Keep Your Seats, Please!

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.

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."

More than a vehicle for the popular George Formby, this pleasant musical offers star turns by comedienne Florence Desmond and the inimitable Alistair Sim, plus an appealing tot called Binkie Stuart. Based on a Russian play, this plot has George trying to discover which of a half dozen chairs his late and eccentric aunt has hidden his inheritance in. Of course, the chairs have been sold at auction, requiring George to pursue them various locales, each allowing a Marx Brothers-type comic sequence.

This is another one of my favourite Formby's, a fast paced comedy drama with a lot of plot to it (based on a Russian play from 1928), a couple of nice songs and a view of a long dead England. It was the 2nd major vehicle for him at ATP after No Limit under the expert guidance of Basil Dean … and Beryl of course!

Eccentric aunt Georgina dies and leaves her gormless nephew George £90,000 in bonds and jewels sewn up in one of a number of chairs already being auctioned. Unfortunately wide eyed manic lawyer Alistair Sim also knows so the chase is on to get to the correct chair before the other does. In this George is aided by Flo Desmond and her little niece Binkie and hindered by smooth talking Gus McNaughton, eventually making front page headlines as a gang of chair-slashers being sought by the police. Nowadays ordinary slashers find they're not being sought by the police. Songs: When I'm Cleaning Windows (in Madame Louise's suddenly dubious apartment, and on the uke that became Lot 443 in the auction of his property after his death in 1961); Tip Of My Toes (by Flo at breakfast in the boarding house); Binkie's Lullaby (in the workman's hut – delightfully ended by Binkie's cute line "Auntie Florrie's asleep, come on, let's play"); and Keep Your Seats Please (first in the pawnshop then on the bus, again playing to Binkie's obvious delight). Favourite bits: the knockabout scenes at Doctor Wilberforce's surgery, with George astounding him by revealing he had twin appendixes; the farcical situations with Enid Stamp-Taylor; Max's ever-increasing percentage take; x-raying the goat. There's the usual great cast that appeared in George's finest films at Ealing when he was Britain's top star – the formula had arrived, was perfect, and was played over and over again.

If you like Formby as I do there's not a dull moment in here, it's wonderful old fashioned entertainment from start to finish, if you don't like Formby here's another chance to work off some cynical bile.

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.