SOUTH AMERICAN GEORGE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 165, 21 August 1942, Page 16

SOUTH AMERICAN GEORGE

(Columbia-British)

HERE you get George Formby you usually get fun. Not perhaps always good clean fun (can the British Film Cen-

sor be taking his Sabbatical leave, we ask ourselves?), but nevertheless, fun. And George is well up to Formby form in this revelation of the lengths to which an unscrupulous manager will go to get rid of a non-revenue-producing operatic tenor, and of the lengths to which George will go when there’s no censor there to stop him. The tenor is not, to begin with, George. George is merely an undesirable extra who ruins a performance of La Traviata by dropping his musket, and walking in front of the soprano to retrieve it. Sacked, he tries to earn some money on his way home by allowing his hair to be experimented with on behalf of Britannia (Rules the Waves), Hair Curlers. Meanwhile, the famous South American operatic tenor, Vernetti, has unwittingly broken his contract by eloping to Los Palmas without his manager’s permission, and curly-haired George is roped in by Vernetti’s publicity manager to impersonate him. Formby fans will laugh themselves hoarse at the sight of George lounging in a luxury flat in be-dragoned dressing-gown; at George, supposedly voiceless with laryngitis, telling the manager what he thinks of him in gestures of one syllable; and at George, on stage, miming a gramophone rendering of an ultra-operatic tenor solo. But George doesn’t confine himself to the classics. He sings four songs in broad Lancashire to the tune (more or less), of "When I’m Cleaning Windows," accompanied by the inevitable banjo and by George’s characteristically © coy glances. South American George is a genuine improvement on the usual Formby vehicle. The plot can stand on its own feet, and the supporting players get far more chance than usual. ,