Keep Your Seats, Please! *** (1936, George Formby, Florence Desmond, Gus McNaughton, Alastair Sim) – Classic Movie Review 10,495

The 1936 comedy Keep Your Seats, Please! stars George Formby as George Withers, who chases treasure stashed in an antique chair. BBC boss John Reith said: ‘If the public wants to hear Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to hear it in cinemas’.

Director Monty Banks’s 1936 comedy Keep Your Seats, Please! stars Lancastrian comic, actor and ukulele player George Formby as gormless George Withers, who chases some treasure – his aunt’s inheritance of some valuable jewels – that has been stashed in one of half-a-dozen antique chairs, sold to different owners in an auction.

It is made by Associated Talking Pictures, and marks the film debut of child star Binkie Stuart, cast by Banks against the wishes of producer Basil Dean, who thought she was too young and inexperienced after winning the Daily Mail’s London’s Most Beautiful Baby competition at the age of two.

Keep Your Seats, Please! was made when Formbymania was coming to its peak and the toothy charmer grins with gusto despite the predictable, hackneyed plot, memorably singing ‘Keep Your Seats, Please’ and ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’.

Director Banks keeps the audience in their seats by moving the thing on swiftly and professionally, and there is a typically competent British cast, with Florence Desmond an appealing heroine and Alastair Sim outstanding as an unscrupulous lawyer also seeking the fortune.

The screenplay by Anthony Kimmins, Thomas J Geraghty and Ian Hay is based on the 1928 Russian satirical novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov.

Also in the cast are Gus McNaughton, Harry Tate, Dame May Whitty, Hal Gordon, Margaret Moffatt, Maud Gill, Mike Johnson, Binkie Stuart, Syd Crossley, Ethel Coleridge, Beatrix Fielden-Kaye and Tom Payne.

The tale by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov was later revived for It’s in the Bag! (1945) and The Twelve Chairs by Mel Brooks in 1970.

Formby first performs the classic naughty comedy song ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’, written by Formby, Harry Gifford and Fred E Cliffe, in this movie. When it was released as a record, it was banned by the BBC from being played on the radio because of its racy lyrics.

The BBC director general John Reith stated that ‘if the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation’s airwaves’. In 1941, the BBC relented and started to broadcast the song after Formby said: ‘I sang it before the King and Queen at the Royal Variety Performance’.

Regal Zonophone awarded Formby the first silver disc for sales of more than 100,000 copies. It became Formby’s signature tune.

Italian national Monty Banks (born Mario Bianchi, 18 July 1897 – 7 January 1950) met British singer and actress Gracie Fields in 1935, directing her in four films, and they married in March 1940.

The cast are George Formby as George Withers, Florence Desmond as Florrie, Gus McNaughton as Max, Alastair Sim as A. S. Drayton, Harry Tate as Auctioneer, Enid Stamp-Taylor as Madame Louise, Hal Gordon as Sailor, Tom Payne as Man from Child Welfare, Beatrix Fielden-Kaye as Woman from Child Welfare, Clifford Heatherley as Doctor Wilberforce, Binkie Stuart as Binkie, Dame May Whitty as Aunt Georgina Withers, Harvey Braban as Detective Jones, Ethel Coleridge as Spinster, Syd Crossley as Bus Conductor, Maud Gill as Fanny Tidmarsh, Jimmy Godden as X-Ray Doctor, Mike Johnson as Mr. O’Flaherty, Margaret Moffatt as Mrs. O’Flaherty, and Frank Perfitt as Bus Inspector.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,495

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