Keep Your Seats, Please!

George Formby is okay as the comic lead in this and most of his other films. But this film is just mildly humorous. What makes it watchable at all is the interesting plot in which Formby's George Withers is in a race with a crooked solicitor (attorney) to find a treasure. His aunt stuffed her jewelry and cash in a chair before she died, rather than let her greedy relatives get anything. In her will, she said that she was donating everything to charity. But in a separate letter to her nephew George Withers, she tells him where to find the treasure she had hidden for him. He was her only relative who wasn't greedy and trying to get at her wealth.

When George gets the letter, his aunt's furniture had already gone to an auction house. But he doesn't have the money to pay for the chairs so he goes to his aunt's solicitor, A. S. Drayton (played by Alastair Sim). Instead of helping him, Drayton burns the letter and goes after the loot himself. So the race is on to find the loot and it's the source of most of the comedy. George gets help from a young woman, Florrie, and a shyster, Max.

People who like these and other members of the cast in the movies will probably enjoy this film. Formby has his frequent banjo in the film and plays and sings a couple of songs - one of which is the title of this film, "Keep Your Seats, Please." It's doubtful that many others will. The six stars are simply because the cast are all quite good in their roles, and there is some comedy in antics with Withers and Drayton.

Here's my favorite exchange of humor in this film. Aunt Georgina Withers (May Whitty), "But probably you've never studied chairs... You've never realized their importance in our lives.... Chairs - the parts they play in our life. A young man, aspiring to a chair on the board of directors, (unintelligible), and what do we find on the other side of the Atlantic?" A. S. Drayton, "America?" Aunt Withers, "No! The electric chair. And, on this side?" Drayton, "Indians?" Aunt Withers, "The greatest chair of all - the throne."

I have Nail Deans autobiography. He says that he had the utmost difficulty in persuading Florence Desmond to take the female lead because her part consisted mainly of rushing after George carrying a child of three. However she needed the money.

He says that they had to be careful about his musical members because he couldn't read a note of music.

He adds that none of his films did worthwhile business in the West End but elsewhere it was a case of all seats sold most of the time.

His films sold on the strength of his personality. So far as the audience was concerned he was gormless. His best known number was featured in this film.

Out of work and dossing around, George (George Formby), the favourite nephew of a favourite wealthy aunt (Dame May Whitty) is left a secret inheritance after the aunt dies, but the cheque has been sewn into a seat that has been auctioned off with many of her other possessions. George learns of this and learning that all seven dining room chairs have been sold separately seeks them out.

Turned into a Formby vehicle from a novel by Ilya Ilf and adapted by regular Formby writer Anthony Kimmins and Thomas J. Geraghty and Ian Hay, this is a good early star turn as Formby/Kimmins still tries to find the formula that works for his films. There are plenty of laughs and set pieces, some quite hilarious. Produced by Basil Dean, Formby even gets to sing one of his best known songs, 'When I'm Cleaning Windows'.

KEEP YOUR SEATS, PLEASE! Is an early Ealing comedy starring George Formby, and it's most notable for being the one where he sings his most famous ukelele song, 'When I'm Cleaning Windows', in a scene randomly shoehorned into the narrative. That set-piece is indeed the highlight of the movie, but the rest is amiable enough, a typical character-focused comedy about a hidden inheritance and some unscrupulous villains trying to get their hands on it. Formby is certainly an acquired taste but I found him quite likeable in a goofy way in this one, and you do get the treat of an early Alistair Sim role where the actor plays - what else? - a villain.

In this film - as in every Formby film - goofish gormless George always gets the girl. Why?

Cus he's a soft daft lad with a happy ukulele - and he's got all the best tunes.

Admittedly, the daft antics get more farcical - even positively ludicrous - as this film goes along (goat carried onto crowded bus wearing a dog mask being the silliest example)

The scene where a matronly nurse tries to take George's trousers off made my girlfriend laugh her mascara off. "Never touched me!" Not!

I was starting to feel myself "going daft" quite a bit at that too.

If you can't let yourself go daft watching a George Formby film you may as well watch something else.