American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality #12. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact, 1977.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

French postcard in the Collection John Travolta by Star, Paris. John Travolta in Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978). Sent by mail in 1986.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard, no. AG 1015. John Travolta in Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Belgian postcard by Multichoice Kaleidoscope. Photo: Isopress / Outline (Bernstein).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard, no. AX 7376.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. C.P.C.S. 33 150. John Travolta in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Vintage autograph photo. John Travolta in Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

German promotion card by Polydor, no. 118. John Travolta in Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard, no. AX 7381. John Travolta in Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978).

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard, no. AG 1014

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Dutch postcard, no. AX 7380.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

French postcard in the Collection John Travolta by Star, Paris. Caption: John Travolta, 1978. Sent by mail in 1985.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

The Postcard

 

A postcard published by J. Beagles & Co. of London E.C. The photography was by Ellis & Walery of Conduit Street and later Regent Street, London, and the card was printed in England.

 

The card was posted in Bath on Saturday the 28th. May 1904 to:

 

Miss Nancy Aust,

64 Queen's Road,

Bayswater,

London W.

 

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

 

"Only three cards came

to you and one for Sue.

Glad you arrived safely".

 

J. Beagles & Co.

 

The firm of J. Beagles & Co. was started by John Beagles (1844-1909). The company produced a variety of postcards including an extensive catalogue of celebrity (stage and screen) portrait postcards. After Beagle’s death, the business continued under its original name until it closed in 1939.

 

Sir Seymour Hicks

 

Sir Edward Seymour Hicks (30th. January 1871 - 6th. April 1949), was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, actor-manager and producer.

 

He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'.

 

Making his stage début at the age of nine and performing professionally by sixteen, Hicks joined a theatrical company and toured America before starring in 'Under the Clock' in 1893, the first musical revue ever staged in London. Following this, he starred in a revival of 'Little Jack Sheppard' at the Gaiety Theatre, London which brought him to the attention of impresario George Edwardes.

 

Edwardes cast Hicks in his next show, 'The Shop Girl', in 1894. Its success led to his participation in two more of Edwardes's hit "girl" musicals, 'The Circus Girl' (1896) and 'A Runaway Girl' (1898), both starring Terriss.

 

He first played the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge in 1901, and eventually played it thousands of times onstage.

 

Hicks, along with his wife, joined the producer Charles Frohman in his theatre company and wrote and starred in a series of extraordinarily successful musicals, including 'Bluebell in Fairyland' (1901), 'Quality Street' (1902), 'The Earl and the Girl' (1903) and 'The Catch of the Season' (1904).

 

Hicks used his fortune from these shows to commission the building of the Aldwych Theatre in 1905 and the Hicks Theatre in 1906, opening the latter with a new hit show, 'The Beauty of Bath'.

 

His stage performances were less successful in later years, and he opted instead to star in music hall tours, including 'Pebbles on the Beach' (1912). He continued to write light comedies, the most popular of which was 'The Happy Day' (1916).

 

On film, he first appeared in 'Scrooge' and 'David Garrick', both from 1913. Later notable films included 'The Lambeth Walk' (1939) and 'Busman's Honeymoon' (1940), and his last film was in the year of his death, 1949.

 

George Formby

 

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

 

Not a lot, but two days earlier, on the 26th. May 1904, George Formby OBE was born. He was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who frequently played the ukulele when on the stage or in films.

 

George Formby (born George Hoy Booth) became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930's and 1940's.

 

On stage, screen and record he sang light, comic songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK's highest-paid entertainer.

 

Born in Wigan, Lancashire, he was the son of George Formby Senior. After an early career as a stable boy and jockey, Formby took to the music hall stage after the early death of his father in 1921.

 

His early performances were taken exclusively from his father's act, including the same songs, jokes and characters. In 1923 he made two career-changing decisions – he purchased a ukulele, and married Beryl Ingham, a fellow performer who became his manager and who transformed his act.

 

Beryl insisted that he appear on stage formally dressed, and introduced the ukulele to his performance.

 

He started his recording career in 1926 and, from 1934, he increasingly worked in film to develop into a major star by the late 1930's and 1940's, and became the UK's most popular entertainer during those decades.

 

Media historian Brian McFarlane writes that on film, Formby portrayed gormless Lancastrian innocents who would win through against some form of villainy, gaining the affection of an attractive middle-class girl in the process.

 

During the Second World War Formby worked extensively for the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), and entertained civilians and troops. By 1946 it was estimated that George had performed in front of three million service personnel.

 

After the war his career declined, although he toured the Commonwealth, and continued to appear in variety and pantomime.

 

George's last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before the death of Beryl.

 

He surprised people by announcing his engagement to a school teacher, Pat Howson, seven weeks after Beryl's funeral, but died in Preston three weeks later, at the age of 56; he was buried in Warrington, alongside his father.

 

Formby's biographer, Jeffrey Richards, considers that:

 

"The actor had been able to embody

simultaneously Lancashire, the working

classes, the people, and the nation".

 

Formby was considered Britain's first properly home-grown screen comedian. He was an influence on future comedians—particularly Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom—and, culturally, on entertainers such as the Beatles, who referred to him in their music.

 

Since his death, Formby has been the subject of five biographies, two television specials and two works of public sculpture.

 

George Formby - The Early Years 1904 - 1921

 

George Formby was born in Wigan, Lancashire, on the 26th. May 1904. He was the eldest of seven surviving children born to James Lawler Booth and his wife Eliza, née Hoy. The marriage was in fact bigamous because Booth was still married to his first wife, Martha Maria Salter, a twenty-year-old music hall performer.

 

Booth was a successful music hall comedian and singer who performed under the name George Formby (he is now known as George Formby Senior).

 

Formby Senior suffered from a chest ailment, identified variously as bronchitis, asthma or tuberculosis, and would use the cough as part of the humour in his act, saying to the audience:

 

"Bronchitis, I'm a bit tight tonight."

 

Alternatively:

 

"Coughing better tonight."

 

One of his main characters was that of John Willie, an "archetypal Lancashire lad". In 1906 Formby Sr was earning £35 a week in the music halls, which rose to £325 a week by 1920. This meant that George Formby grew up in an affluent home.

 

Formby Senior was so popular that Marie Lloyd, the influential music hall singer and actress, would only watch two acts: his and that of Dan Leno.

 

George Formby was born blind owing to an obstructive caul, although his sight was restored during a violent coughing fit or sneeze when he was a few months old.

 

After briefly attending school—at which he did not prosper, and did not learn to read or write—Formby was removed from formal education at the age of seven and sent to become a stable boy, briefly in Wiltshire and then in Middleham, Yorkshire.

 

Formby Senior sent his son away to work as he was worried that he would watch him on stage; he was against Formby following in his footsteps, saying:

 

"One fool in the family is enough."

 

After a year working at Middleham, young George was apprenticed to Thomas Scholfield in Epsom, where he ran his first professional races at the age of 10, when he weighed less than 56 lb (25 kg).

 

In 1915 Formby Senior allowed his son to appear on screen, taking the lead in By the Shortest of Heads, a thriller directed by Bert Haldane in which Formby played a stable boy who outwits a gang of villains and wins a £10,000 prize when he comes first in a horse race.

 

The film is now considered lost, with the last-known copy having been destroyed in 1940.

 

Later in 1915, and with the closure of the English racing season because of the Great War, Formby moved to Ireland where he continued as a jockey until November 1918.

 

Later that month he returned to England and raced for Lord Derby at his Newmarket stables. Formby continued as a jockey until 1921, although he never won a race.

 

-- Beginning a Stage Career: 1921–1934

 

On the 8th. February 1921, Formby Senior succumbed to his bronchial condition and died at the young age of 45; he was laid to rest in the Catholic section of Warrington Cemetery.

 

After his father's funeral Eliza took the young Formby to London to help him cope with his grief. While there, they visited the Victoria Palace Theatre—where Formby Senior had previously been so successful—and saw a performance by the Tyneside comedian Tommy Dixon.

 

Dixon was performing a copy of Formby Senior's act, using the same songs, jokes, costumes and mannerisms, and billed himself as "The New George Formby", a name which angered Eliza and Formby even more.

 

The performance prompted Formby to follow in his father's profession, a decision which was supported by Eliza. As he had never seen his father perform live, Formby found the imitation difficult, and he had to learn his father's songs from records, and the rest of his act and jokes from his mother.

 

On the 21st. March 1921 Formby gave his first professional appearance in a two-week run at the Hippodrome in Earlestown, Lancashire, where he received a fee of £5 a week.

 

In the show he was billed as George Hoy, using his mother's maiden name—he explained later that he did not want the Formby name to appear in small print. His father's name was used in the posters and advertising, George Hoy being described as:

 

"Comedian (Son of George Formby)."

 

While still appearing in Earlestown, Formby was hired to appear at the Moss Empire chain of theatres for £17 10s a week. His first night was unsuccessful, and he later said of it:

 

"I was the first turn, three minutes,

and died the death of a dog."

 

George toured venues in Northern England, although he was not well received, and was booed and hissed while performing in Blyth, Northumberland. As a result he experienced frequent periods of unemployment—up to three months at one point.

 

Formby spent two years as a support act touring round the northern halls, and although he was poorly paid, his mother supported him financially.

 

In 1923 Formby started to play the ukulele, although the exact circumstances of how he came to play the instrument are unknown. He introduced it into his act during a run at the Alhambra Theatre in Barnsley.

 

When the songs—still his father's material—were well received, he changed his stage name to George Formby, and stopped using the John Willie character.

 

Another significant event was his appearance in Castleford, West Yorkshire, where appearing on the same bill was Beryl Ingham, an Accrington-born champion clogdancer and actress who had won the All England Step Dancing title at the age of 11.

 

Beryl, who had formed a dancing act with her sister, May, called "The Two Violets", had a low opinion of Formby's act. She later said that:

 

"If I'd had a bag of rotten tomatoes

with me I'd have thrown them at him".

 

Nevertheless Formby and Beryl entered into a relationship and married two years later, on the 13th. September 1924, at a register office in Wigan, with Formby's aunt and uncle as witnesses.

 

Upon hearing the news, George's mother Eliza insisted on the couple having a church wedding, which followed two months later.

 

Beryl took over as George's manager, and changed aspects of his act, including the songs and jokes. She instructed him on how to use his hands, and how to work his audience.

 

She also persuaded him to change his stage dress to black tie—although he appeared in a range of other costumes too—and to take lessons in how to play the ukulele properly.

 

By June 1926 George was proficient enough to earn a one-off record deal—negotiated by Beryl—to sing six of his father's songs for the Edison Bell/Winner label.

 

Formby spent the next few years touring, largely in the north, but also appearing at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, his official London debut.

 

George had a further recording session in October 1929, performing two songs for Dominion Records. However according to David Bret, Formby's biographer:

 

"Beryl's avaricious demands would

prevent any serious contract from

coming George's way."

 

That changed in 1932, when Formby signed a three-year deal with Decca Records. One of the songs he recorded in July 1932 was "Chinese Laundry Blues", telling the story of Mr Wu, which became one of his standard songs, and part of a long-running series of songs about the character.

 

Over the course of his career Formby went on to record over 200 songs, around 90 of which were written by Fred Cliffe and Harry Gifford.

 

In the 1932 winter season Formby appeared in his first pantomime, Babes in the Wood, in Bolton, after which he toured with the George Formby Road Show around the north of England, with Beryl acting as the commère; the show also toured in 1934.

 

-- George Formby's Burgeoning Film Career: 1934–1940

 

With Formby's growing success on stage, Beryl decided that it was time for him to move into films. In 1934 she approached the producer Basil Dean, the head of Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). Although he expressed an interest in Formby, he did not like the associated demands from Beryl.

 

She also met the representative of Warner Brothers in the UK, Irving Asher, who was dismissive, saying that Formby was:

 

"Too stupid to play the bad guy

and too ugly to play the hero."

 

Three weeks later Formby was approached by John E. Blakeley of Blakeley's Productions, who offered him a one-film deal.

 

The film, Boots! Boots!, was shot on a budget of £3,000 in a one-room studio in Albany Street, London. Formby played the John Willie character, while Beryl also appeared, and the couple were paid £100 for the two weeks' work, plus 10 per cent of the profits.

 

The film followed a revue format, and Jo Botting, writing for the British Film Institute, described it as having:

 

"A wafer-thin plot that

is "almost incidental."

 

Botting also considered the film to have:

 

"Poor sound quality, static

scene set-ups and a lack

of sets."

 

However while it did not impress the critics, audience figures were high.

 

Formby followed this up with Off the Dole in 1935, again for Blakeley, who had re-named his company Mancunian Films. The film cost £3,000 to make, and earned £80,000 at the box office.

 

As with Boots! Boots!, the film was in a revue format, and Formby again played John Willie, with Beryl as his co-star. According to Formby's biographer, Jeffrey Richards:

 

"The two films for Blakeley are

an invaluable record of the

pre-cinematic Formby at work".

 

The success of the pictures led Basil Dean to offer Formby a seven-year contract with ATP, which resulted in the production of 11 films, although Dean's fellow producer, Michael Balcon, considered Formby to be:

 

"... an odd and not particularly

loveable character".

 

The first film from the deal was released in 1935. No Limit features Formby as an entrant in the Isle of Man annual Tourist Trophy (TT) motorcycle race. Monty Banks directed, and Florence Desmond took the female lead.

 

According to Richards, Dean did not try to play down Formby's Lancashire character in the film, and in fact employed Walter Greenwood, the Salford-born author of the 1933 novel Love on the Dole, as the scriptwriter.

 

Filming was troubled, with Beryl being difficult to everyone present. The writer Matthew Sweet described the set as "a battleground" because of her actions, and Monty Banks unsuccessfully requested that Dean bar Beryl from the studio.

 

The Observer thought that:

 

"Parts of No Limit are pretty dull

stuff, but the race footage was

shot and cut to a maximum of

excitement."

 

Regarding the star of the film, the reviewer thought that:

 

"Our Lancashire George is a grand

lad; he can gag and clown, play the

banjo and sing with authority ...

Still and all, he doesn't do too bad."

 

The film was so popular that it was reissued in 1938, 1946 and 1957.

 

The formula used for No Limit was repeated in George's following works: Formby played the 'urban little man' -- defeated, but refusing to admit it.

 

George portrayed a good-natured, but accident-prone and incompetent Lancastrian, who was often in a skilled trade, or the services.

 

The plots were geared to Formby trying to achieve success in a field unfamiliar to him (in horse racing, the TT Races, as a spy or a policeman), and by winning the affections of a middle-class girl in the process.

 

Interspersed throughout each film is a series of songs by Formby, in which he plays the banjo, banjolele or ukulele. The films are, in the words of the academic Brian McFarlane:

 

"... unpretentiously skilful in their

balance between broad comedy

and action, laced with Formby's

shy ordinariness".

 

No Limit was followed by Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936, which was again directed by Banks with Desmond returning as the co-star.

 

Tensions arose in pre-production with Banks and some of the cast requesting to Dean that Beryl be banned from the set. Tempers had also become strained between Formby and Florence Desmond, who were not on speaking terms except to film scenes.

 

The situation became so bad that Dean avoided visiting his studios for the month of filming. The film contained the song "The Window Cleaner" (popularly known as "When I'm Cleaning Windows"), which was soon banned by the BBC.

 

The corporation's director 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."

 

Reith particularly objected to two of the verses:

 

"To overcrowded flats I've been,

Sixteen in one bed I've seen,

With the lodger tucked up in between,

When I'm cleaning windows!

 

Now lots of girls I've had to jilt,

For they admire the way I'm built,

It's a good job I don't wear a kilt,

When I'm cleaning windows!"

 

31 years later, in 1967, the BBC banned the Beatles' 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' because of the song's alleged references to drugs. However writer of the song John Lennon claimed in a 1971 interview that Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds has no connection to LSD. He explained that he was inspired to write the song after his son brought him a drawing that he made in nursery school:

 

“It never was about LSD, and nobody

believes me. This is the truth: My son

came home with a drawing and showed

me this strange-looking woman flying

around. I said, ‘What is it?’ and he said,

‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,’ and

I thought, ‘That’s beautiful.’

I immediately wrote a song about it.

The song had gone out, the whole

album had been published and

somebody noticed that the letters

spelled out LSD, and I had no idea

about it. … It wasn’t about LSD at all.”

 

Formby and Beryl were furious that their song was blocked. In May 1941 Beryl informed the BBC that the song was a favourite of the royal family, particularly Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby pointed out that:

 

"I sang it before the King and

Queen at the Royal Variety

Performance."

 

The BBC relented and started to broadcast the song.

 

When production finished on Keep Your Seats, Please, Beryl insisted that for the next film there should be:

 

"No Eye-Ties and stuck-up

little trollops involved."

 

Beryl was referring to Banks and Desmond, respectively.

 

By then Dean had tired of the on-set squabbles, and for the third ATP film, Feather Your Nest, he appointed William Beaudine as the director, and Polly Ward, the niece of the music hall star Marie Lloyd, as the female lead.

 

Bret noted:

 

"The songs in the film are comparatively

bland, with the exception of the one

which would become immortal: 'Leaning

on a Lamp-post'."

 

By the time of the next production, Keep Fit in 1937, Dean had begun to assemble a special team at Ealing Studios to help develop and produce the Formby films; key among the members were the director Anthony Kimmins, who went on to direct five of Formby's films.

 

Kay Walsh was cast as the leading lady and, in the absence of Beryl from the set, Formby and Walsh had an affair, after she fell for his flirtatious behaviour off-camera.

 

Although Beryl was furious with Walsh, and tried to have her removed from the film, a showdown with Dean proved fruitless. Dean informed her that Walsh was to remain the lead in both Keep Fit, and in Formby's next film (I See Ice, 1938). In order to mollify Beryl, Dean raised Formby's fee for the latter film to £25,000.

 

When filming concluded on I See Ice, Formby spent the 1937 summer season performing in the revue King Cheer at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, before appearing in a 12-minute slot at the Royal Variety Performance in November.

 

The popularity of George's performances meant that in 1937 he was the top British male star in box office takings, a position he held every subsequent year until 1943.

 

Additionally, between 1938 and 1942 he was also the highest-paid entertainer in Great Britain, and by the end of the 1930's was earning £100,000 a year.

 

In early 1938 Dean informed the Formbys that in the next film, It's in the Air, Banks would return to direct and Walsh would again be the leading lady. Beryl objected strongly, and Kimmins continued his directorial duties, while Ward was brought in for the female lead.

 

Beryl, as she did with all Formby's female co-stars, read the 'keep-your-hands-off-my-husband' riot act to the actress.

 

In May 1938, while filming It's in the Air, Formby purchased a Rolls-Royce, with the personalised number plate GF 1. Every year afterwards he would purchase either a new Rolls-Royce or Bentley, buying 26 over the course of his life.

 

In the autumn of 1938 Formby began work on Trouble Brewing, released the following year with 19-year-old Googie Withers as the female lead; Kimmins again directed.

 

Withers later recounted that Formby did not speak to her until, during a break in filming when Beryl was not present, he whispered out of the corner of his mouth:

 

"I'm sorry, love, but you know,

I'm not allowed to speak to you."

 

Googie thought that this was "very sweet."

 

George's second release of 1939—shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War—was Come On George!, which cast Pat Kirkwood in the female lead.

 

Formby and Kirkwood disliked each other intensely, and neither of the Formbys liked several of the other senior cast members. Come On George! was screened for troops serving in France before being released in Great Britain.

 

-- George Formby and the Second World War

 

At the outbreak of the Second World War Dean left ATP and became the head of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), the organisation that provided entertainment to the British Armed Forces.

 

Over the course of five months Formby requested to sign up for ENSA, but was denied; Dean however relented in February 1940, and Formby was signed on a fixed salary of £10 per week, although he still remained under contract to ATP.

 

George undertook his first tour in France in March, where he performed for members of the British Expeditionary Force.

 

Basil Dean commented on Formby's work for the organisation:

 

"Standing with his back to a tree or a wall

of sandbags, with men squatting on the

ground in front of him, he sang song after

song, screwing up his face into comical

expressions of fright whenever shells

exploded in the near distance, and

making little cracks when the firing

drowned the point lines in his songs".

 

The social research organisation Mass-Observation recorded that Formby's first film of 1940, Let George Do It!, gave a particularly strong boost to early-war British civilian morale.

 

In a dream sequence after being drugged, Formby's character punches Hitler during a Nuremberg Rally. According to Richards:

 

"The scene provides the visual

encapsulation of the people's

war, with the English Everyman

flooring the Nazi Superman."

 

The scene was so striking that the film became Formby's first international release, in the US, under the title To Hell With Hitler.

 

Let George Do It! was also shown in Moscow, where it was released in 1943 under the title Dinky Doo. The film attracted packed houses, and received record box-office takings for over ten months.

 

The critics also praised the film, and the Kinematograph Weekly called it Formby's "best performance to date", and the film, "a box office certainty".

 

Formby's ENSA commitments were heavy, touring factories, theatres and concert halls around Great Britain. He also gave free concerts for charities and worthy causes, and raised £10,000 for the Fleetwood Fund on behalf of the families of missing trawlermen.

 

George and Beryl also set up their own charities, such as the OK Club for Kids, whose aim was to provide cigarettes for Yorkshire soldiers, and the Jump Fund, to provide home-knitted balaclavas, scarves and socks to servicemen.

 

Formby also joined the Home Guard as a dispatch rider, where he took his duties seriously, and fitted them around his other work whenever he could.

 

Formby continued filming with ATP, and his second film of 1940, Spare a Copper, was again focused on an aspect of the war, this time combating fifth columnists and saboteurs in a Merseyside dockyard.

 

However cinema-goers had begun to tire of war films, and so his next venture, Turned Out Nice Again returned to less contentious issues, with Formby's character caught in a domestic battle between his new wife and mother.

 

Early in the filming schedule, he took time to perform in an ENSA show that was broadcast on the BBC from Aldwych tube station as Let the People Sing. George sang four songs, and told the audience:

 

"Don't forget, it's wonderful

to be British!"

 

Towards the end of 1940 Formby tried to enlist for active military service, despite Beryl informing him that by being a member of ENSA he was already signed up. However the examining board rejected him as being unfit, because he had sinusitis and arthritic toes.

 

George spent the winter season in pantomime at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, portraying Idle Jack in Dick Whittington. When the season came to an end, the Formbys moved to London and, in May 1941, performed for the royal family at Windsor Castle.

 

George had commissioned a new set of inoffensive lyrics for "When I'm Cleaning Windows", but was informed that he should sing the original, uncensored version, which was enjoyed by the royal party, particularly Queen Mary, who asked for a repeat of the song.

 

King George VI presented Formby with a set of gold cuff links, and advised him to "wear them, not put them away".

 

With the ATP contract at an end, Formby decided not to renew or push for an extension. Robert Murphy, in his study of wartime British cinema, points out that:

 

"Balcon, Formby's producer at the

time, seems to have made little

effort to persuade him not to transfer

his allegiance."

 

This was despite the box office success enjoyed by Let George Do It! and Spare a Copper. Numerous offers came in, and Formby selected the American company Columbia Pictures, in a deal worth in excess of £500,000. The contract was to make a minimum of six films—seven were eventually made.

 

Formby set up his own company, Hillcrest Productions, to distribute the films, and had the final decision on the choice of director, scriptwriter and theme, while Columbia would have the choice of leading lady.

 

Part of Formby's reasoning behind the decision was a desire for parts with more character, something that would not have happened at ATP.

 

At the end of August 1941 production began on Formby's first film for Columbia, South American George, which took six weeks to complete.

 

Formby's move to an American company was controversial, and although his popular appeal seemed unaffected, John Mundy noted in 2007 that:

 

"His films were treated with

increasing critical hostility."

 

The reviewer for The Times wrote that the story was "confused," and considered that "there is not sufficient comic invention in the telling" of it.

 

Murphy commented that:

 

"The criticism had more to do with

the inadequate vehicles which he

subsequently appeared in than in

any diminution of his personal

popularity."

 

In early 1942 Formby undertook a three-week, 72-show tour of Northern Ireland, largely playing to troops, but also undertaking fund-raising shows for charity—one at the Belfast Hippodrome raised £500.

 

He described his time in Ulster as:

 

"The pleasantest tour

I've ever undertaken".

 

George returned to the mainland by way of the Isle of Man, where he entertained the troops guarding the internment camps. After further charity shows—raising £8,000 for a tank fund—Formby was the associate producer for the Vera Lynn film We'll Meet Again (1943).

 

In March he also filmed Much Too Shy which was released in October that year. Although the film was poorly received by the critics, the public still attended in large numbers, and the film was profitable.

 

In the summer of 1942 Formby was involved in a controversy with the Lord's Day Observance Society, who had filed law suits against the BBC for playing secular music on Sunday.

 

The society began a campaign against the entertainment industry, claiming that all theatrical activity on a Sunday was unethical, and cited a 1667 law which made it illegal.

 

With 60 leading entertainers already avoiding Sunday working, Dean informed Formby that his stance would be crucial in avoiding a spread of the problem. Formby issued a statement:

 

"I'll hang up my uke on Sundays only

when our lads stop fighting and getting

killed on Sundays ... as far as the Lord's

Day Observance Society are concerned,

they can mind their own bloody business.

And in any case, what have they done for

the war effort except get on everyone's

nerves?"

 

The following day it was announced that the pressure from the society was to be lifted.

 

At the end of 1942 Formby started filming Get Cracking, a story about the Home Guard, which was completed in under a month, the tight schedule brought about by an impending ENSA tour of the Mediterranean.

 

Between the end of filming Get Cracking and the release of the film in May 1943, Formby undertook a tour of Northern Scotland and the Orkney Islands, and had nearly completed shooting on his next film, Bell-Bottom George.

 

The reviewer for The Times opined that:

 

"Get Cracking, although a distinct

improvement on other films in which

Mr. Formby has appeared, is cut too

closely to fit the demands of an

individual technique to achieve any

real life of its own."

 

Bell-Bottom George was described 60 years later by the academic Baz Kershaw as being:

 

"Unashamedly gay and peppered

with homoerotic scenes."

 

Bret concurs, and notes that:

 

"The majority of the cast and almost

every one of the male extras was

unashamedly gay."

 

The film was a hit with what Bret describes as Formby's "surprisingly large, closeted gay following".

 

The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian was impressed with the film, and wrote that:

 

"There is a new neatness of execution

and lightness of touch about this

production ... while George himself

can no longer be accused of trailing

clouds of vaudevillian glory."

 

The reviewer also considered Formby:

 

"... our first authentic and strictly

indigenous film comedian."

 

After completing filming, the Formbys undertook a further ENSA tour. Although Dean personally disliked the Formbys, he greatly admired the tireless work they did for the organisation.

 

In August 1943 Formby undertook a 53-day tour of a significant portion of the Mediterranean, including Italy, Sicily, Malta, Gibraltar, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine.

 

He entertained 750,000 troops in thirteen countries, touring 25,000 miles (40,000 km) in the process and returning to England in October.

 

The couple travelled around the countryside in a Ford Mercury that Formby had purchased from the racing driver Sir Malcolm Campbell, which had been converted to sleep two in the back.

 

In January 1944 Formby described his experiences touring for ENSA in Europe and the Middle East in a BBC radio broadcast. He said that:

 

"The troops are worrying quite a lot

about you folks at home, but we soon

put them right about that.

We told them that after four and a half

years, Britain was still the best country

to live in."

 

Shortly after he began filming He Snoops to Conquer—his fifth picture for Columbia—he was visited on set by the Dance Music Policy Committee (DMPC).

 

The DMPC was responsible for vetting music for broadcast, and for checking if music was sympathetic towards the enemy during the war.

 

The DMPC interviewed Formby about three songs that had been included in Bell-Bottom George: "Swim Little Fish", "If I Had a Girl Like You" and "Bell-Bottom George".

 

Formby was summoned to the BBC's offices to perform his three songs in front of the committee, with his song checked against the available sheet music. A week later, on the 1st. February, the committee met and decided that the songs were innocuous, although Formby was told that he would have to get further clearance if the lyrics were changed.

 

Bret concluded that George had been the victim of a plot by a member of the Variety Artists' Federation, following Formby's scathing comments on entertainers who were too scared to leave London to entertain the troops.

 

The comments, which appeared in the forces magazine Union Jack, were then widely reported in the press in Britain. The Variety Artists' Federation demanded that Formby release names, and threatened him with action if he did not do so, but he refused to give in to their pressure.

 

Formby went to Normandy in July 1944 in the vanguard of a wave of ENSA performers. He and Beryl travelled over on a rough crossing to Arromanches giving a series of impromptu concerts to troops in improvised conditions, including on the backs of farm carts and army lorries, or in bomb-cratered fields.

 

In one location the German front line was too close for him to perform, so he crawled into the trenches and told jokes with the troops there. He then boarded HMS Ambitious for his first scheduled concert before returning to France to continue his tour.

 

During dinner with General Bernard Montgomery, whom he had met in North Africa, Formby was invited to visit the glider crews of 6th. Airborne Division, who had been holding a series of bridges without relief for 56 days.

 

He did so on the 17th. August in a one-day visit to the front line bridges, where he gave nine shows, all standing beside a sandbag wall, ready to jump into a slit trench in case of problems; much of the time his audience were in foxholes.

 

After the four-week tour of France, Formby returned home to start work on I Didn't Do It (released in 1945), although he continued to work on ENSA concerts and tours in Britain.

 

Between January and March 1945, shortly after the release of He Snoops to Conquer, he left on an ENSA tour that took in Burma, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

 

The concerts in the Far East were his last for ENSA, and by the end of the war it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel.

 

-- George Formby's Post-War Career: 1946–1952

 

In 1946 the song "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", which Formby had recorded in 1937, began to cause problems at the BBC for broadcasts of Formby or his music.

 

The producer of one of Formby's live television programmes received a letter from a BBC manager that stated:

 

"We have no record that "With My Little

Stick of Blackpool Rock" is banned. We

do however know, and so does Formby,

that certain lines in the lyric must not be

broadcast."

 

Between July and October 1946, Formby filmed George in Civvy Street, which would be his final film. The story concerns the rivalry between two pubs: the Unicorn, bequeathed to Formby's character, and the Lion, owned by his childhood sweetheart—played by Rosalyn Boulter—but run by an unscrupulous manager.

 

Richards wrote:

 

"The film has symbolic significance;

at the end, with the marriage between

the two pub owners, Formby bowed

out of films, unifying the nation mythically,

communally, and matrimonially".

 

The film was less successful at the box office than George's previous works, as audience tastes had changed in the post-war world. Fisher opines that because of his tireless war work, Formby had become too synonymous with the war, causing the public to turn away from him, much as they had from the wartime British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

 

Bret believes that post-war audiences wanted intrigue, suspense and romance, through the films of James Mason, Stewart Granger, David Niven and Laurence Olivier.

 

Bret also indicates that Formby's cinematic decline was shared by similar performers, including Gracie Fields, Tommy Trinder and Will Hay.

 

Formby's biographers, Alan Randall and Ray Seaton, write that in his late 40s, Formby "was greying and thickening out", and was too old to play the innocent young Lancashire lad.

 

The slump in his screen popularity hit Formby hard, and he became depressed. In early 1946 Beryl checked him into a psychiatric hospital under her maiden name, Ingham. He came out after five weeks, in time for a tour of Scandinavia in May.

 

On his return from Scandinavia, Formby went into pantomime in Blackpool; while there, he learned of his appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours. Although delighted, he was upset that Beryl went without official recognition, and said:

 

"If somethin' was comin' our way,

ah'd like it to be somethin' Beryl

could have shared."

 

Later that year the Formbys toured South Africa shortly before formal racial apartheid was introduced. While there they refused to play racially-segregated venues. When Formby was cheered by a black audience after embracing a small black girl who had presented his wife with a box of chocolates, National Party leader Daniel François Malan (who later introduced apartheid) telephoned to complain; Beryl replied:

 

"Why don't you piss off,

you horrible little man?"

 

Formby returned to Great Britain at Christmas and appeared in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre, Leeds for nine weeks, and then, in February 1947, he appeared in variety for two weeks at the London Palladium. Reviewing the show, The Times thought:

 

"Formby was more than ever the

mechanized perfection of naive

jollity. His smile, though fixed, is

winning, and his songs are catchy."

 

In September 1947 he went on a 12-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. On his return he was offered more film roles, but turned them down, saying:

 

"When I look back on some of the films

I've done in the past it makes me want

to cringe. I'm afraid the days of being a

clown are gone. From now on I'm only

going to do variety."

 

George began suffering increasing health problems, including a gastric ulcer, and was treated for breathing problems resulting from his heavy smoking. He finished the year in pantomime, appearing as Buttons in Cinderella at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, with Beryl playing Dandini.

 

In September 1949 Formby went on a 19 city coast-to-coast Canadian tour, from which he returned unwell. While subsequently appearing in Cinderella in Leeds, he collapsed in his dressing room. The attending doctor administered morphine, to which Formby briefly became addicted.

 

Further poor health plagued George into 1950, with a bout of dysentery, followed by appendicitis, after which he recuperated in Norfolk, before giving another royal command performance that April.

 

He undertook two further international tours that year: one to Scandinavia, and a second to Canada. His earnings of Ca$200,000 were heavily taxed: Canadian taxes took up $68,000, and UK taxes took 90% of the balance.

 

Formby complained to reporters about the level of taxation, saying:

 

"That's it. So long as the government

keeps bleeding me dry, I shan't be in

much of a hurry to work again!"

 

He and Beryl spent the rest of the year resting in Norfolk, in temporary retirement.

 

Formby was tempted back to work by the theatrical impresario Emile Littler, who offered him the lead role of Percy Piggott in Zip Goes a Million, a play based on the 1902 novel Brewster's Millions by G. B. McCutcheon; Formby was offered £1,500, plus a share of the box-office takings.

 

The show premiered at the Coventry Hippodrome in September 1951 before opening at the Palace Theatre, London on the 20th. October. The Times commented unfavourably, saying that:

 

"Although the audience were appreciative

of the play, they could not conceivably

have detected a spark of wit in either the

lyrics or the dialogue."

 

The paper was equally dismissive of Formby, writing that:

 

"He has a deft way with a song or

a banjo, but little or no finesse in

his handling of a comic situation".

 

A month after the play opened in London, Formby was the guest star on Desert Island Discs, where one of his choices was his father's "Standing on the Corner of the Street".

 

In early 1952 Formby's health began to decline and, on the 28th. April, he decided to withdraw from Zip Goes a Million. On the way to the theatre to inform Littler, Formby suffered a heart attack, although it took the doctors five days to diagnose the coronary and admit him to hospital.

 

George was treated for both the attack, and his morphine addiction. He stayed in hospital for nine weeks before returning home to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, where he announced his retirement.

 

-- George Formby's Health Problems and Intermittent Work: 1952–1960

 

During his recuperation, Formby contracted gastroenteritis and had a suspected blood clot on his lung, after which he underwent an operation to clear a fishbone that was stuck in his throat.

 

He had recovered sufficiently by April 1953 to undertake a 17-show tour of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), before a special appearance at the Southport Garrick Theatre. That September he turned on the Blackpool Illuminations.

 

From October to December 1953 Formby appeared at the London Palladium in 138 performances of the revue Fun and the Fair, with Terry-Thomas and the Billy Cotton band; Formby appeared in the penultimate act of the evening, with Terry-Thomas closing the show.

 

Although Formby's act was well-received, the show was not as successful as had been hoped, and Terry-Thomas later wrote that:

 

"Formby put the audience in a certain

mood which made them non-receptive

to whoever followed. Even though my

act was the star spot, I felt on this

occasion that my being there was an

anti-climax."

 

He requested that the order be changed to have Formby close the show, but this was turned down.

 

Formby suffered from stage fright during the show's run—the first time he had suffered from the condition since his earliest days on stage—and his bouts of depression returned, along with stomach problems.

 

Formby took a break from work until mid-1954, when he starred in the revue Turned Out Nice Again, in Blackpool. Although the show was initially scheduled to run for 13 weeks, it was cut short after six when Formby suffered again from dysentery and depression.

 

George again announced his retirement, but continued to work. After some television appearances on Ask Pickles and Top of the Town, in late 1954 and early 1955 respectively,

 

Formby then travelled to South Africa for a tour, where Beryl negotiated an agreement with the South African premier Johannes Strijdom to play in venues of Formby's choice.

 

They then sailed to Canada for a ten-day series of performances. On the return voyage George contracted bronchial pneumonia, but still joined the cast of the non-musical play Too Young to Marry on his arrival in Britain.

 

In August 1955 Beryl felt unwell and went for tests: she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and was given two years to live.

 

The couple reacted to the news in different ways, and while Beryl began to drink heavily—up to a bottle of whisky a day to dull the pain—George began to work harder, and began a close friendship with a school teacher, Pat Howson.

 

Too Young to Marry toured between September 1955 and November 1956, but still allowed Formby time to appear in the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.

 

The touring production was well received everywhere except in Scotland, where Formby's attempted Scottish accent is thought to have put people off.

 

For Christmas 1956 George appeared in his first London pantomime, playing Idle Jack in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Palace Theatre, although he withdrew from the run in early February after suffering from laryngitis.

 

According to Bret, Formby spent the remainder of 1957 "doing virtually nothing", although he appeared in two television programmes, Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular in July and Top of the Bill in October.

 

From March 1958 Formby appeared in the musical comedy Beside the Seaside, a Holiday Romp in Hull, Blackpool, Birmingham and Brighton. However by the time it reached Brighton the play was playing to increasingly smaller audiences, and the run was cut short as a result.

 

The play may not have been to southern audiences' tastes—the plot centres on a northern family's holiday in Blackpool—but those in the north, particularly Blackpool, thought highly of it and the show was a nightly sell-out. When the show closed Formby was disappointed, and vowed never to appear in another stage musical.

 

The year 1958 was professionally quiet for George; in addition to Beside the Seaside, he also worked in one-off appearances in three television shows.

 

He began 1959 by appearing in Val Parnell's Spectacular: The Atlantic Showboat in January, and in April hosted his own show, Steppin' Out With Formby.

 

During the summer season he appeared at the Windmill Theatre, Great Yarmouth, although he missed two weeks of performances when he was involved in a car crash on the August Bank Holiday.

 

When doctors examined him, they were concerned with his overall health, partly as a result of his forty cigarettes-a-day smoking habit. He also had high blood pressure, was overweight and had heart problems.

 

Formby's final year of work was 1960. That May he recorded his last session of songs, "Happy Go Lucky Me" and "Banjo Boy", the former of which peaked at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart.

 

He then spent the summer season at the Queen's Theatre in Blackpool in The Time of Your Life—a performance which was also broadcast by the BBC. One of the acts in the show was the singer Yana, with whom Formby had an affair, made easier because of Beryl's absence from the theatre through illness.

 

George's final televised performance, a 35-minute BBC programme, The Friday Show: George Formby, was aired on the 16th. December. Bret considered the programme to be:

 

"Formby's greatest performance—

it was certainly his most sincere."

 

However reviewing for The Guardian, Mary Crozier thought it "too slow". She went on to say:

 

"George Formby is really a music-hall

star, and it needs the warmth and

sociability of the theatre to bring out

his full appeal."

 

Beryl's illness was worsening. Worn down by the strain, and feeling the need to escape, Formby took the part of Mr Wu in Aladdin in Bristol, having turned down a more lucrative part in Blackpool.

 

-- George Formby's Final Months: a New Romance, Death, and a Family Dispute

 

Two hours before the premiere of Aladdin—on Christmas Eve 1960—Formby received a phone call from Beryl's doctor, saying that she was in a coma and was not expected to survive the night.

 

Formby went through with the performance, and was told early the next morning that Beryl had died. Her cremation took place on the 27th. December, and an hour after the service Formby returned to Bristol to appear in that day's matinee performance of Aladdin.

 

He continued in the show until the 14th. January when a cold forced him to rest, on doctors' advice. He returned to Lytham St. Annes and communicated with Pat Howson; she contacted his doctor and Formby was instructed to go to hospital, where he remained for the next two weeks.

 

On Valentine's Day 1961, seven weeks after Beryl's death, Formby and Howson announced their engagement. Eight days later he suffered a heart attack which was so severe that he was given the last rites of the Catholic Church on his arrival at hospital in Preston.

 

He was revived and, from his hospital bed, he and Howson planned their wedding, which was due to take place in May. He was still there when, on the 6th. March, he had a further heart attack and died at the age of 56.

 

The obituarist for The Times wrote that:

 

"He was the amateur of the old smoking

concert platform turned into a music-hall

professional of genius."

 

Donald Zec, writing in the Daily Mirror, called him:

 

"As great an entertainer as any

of the giants of the music-hall".

 

The Guardian considered that:

 

"With his ukulele, his songs, and his

grinning patter, the sum was greater

than any of those parts: a Lancashire

character."

 

In the eyes of the public, Formby's passing was genuinely and widely mourned.

 

Formby was laid to rest alongside his father in Warrington Cemetery with over 150,000 mourners lining the route. The undertaker was Bruce Williams who, as Eddie Latta, had written songs for Formby.

 

An hour after the ceremony the family read the will, which had been drawn up two weeks previously. Harry Scott—Formby's valet and factotum—was to receive £5,000, while the rest was to go to Howson; at probate Formby's estate was valued at £135,000.

 

Formby's mother and siblings were angered by the will, and contested it. In the words of Bret:

 

"Mourning Formby was marred by

a greedy family squabbling over

his not inconsiderable fortune."

 

Because the will was contested, Formby's solicitor insisted that a public auction was held for the contents of Formby's house, which took place over three days in June.

 

Howson offered to honour an earlier will by providing £5,000 for Eliza and £2,000 each for Formby's sisters, but the offer was rejected, and the matter went to the High Court in London.

 

The case was heard in May 1963 before Mr Justice Ormrod. At the end, Eliza was granted £5,000, and the sisters received £2,000 each. Formby's solicitor, John Crowther, acted for Howson, and explained that the bequest to Formby's sisters from the older will was made "with reluctance" by Formby, who had described his family as "a set of scroungers".

 

The family appealed the decision, and the matter lasted until September 1965, when it was finally dismissed in Howson's favour.

 

-- George Formby's Screen Persona and Technique

 

George once said:

 

"I'm just a clown without the make-up,

the circus clown who magnifies the

reactions of ordinary people to the

things that happen around them".

 

Richards considered that:

 

"Formby had been able to embody

simultaneously Lancashire, the

working classes, the people, and

the nation."

 

Geoff King, in his examination of film comedy, also saw Formby as an icon, and wrote that:

 

"Gracie Fields and Formby gained the

status of national as well as regional

figures, without sacrificing their

distinctive regional personality traits."

 

While the national aspect was important for success outside the north, the Lancashire accent remained to enhance his homely comic appeal.

 

The media historian Brian McFarlane wrote that:

 

"On film, Formby portrayed essentially

gormless incompetents, aspiring to various

kinds of professional success ... and even

more improbably to a middle-class girlfriend,

usually in the clutches of some caddish type

with a moustache.

Invariably he scored on both counts".

 

In an edition of ITV's The South Bank Show in November 1992, Richards commented that:

 

"Formby embodied qualities that people

admired and found reassuring in the

depression ... and you thought that here's

a man whom whatever is thrown at him,

will come through and come out smiling—

and people wanted that."

 

H.J. Igoe, contributing to The Catholic Herald, wrote that:

 

"Formby has a common English touch.

We warm to the kindly turnip face, the

revolving eyes, the mouth like a slashed

coconut, the silly little songs ... the

melodiously tinny voice and twanging

banjo.

The comedian is the universal works—

platoon and bar-room simpleton—

mother's boy—the beloved henpeck—

the father who cannot hang a picture

and underlying his everyday folly there

is the sublime wisdom of the ordinary

fool who loves and trusts the world.

His comedy is earthy, but never

lascivious."

 

Formby himself said of his suggestive lyrics:

 

"You know, some of the songs are a bit

near. But they'll take them from me in

evening dress; they wouldn't take them

if I wore baggy pants and rednose".

 

Richards identified in Formby:

 

"An innocence that was essentially

childlike ... which explains why

George was as popular with children

as he was with adults."

 

Formby's screen and stage persona of innocence and simplicity was not seen as ignorance or stupidity, although Basil Dean disagreed, and claimed:

 

"Formby didn't act gormless as

many successful Lancashire

comedians have done - he was

gormless."

 

Much of the innocence in Formby's performance is connected to sex, and the use of double entendres within his songs. John Caughie and Kevin Rockett, in their examination of British film, see a connection between Formby's approach to sex and the saucy seaside postcards of Donald McGill.

 

Richards also sees the function of Formby's humour as being the same as McGill's:

 

"The harmless diffusion of a major

source of tension in a deeply

repressed and conventional

society."

 

Formby's delivery of the sexual content—what McFarlane identifies as being "sung with such a toothy grin and air of innocence"—negated any possible indignation, and this contrasts with the more overtly sexual delivery of other performers of the time, such as Max Miller and Frank Randle.

 

George's musical skills have also been praised; ukulele expert Steven Sproat considers that:

 

"Formby was incredible ... There hasn't

really been a uke player since Formby—

or even before Formby—who played

quite like him."

 

Much of Formby's virtuosity came from his right-hand technique, the split stroke, and he developed his own fast and complicated syncopated musical style with a very fast right-hand strum.

 

Joe Cooper, writing in New Society, considered that:

 

"Nobody has ever reproduced

the casual devastating right-hand

syncopation, which so delicately

synchronised with deft left-hand

chord fingering".

 

-- George Formby's Legacy

 

Formby's screen persona influenced Norman Wisdom in the 1950's and Charlie Drake in the following decade, although both these performers used pathos, which Formby avoided.

 

Shortly after Formby's death a small group of fans formed the George Formby Society, which had its inaugural meeting at the Imperial Hotel Blackpool. George Harrison was a fan of Formby, a member of the Society and an advocate of the ukulele.

 

The rest of the Beatles were also fans—they improvised with ukuleles during the recording breaks on Let It Be—and Formby's influence can be heard in the song "Her Majesty".

 

The Beatles' penultimate song, "Free as a Bird", ends with a slight coda including a strummed ukulele by Harrison and the voice of John Lennon played backwards, saying:

 

"Turned out nice again".

 

As of 2014 there are two public statues of Formby. The first, by the Manx artist Amanda Barton, is in Douglas, Isle of Man, and shows him leaning on a lamp-post and dressed in the motorcycle leathers of a TT racer.

 

Barton was also commissioned to provide a second statue for the Lancashire town of Wigan, which was unveiled in September 2007 in the town's Grand Arcade shopping centre.

 

Formby has been the subject of five biographies as of 2014.

 

In the late 1960's, Harry Scott published his reminiscences of Formby, The Fabulous Formby, in 14 issues of The Vellum, the magazine of the George Formby Society.

 

Alan Randall and Ray Seaton published their book on Formby in 1974, and John Fisher published George Formby in 1975.

 

David Bret produced George Formby: A Troubled Genius in 1999.

 

The last of the five to be published was by Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard in 2011, It's Turned Out Nice Again!.

 

There have also been two documentaries on British television, an edition of The South Bank Show in 1992, and Frank Skinner on George Formby in 2011.

 

In 2004 Formby was inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame, a non-profit organisation for the preservation of ukulele history. His citation reads, in part:

 

"He won such love and respect for his

charismatic stage presence, technical

skill and playful lyrics that he remains

popular forty years after his death."

 

In June 2012, a Blackpool Boat Car tram, number 604, was repainted and returned to service with sponsorship from the George Formby Society. The tram was named "George Formby OBE," and images of him are affixed within the trolley.

CHUBBY Broccoli was born in Queens, New York. He acquired his nickname after cousin, Pat DiCicco, began calling him "Kabibble," after a cartoon character.

Eventually it was shortened to "Kubbie", adopted by Broccoli as "Cubby" and then 'Chubby' after Broccoli had undergone a triple heart bypass.

 

The family bought a farm in Smithtown New York near relatives' DiCiccos then moved to Florida and upon the death of father Giovanni, Broccoli moved to live with his grandmother in Astoria, Queens New York.

 

Having working many jobs, including casket maker, Broccoli became involved in film industry.

 

He started at the bottom, working as a gofer on Howard Hughes' The Outlaw (1941), starring Jane Russell. He met lifelong friend, Howard Hughes, for the first time, while Hughes was overseeing the movie's production after director Howard Hawks was fired.

 

Broccoli became interested in bringing Ian Fleming's James Bond character into features with Harry Saltzman to partner with and co-produce the films, which led to the creation of the production company EON Productions and its parent (holding) company Danjaq, LLC.

 

Saltzman and Broccoli produced the first Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962. Their second, From Russia with Love, was a break-out success.

 

Broccoli made one notable attempt at a non-Bond film, an adaptation of Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968.

 

By the mid-1960s, Broccoli had put nearly all of his energies into the Bond series. Saltzman and Broccoli had differences over Saltzman's outside commitments; however, in the end, it was Saltzman who withdrew from Danjaq and EON after a series of financial mishaps.

 

Broccoli lost relatively little independence or prestige in the bargain. The racy credits sequence to every EON Bond film would begin with the words "Albert R. Broccoli Presents."

 

In recognition of Broccoli's insistence that every 'James Bond' film produced by EON should bear the name of the character's creator, Ian Fleming, in the opening credits (even when the film contained no true connection to any Fleming novel, apart from the titular character).

 

In 1966, Cubby was in Japan scouting locations to film the next James Bond film You Only Live Twice. He had a ticket booked on BOAC Flight 911 but cancelled his ticket that day so he could see a ninja demonstration by Stephen Hayes 35th Grandmaster of Togakure-ryū ninjutsu.

Flight 911 crashed after clear-air turbulence.

 

Exactly 30 years after escaping death, plans were being made to feature a black James Bond from Jamaica Queens since Ian Fleming created 'Bond' while residing in the country of Jamaica and Broccoli had grown up in Queens.

 

It was suggested that Bailey 'El Negro' Ramirez 8th Degree Black Belt, spoke fluent French, and a classically trained pianist, was to play the role of the first black James Bond in the next film "No Deals Mr. Bond" but Broccoli died in Beverly Hills 90210 in 1996.

 

It was the last Bond novel to be published in Britain by Jonathan Cape, ending an association dating back to the first Bond novel, Casino Royale in 1953.

 

It was decided by his surviving family that all subsequent Bond films should bear Broccoli's name, therefore, all 'Bond' films since ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ have opened with the line "Albert R. Broccoli's EON Productions presents", but the topic of a black Bond didn't arise again till the Black Lives Matter Movement took place.. by then Bailey Ramirez was long left out of the formula since he no longer had Cubby Broccolli in his corner to back him up, instead, Idris Elba, an actor with a small strange shaped head who spoke with a British accent was suggested as a possible future Bond.

 

Ramirez was never heard from again and disappeared off the grid sometime in 2013 after failure to launch an independent 'NO Nations Productions' crossover arc Bond film, to be titled "No More Deals Mr. Bond" by Ace Preston, which would have featured Ramirez as a most controversial Agent 0013.

 

"No Deals, Mr. Bond" basically came up short with a 1987 appeal which got lost in the 21st century so the Great Ace Preston added 'More" to the title and story to maintain the minor distinction of being the first and only non-novelization James Bond novel to incorporate the agent's name into the title.

 

NO Nation Productions had explained that since "Casino Royale", originally began as a 1954 television adaptation of the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming as the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond, an American actor, noted as the first to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent. This was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel made before the formation of Eon Productions.

 

Strangely the 'Casino Royale' episode was lost for decades after it's 1954 broadcast until a black and white kinescope of the live broadcast was located in 1981, however, the original 1954 broadcast had been in color and the VHS release and TBS presentation did not include the last two minutes which were still lost.

 

Eventually the missing footage minus the last seconds of the end credits were located and included on a Spy Guise & Cara Entertainment VHS release.

 

IT WAS ALL ABOUT BOND

George Lazenby (born 5 September 1939) is an Australian known for playing the fictional secret agent, James Bond, in the Eon Productions film series, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969).

Lazenby's tenure as Bond was the shortest lived, appearing in just one film, and the only Irish actor to portray the character. At 29, he was also the youngest actor to be Bond and had no prior film experience. He was cast by producer Albert R. Broccoli to replace original Bond actor Sean Connery.

He declined further Bond films and pursued career in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, and Hollywood. His most notable work was "The Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977) where he played an architect named Art Vandelay later adopted as an alter ego character by George Constanza. Thereafter his career stalled forever.

 

At 14 Lazenby had moved from Goulburn to Queanbeyan. He served in the Australian Army, then worked as a mechanic but was no Mechanic like Steven J. Spears in "Mad Max II: The Road Warrior". Spears was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1951 and died in Aldinga, South Australia, from brain cancer in 2007. He was 56.

Lazenby on the other hand moved to London to pursue a woman. He became a used-car salesman in 1966 and was voted Top Model of the Year.

 

Lazenby stated he intended to make the next Bond film, which was to be The Man with the Golden Gun, however, by November 1969, prior to the release of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Lazenby said he no longer wished to play another James Bond role, saying, "The producers made me feel like I was mindless. They disregarded everything I suggested simply because I hadn't been in the film business like them for about a thousand years."

 

His co-star Diana Rigg was among many who commented on this decision:

The role made Sean Connery a millionaire. It made Sean Connery ... I truly don't know what's happening in George's mind so I can only speak of my reaction. I think it's a pretty foolish move. I think if he can bear to do an apprenticeship, which everybody in this business has to do – hasto do – then he should do it quietly and with humility. Everybody has to do it. There are few instant successes in the film business. And the instant successes one usually associates with somebody who is willing to learn anyway.

 

Rigg was also quoted as saying, "I can no longer cater for his obsession with himself. He is utterly, unbelievably ... bloody impossible".

 

"I draw a veil over the chap", said Desmond Llewelyn (who played Q in 17 Bond films). "How can you expect someone who's never acted before ... to take on a leading role?"

 

Lazenby grew a beard and long hair. "Bond is a brute ... I've already put him behind me. I will never play him again. Peace – that's the message now", he announced.

He said:

I much prefer being a car salesman to a stereotyped James Bond. My parents think I'm insane, everybody thinks I'm insane passing up maybe millions of pounds. Nobody believed me. They thought it was a publicity stunt. But it's just me doing my own thing.

 

He later elaborated:

Fantasy doesn't interest me. Reality does. Anyone who's in touch with the kids knows what's happening, knows the mood. Watch pop music and learn what's going to happen. Most film-makers don't watch and aren't in touch. People aren't going to films because film-makers are putting out films people don't want to see. As for the so-called "Tomorrow movies" they are only tomorrow movies with yesterday directors ... Actors aren't all that important. Directors are. I'm terribly impressed with Dennis Hopper. I'd like to work for him. I also like Arthur Penn, John Schlesinger and Peter Yates ... What I'm going to do is look for a great director first, a good screenplay second. Meanwhile, no more Bond. I make better money doing commercials.

 

At the time of the release of OHMSS, Lazenby's performance received mixed reviews. Some felt that, while he was physically convincing, some of his costumes were inappropriate – "too loud" according to some – and that he delivered his lines poorly.

 

Roger Moore made reference to Lazenby in his commentary for a 2007 DVD release of The Man with the Golden Gun:

I have a great deal of e-mail contact with George Lazenby; he's sort of in on the joke circuit ...

 

Broccoli told the press shortly after the film's release:

I don't agree with the press. I think they should have given him A for effort. It's true he's not Olivier but Olivier could not play Bond in any circumstances...

Broccoli did admit that he found Lazenby's post-movie attitude annoying:

I find it incredible that a plum role can't be respected. We chose George because in his physique and his looks and his walk he was the best of the candidates. He had the masculinity. Looking at the film, to put it in an old Spanish phrase, one could wish he had less cojones and more charm.

 

Although Lazenby had been offered a contract for seven movies, his agent, Ronan O'Rahilly, convinced him that the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s, and as a result he left the series after the release of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969.

 

Lazenby made another film a year after On Her Majesty's Secret Service – Universal Soldier (1971), which he helped write. The film was a financial disaster which was barely released.

 

Universal Soldier is a 1971 film starring George Lazenby as a mercenary. The title came from the 1964 song of the same name by Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Ryker (Lazenby), a former mercenary, comes out of retirement to take part in the overthrow of an African dictator. He travels to London to meet former war comrade Jesse Jones (Ben Carruthers), and his associates Freddy Bradshaw (Robin Hunter) and Temple Smith (Alan Barnes). After helping fellow mercenaries test and ship weapons to South Africa, Ryker begins to have ethical concerns about his involvement. He eventually distances himself from the others, and rents a flat in London. He falls into hippie culture, and begins dating a girl named Chrissie.

 

"After the Bond fiasco nobody would touch me", admitted Lazenby. "Harry Saltzman had always said, 'If you don't do another Bond you'll wind up doing spaghetti westerns in Italy. But I couldn't even get one of those. My agent couldn't believe it. But the word was out – I was 'difficult'."

Lazenby revealed that he had spent all of the money he had earned from playing Bond, had experienced two nervous breakdowns and had become an alcoholic. He was meant to follow with an Anglo-Italian western made in Turkey, followed by a film about rioting students in pre-Fidel Castro Cuba, but neither was made.

 

Lazenby was "flat broke" when he went to Hong Kong to meet Bruce Lee and producer Raymond Chow. They ended up offering him $10,000 ($57,600 today) to appear in a film with Lee, which was going to be the Golden Harvest film "Game of Death". However this collapsed after Lee's sudden death – Lazenby was actually meant to meet Lee for lunch on the day Lee died.

 

It revealed he had been consulting an astrologer for four years. Lazenby moved to Hollywood and said. "I've got an American wife and green card so I have the best of both worlds."

He appeared in a TV movie Cover Girls (1977).

 

Broccoli described casting Lazenby as "my biggest mistake in 16 years. He just couldn't deal with success. He was so arrogant. There was the stature and looks of a Bond but Lazenby couldn't get along with the other performers and technicians." Sean Connery came to Lazenby's defence saying "I have known George for many years and arrogance is not in his character. Alas I cannot say the same for Cubby Broccoli".

"The interesting thing about that is – I've never met Sean", said Lazenby. "I don't know him at all. Once, years ago, he came to pick up someone who was staying at my house and I saw him through the door. That's all."

Lazenby went on to add:

It hasn't been easy, trying to climb back... I admit I acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to me. But remember, it was my first film... Now what I've got to do is live down my past; convince people I'm not the same person who made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I need is the chance.

 

In 1978, he took out an advertisement in Variety, offering himself for acting work. "If I could get a TV series or a good movie, I swear I'd do it for nothing", he told a journalist. "People ask me if the Bond movie wasn't worth it if it got me into acting. It's true that it got me in, but it wasn't worth the ten years it cost me."

 

He appeared with Sylvia Kristel in several new Emmanuelle films in the 1990s, many of which appeared on cable television.

 

In 1993, Lazenby had a role in the film "Gettysburg" as Confederate General Johnston Pettigrew, who wrote a racist book about the culture of Spain titled "Notes on Spain and the Spaniards in the Summer of 1859, With a Glance at Sardinia".

 

Lazenby showed his true colors by portraying the arrogant racist slave owning North Carolina plantation aristocrat general who led his men to death in the disastrous assault known as 'Pickett's Charge' on the final day of Gettysburg.

He was later mortally wounded, shot by a Union cavalryman in the belly, during a Union attack while the Confederates retreated to Virginia near Falling Waters, West Virginia, as part of the rear guard of the last Confederate units still north of the Potomac River. Pettigrew's brigade had been ruined as an effective combat organization.

 

So to sum up the alternative pseudo Bonds, after “You Only Live Twice”, the 5th film in the Bond franchise, Sean Connery retired from the role of 007. George Lazenby due to shooting chocolate advertisements in London nabbed the role to “On Her Majesty's Secret Service” to do only one Bond series.

 

Afterwards Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli were back looking for a new Bond in a film which would have more of a Yankee slant in “Diamonds Are Forever” set in Las Vegas now considered an American James Bond.

 

Burt Reynolds was offered the gig but turned it down stating that the character should remain British.

 

Adam West, known as TV's Batman was then offered the job due to his commercials for Nestlé Quik were he portrayed "Captain Q.", also like Bond, a naval officer and it just might have made him the next James Bond but West rejected the offer also believing that it was also meant for a

British actor pros

NO Nation Productions noted that since the original 'Casino Royale' had very few elements in common with the Eon series, and portrayal of Nelson's Bond suggested a human prone to errors and low maintenance, the Bond series could have resurfaced with a 0013 agent in a 21st century Post 9-11 world maintaining that the worst defeats were always caused by overconfidence and stupidity, an amazing trait of secret agents. Plus any actor chosen would be better than a George Lazenby especially Ramirez who was a dedicated team player.

 

An American Bond would have been the only alternative since Bond was first played as an american... thus it wouldn't be violating any standards of what makes a hero, since heroes in America come in all shapes and colors and are at times mistaken for criminals.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard produced by the Empire Studios. There are no imdications as to the identity of the man.

 

The back of the card has been date-stamped with the date:

 

12th. July 1940.

 

'Let George Do It!'

 

So what else happened on Friday the 12th. July 1940?

 

Well, on that day the film 'Let George Do It!' premiered at the Empire, Leicester Square in London, taking over from 'Gone With the Wind', which had run in that cinema for 12 weeks.

 

The film (titled in the US: 'To Hell With Hitler') is a British black-and-white comedy musical war film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring George Formby.

 

It was produced by Michael Balcon for Associated Talking Pictures and its successor, Ealing Studios, and distributed in the UK by ABFD. This was the first comedy from this studio to deal directly with the Second World War.

 

George Formby

 

George Formby OBE (born George Hoy Booth; 1904 – 1961) was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930's and 1940's.

 

On stage, screen and record he sang light, comic songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK's highest-paid entertainer.

 

Born in Wigan, Lancashire, he was the son of George Formby Senior. After an early career as a stable boy and jockey, Formby took to the music hall stage after the early death of his father in 1921.

 

His early performances were taken exclusively from his father's act, including the same songs, jokes and characters. In 1923 he made two career-changing decisions – he purchased a ukulele, and married Beryl Ingham, a fellow performer who became his manager and who transformed his act.

 

Beryl insisted that he appear on stage formally dressed, and introduced the ukulele to his performance.

 

He started his recording career in 1926 and, from 1934, he increasingly worked in film to develop into a major star by the late 1930's and 1940's, and became the UK's most popular entertainer during those decades.

 

Media historian Brian McFarlane writes that on film, Formby portrayed gormless Lancastrian innocents who would win through against some form of villainy, gaining the affection of an attractive middle-class girl in the process.

 

During the Second World War Formby worked extensively for the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), and entertained civilians and troops. By 1946 it was estimated that George had performed in front of three million service personnel.

 

After the war his career declined, although he toured the Commonwealth, and continued to appear in variety and pantomime.

 

George's last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before the death of Beryl.

 

He surprised people by announcing his engagement to a school teacher, Pat Howson, seven weeks after Beryl's funeral, but died in Preston three weeks later, at the age of 56; he was buried in Warrington, alongside his father.

 

Formby's biographer, Jeffrey Richards, considers that:

 

"The actor had been able to embody

simultaneously Lancashire, the working

classes, the people, and the nation".

 

Formby was considered Britain's first properly home-grown screen comedian. He was an influence on future comedians—particularly Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom—and, culturally, on entertainers such as the Beatles, who referred to him in their music.

 

Since his death, Formby has been the subject of five biographies, two television specials and two works of public sculpture.

 

-- George Formby - The Early Years 1904 - 1921

 

George Formby was born in Wigan, Lancashire, on the 26th. May 1904. He was the eldest of seven surviving children born to James Lawler Booth and his wife Eliza, née Hoy. The marriage was in fact bigamous because Booth was still married to his first wife, Martha Maria Salter, a twenty-year-old music hall performer.

 

Booth was a successful music hall comedian and singer who performed under the name George Formby (he is now known as George Formby Senior).

 

Formby Senior suffered from a chest ailment, identified variously as bronchitis, asthma or tuberculosis, and would use the cough as part of the humour in his act, saying to the audience:

 

"Bronchitis, I'm a bit tight tonight."

 

Alternatively:

 

"Coughing better tonight."

 

One of his main characters was that of John Willie, an "archetypal Lancashire lad". In 1906 Formby Sr was earning £35 a week in the music halls, which rose to £325 a week by 1920. This meant that George Formby grew up in an affluent home.

 

Formby Senior was so popular that Marie Lloyd, the influential music hall singer and actress, would only watch two acts: his and that of Dan Leno.

 

George Formby was born blind owing to an obstructive caul, although his sight was restored during a violent coughing fit or sneeze when he was a few months old.

 

After briefly attending school—at which he did not prosper, and did not learn to read or write—Formby was removed from formal education at the age of seven and sent to become a stable boy, briefly in Wiltshire and then in Middleham, Yorkshire.

 

Formby Senior sent his son away to work as he was worried that he would watch him on stage; he was against Formby following in his footsteps, saying:

 

"One fool in the family is enough."

 

After a year working at Middleham, young George was apprenticed to Thomas Scholfield in Epsom, where he ran his first professional races at the age of 10, when he weighed less than 56 lb (25 kg).

 

In 1915 Formby Senior allowed his son to appear on screen, taking the lead in By the Shortest of Heads, a thriller directed by Bert Haldane in which Formby played a stable boy who outwits a gang of villains and wins a £10,000 prize when he comes first in a horse race.

 

The film is now considered lost, with the last-known copy having been destroyed in 1940.

 

Later in 1915, and with the closure of the English racing season because of the Great War, Formby moved to Ireland where he continued as a jockey until November 1918.

 

Later that month he returned to England and raced for Lord Derby at his Newmarket stables. Formby continued as a jockey until 1921, although he never won a race.

 

-- Beginning a Stage Career: 1921–1934

 

On the 8th. February 1921, Formby Senior succumbed to his bronchial condition and died at the young age of 45; he was laid to rest in the Catholic section of Warrington Cemetery.

 

After his father's funeral Eliza took the young Formby to London to help him cope with his grief. While there, they visited the Victoria Palace Theatre—where Formby Senior had previously been so successful—and saw a performance by the Tyneside comedian Tommy Dixon.

 

Dixon was performing a copy of Formby Senior's act, using the same songs, jokes, costumes and mannerisms, and billed himself as "The New George Formby", a name which angered Eliza and Formby even more.

 

The performance prompted Formby to follow in his father's profession, a decision which was supported by Eliza. As he had never seen his father perform live, Formby found the imitation difficult, and he had to learn his father's songs from records, and the rest of his act and jokes from his mother.

 

On the 21st. March 1921 Formby gave his first professional appearance in a two-week run at the Hippodrome in Earlestown, Lancashire, where he received a fee of £5 a week.

 

In the show he was billed as George Hoy, using his mother's maiden name—he explained later that he did not want the Formby name to appear in small print. His father's name was used in the posters and advertising, George Hoy being described as:

 

"Comedian (Son of George Formby)."

 

While still appearing in Earlestown, Formby was hired to appear at the Moss Empire chain of theatres for £17 10s a week. His first night was unsuccessful, and he later said of it:

 

"I was the first turn, three minutes,

and died the death of a dog."

 

George toured venues in Northern England, although he was not well received, and was booed and hissed while performing in Blyth, Northumberland. As a result he experienced frequent periods of unemployment—up to three months at one point.

 

Formby spent two years as a support act touring round the northern halls, and although he was poorly paid, his mother supported him financially.

 

In 1923 Formby started to play the ukulele, although the exact circumstances of how he came to play the instrument are unknown. He introduced it into his act during a run at the Alhambra Theatre in Barnsley.

 

When the songs—still his father's material—were well received, he changed his stage name to George Formby, and stopped using the John Willie character.

 

Another significant event was his appearance in Castleford, West Yorkshire, where appearing on the same bill was Beryl Ingham, an Accrington-born champion clogdancer and actress who had won the All England Step Dancing title at the age of 11.

 

Beryl, who had formed a dancing act with her sister, May, called "The Two Violets", had a low opinion of Formby's act. She later said that:

 

"If I'd had a bag of rotten tomatoes

with me I'd have thrown them at him".

 

Nevertheless Formby and Beryl entered into a relationship and married two years later, on the 13th. September 1924, at a register office in Wigan, with Formby's aunt and uncle as witnesses.

 

Upon hearing the news, George's mother Eliza insisted on the couple having a church wedding, which followed two months later.

 

Beryl took over as George's manager, and changed aspects of his act, including the songs and jokes. She instructed him on how to use his hands, and how to work his audience.

 

She also persuaded him to change his stage dress to black tie—although he appeared in a range of other costumes too—and to take lessons in how to play the ukulele properly.

 

By June 1926 George was proficient enough to earn a one-off record deal—negotiated by Beryl—to sing six of his father's songs for the Edison Bell/Winner label.

 

Formby spent the next few years touring, largely in the north, but also appearing at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, his official London debut.

 

George had a further recording session in October 1929, performing two songs for Dominion Records. However according to David Bret, Formby's biographer:

 

"Beryl's avaricious demands would

prevent any serious contract from

coming George's way."

 

That changed in 1932, when Formby signed a three-year deal with Decca Records. One of the songs he recorded in July 1932 was "Chinese Laundry Blues", telling the story of Mr Wu, which became one of his standard songs, and part of a long-running series of songs about the character.

 

Over the course of his career Formby went on to record over 200 songs, around 90 of which were written by Fred Cliffe and Harry Gifford.

 

In the 1932 winter season Formby appeared in his first pantomime, Babes in the Wood, in Bolton, after which he toured with the George Formby Road Show around the north of England, with Beryl acting as the commère; the show also toured in 1934.

 

-- George Formby's Burgeoning Film Career: 1934–1940

 

With Formby's growing success on stage, Beryl decided that it was time for him to move into films. In 1934 she approached the producer Basil Dean, the head of Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). Although he expressed an interest in Formby, he did not like the associated demands from Beryl.

 

She also met the representative of Warner Brothers in the UK, Irving Asher, who was dismissive, saying that Formby was:

 

"Too stupid to play the bad guy

and too ugly to play the hero."

 

Three weeks later Formby was approached by John E. Blakeley of Blakeley's Productions, who offered him a one-film deal.

 

The film, Boots! Boots!, was shot on a budget of £3,000 in a one-room studio in Albany Street, London. Formby played the John Willie character, while Beryl also appeared, and the couple were paid £100 for the two weeks' work, plus 10 per cent of the profits.

 

The film followed a revue format, and Jo Botting, writing for the British Film Institute, described it as having:

 

"A wafer-thin plot that

is "almost incidental."

 

Botting also considered the film to have:

 

"Poor sound quality, static

scene set-ups and a lack

of sets."

 

However while it did not impress the critics, audience figures were high.

 

Formby followed this up with Off the Dole in 1935, again for Blakeley, who had re-named his company Mancunian Films. The film cost £3,000 to make, and earned £80,000 at the box office.

 

As with Boots! Boots!, the film was in a revue format, and Formby again played John Willie, with Beryl as his co-star. According to Formby's biographer, Jeffrey Richards:

 

"The two films for Blakeley are

an invaluable record of the

pre-cinematic Formby at work".

 

The success of the pictures led Basil Dean to offer Formby a seven-year contract with ATP, which resulted in the production of 11 films, although Dean's fellow producer, Michael Balcon, considered Formby to be:

 

"... an odd and not particularly

loveable character".

 

The first film from the deal was released in 1935. No Limit features Formby as an entrant in the Isle of Man annual Tourist Trophy (TT) motorcycle race. Monty Banks directed, and Florence Desmond took the female lead.

 

According to Richards, Dean did not try to play down Formby's Lancashire character in the film, and in fact employed Walter Greenwood, the Salford-born author of the 1933 novel Love on the Dole, as the scriptwriter.

 

Filming was troubled, with Beryl being difficult to everyone present. The writer Matthew Sweet described the set as "a battleground" because of her actions, and Monty Banks unsuccessfully requested that Dean bar Beryl from the studio.

 

The Observer thought that:

 

"Parts of No Limit are pretty dull

stuff, but the race footage was

shot and cut to a maximum of

excitement."

 

Regarding the star of the film, the reviewer thought that:

 

"Our Lancashire George is a grand

lad; he can gag and clown, play the

banjo and sing with authority ...

Still and all, he doesn't do too bad."

 

The film was so popular that it was reissued in 1938, 1946 and 1957.

 

The formula used for No Limit was repeated in George's following works: Formby played the 'urban little man' -- defeated, but refusing to admit it.

 

George portrayed a good-natured, but accident-prone and incompetent Lancastrian, who was often in a skilled trade, or the services.

 

The plots were geared to Formby trying to achieve success in a field unfamiliar to him (in horse racing, the TT Races, as a spy or a policeman), and by winning the affections of a middle-class girl in the process.

 

Interspersed throughout each film is a series of songs by Formby, in which he plays the banjo, banjolele or ukulele. The films are, in the words of the academic Brian McFarlane:

 

"... unpretentiously skilful in their

balance between broad comedy

and action, laced with Formby's

shy ordinariness".

 

No Limit was followed by Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936, which was again directed by Banks with Desmond returning as the co-star.

 

Tensions arose in pre-production with Banks and some of the cast requesting to Dean that Beryl be banned from the set. Tempers had also become strained between Formby and Florence Desmond, who were not on speaking terms except to film scenes.

 

The situation became so bad that Dean avoided visiting his studios for the month of filming. The film contained the song "The Window Cleaner" (popularly known as "When I'm Cleaning Windows"), which was soon banned by the BBC.

 

The corporation's director 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."

 

Reith particularly objected to two of the verses:

 

"To overcrowded flats I've been,

Sixteen in one bed I've seen,

With the lodger tucked up in between,

When I'm cleaning windows!

 

Now lots of girls I've had to jilt,

For they admire the way I'm built,

It's a good job I don't wear a kilt,

When I'm cleaning windows!"

 

31 years later, in 1967, the BBC banned the Beatles' 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' because of the song's alleged references to drugs. However writer of the song John Lennon claimed in a 1971 interview that Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds has no connection to LSD. He explained that he was inspired to write the song after his son brought him a drawing that he made in nursery school:

 

“It never was about LSD, and nobody

believes me. This is the truth: My son

came home with a drawing and showed

me this strange-looking woman flying

around. I said, ‘What is it?’ and he said,

‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,’ and

I thought, ‘That’s beautiful.’

I immediately wrote a song about it.

The song had gone out, the whole

album had been published and

somebody noticed that the letters

spelled out LSD, and I had no idea

about it. … It wasn’t about LSD at all.”

 

Formby and Beryl were furious that their song was blocked. In May 1941 Beryl informed the BBC that the song was a favourite of the royal family, particularly Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby pointed out that:

 

"I sang it before the King and

Queen at the Royal Variety

Performance."

 

The BBC relented and started to broadcast the song.

 

When production finished on Keep Your Seats, Please, Beryl insisted that for the next film there should be:

 

"No Eye-Ties and stuck-up

little trollops involved."

 

Beryl was referring to Banks and Desmond, respectively.

 

By then Dean had tired of the on-set squabbles, and for the third ATP film, Feather Your Nest, he appointed William Beaudine as the director, and Polly Ward, the niece of the music hall star Marie Lloyd, as the female lead.

 

Bret noted:

 

"The songs in the film are comparatively

bland, with the exception of the one

which would become immortal: 'Leaning

on a Lamp-post'."

 

By the time of the next production, Keep Fit in 1937, Dean had begun to assemble a special team at Ealing Studios to help develop and produce the Formby films; key among the members were the director Anthony Kimmins, who went on to direct five of Formby's films.

 

Kay Walsh was cast as the leading lady and, in the absence of Beryl from the set, Formby and Walsh had an affair, after she fell for his flirtatious behaviour off-camera.

 

Although Beryl was furious with Walsh, and tried to have her removed from the film, a showdown with Dean proved fruitless. Dean informed her that Walsh was to remain the lead in both Keep Fit, and in Formby's next film (I See Ice, 1938). In order to mollify Beryl, Dean raised Formby's fee for the latter film to £25,000.

 

When filming concluded on I See Ice, Formby spent the 1937 summer season performing in the revue King Cheer at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, before appearing in a 12-minute slot at the Royal Variety Performance in November.

 

The popularity of George's performances meant that in 1937 he was the top British male star in box office takings, a position he held every subsequent year until 1943.

 

Additionally, between 1938 and 1942 he was also the highest-paid entertainer in Great Britain, and by the end of the 1930's was earning £100,000 a year.

 

In early 1938 Dean informed the Formbys that in the next film, It's in the Air, Banks would return to direct and Walsh would again be the leading lady. Beryl objected strongly, and Kimmins continued his directorial duties, while Ward was brought in for the female lead.

 

Beryl, as she did with all Formby's female co-stars, read the 'keep-your-hands-off-my-husband' riot act to the actress.

 

In May 1938, while filming It's in the Air, Formby purchased a Rolls-Royce, with the personalised number plate GF 1. Every year afterwards he would purchase either a new Rolls-Royce or Bentley, buying 26 over the course of his life.

 

In the autumn of 1938 Formby began work on Trouble Brewing, released the following year with 19-year-old Googie Withers as the female lead; Kimmins again directed.

 

Withers later recounted that Formby did not speak to her until, during a break in filming when Beryl was not present, he whispered out of the corner of his mouth:

 

"I'm sorry, love, but you know,

I'm not allowed to speak to you."

 

Googie thought that this was "very sweet."

 

George's second release of 1939—shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War—was Come On George!, which cast Pat Kirkwood in the female lead.

 

Formby and Kirkwood disliked each other intensely, and neither of the Formbys liked several of the other senior cast members. Come On George! was screened for troops serving in France before being released in Great Britain.

 

-- George Formby and the Second World War

 

At the outbreak of the Second World War Dean left ATP and became the head of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), the organisation that provided entertainment to the British Armed Forces.

 

Over the course of five months Formby requested to sign up for ENSA, but was denied; Dean however relented in February 1940, and Formby was signed on a fixed salary of £10 per week, although he still remained under contract to ATP.

 

George undertook his first tour in France in March, where he performed for members of the British Expeditionary Force.

 

Basil Dean commented on Formby's work for the organisation:

 

"Standing with his back to a tree or a wall

of sandbags, with men squatting on the

ground in front of him, he sang song after

song, screwing up his face into comical

expressions of fright whenever shells

exploded in the near distance, and

making little cracks when the firing

drowned the point lines in his songs".

 

The social research organisation Mass-Observation recorded that Formby's first film of 1940, Let George Do It!, gave a particularly strong boost to early-war British civilian morale.

 

In a dream sequence after being drugged, Formby's character punches Hitler during a Nuremberg Rally. According to Richards:

 

"The scene provides the visual

encapsulation of the people's

war, with the English Everyman

flooring the Nazi Superman."

 

The scene was so striking that the film became Formby's first international release, in the US, under the title To Hell With Hitler.

 

Let George Do It! was also shown in Moscow, where it was released in 1943 under the title Dinky Doo. The film attracted packed houses, and received record box-office takings for over ten months.

 

The critics also praised the film, and the Kinematograph Weekly called it Formby's "best performance to date", and the film, "a box office certainty".

 

Formby's ENSA commitments were heavy, touring factories, theatres and concert halls around Great Britain. He also gave free concerts for charities and worthy causes, and raised £10,000 for the Fleetwood Fund on behalf of the families of missing trawlermen.

 

George and Beryl also set up their own charities, such as the OK Club for Kids, whose aim was to provide cigarettes for Yorkshire soldiers, and the Jump Fund, to provide home-knitted balaclavas, scarves and socks to servicemen.

 

Formby also joined the Home Guard as a dispatch rider, where he took his duties seriously, and fitted them around his other work whenever he could.

 

Formby continued filming with ATP, and his second film of 1940, Spare a Copper, was again focused on an aspect of the war, this time combating fifth columnists and saboteurs in a Merseyside dockyard.

 

However cinema-goers had begun to tire of war films, and so his next venture, Turned Out Nice Again returned to less contentious issues, with Formby's character caught in a domestic battle between his new wife and mother.

 

Early in the filming schedule, he took time to perform in an ENSA show that was broadcast on the BBC from Aldwych tube station as Let the People Sing. George sang four songs, and told the audience:

 

"Don't forget, it's wonderful

to be British!"

 

Towards the end of 1940 Formby tried to enlist for active military service, despite Beryl informing him that by being a member of ENSA he was already signed up. However the examining board rejected him as being unfit, because he had sinusitis and arthritic toes.

 

George spent the winter season in pantomime at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, portraying Idle Jack in Dick Whittington. When the season came to an end, the Formbys moved to London and, in May 1941, performed for the royal family at Windsor Castle.

 

George had commissioned a new set of inoffensive lyrics for "When I'm Cleaning Windows", but was informed that he should sing the original, uncensored version, which was enjoyed by the royal party, particularly Queen Mary, who asked for a repeat of the song.

 

King George VI presented Formby with a set of gold cuff links, and advised him to "wear them, not put them away".

 

With the ATP contract at an end, Formby decided not to renew or push for an extension. Robert Murphy, in his study of wartime British cinema, points out that:

 

"Balcon, Formby's producer at the

time, seems to have made little

effort to persuade him not to transfer

his allegiance."

 

This was despite the box office success enjoyed by Let George Do It! and Spare a Copper. Numerous offers came in, and Formby selected the American company Columbia Pictures, in a deal worth in excess of £500,000. The contract was to make a minimum of six films—seven were eventually made.

 

Formby set up his own company, Hillcrest Productions, to distribute the films, and had the final decision on the choice of director, scriptwriter and theme, while Columbia would have the choice of leading lady.

 

Part of Formby's reasoning behind the decision was a desire for parts with more character, something that would not have happened at ATP.

 

At the end of August 1941 production began on Formby's first film for Columbia, South American George, which took six weeks to complete.

 

Formby's move to an American company was controversial, and although his popular appeal seemed unaffected, John Mundy noted in 2007 that:

 

"His films were treated with

increasing critical hostility."

 

The reviewer for The Times wrote that the story was "confused," and considered that "there is not sufficient comic invention in the telling" of it.

 

Murphy commented that:

 

"The criticism had more to do with

the inadequate vehicles which he

subsequently appeared in than in

any diminution of his personal

popularity."

 

In early 1942 Formby undertook a three-week, 72-show tour of Northern Ireland, largely playing to troops, but also undertaking fund-raising shows for charity—one at the Belfast Hippodrome raised £500.

 

He described his time in Ulster as:

 

"The pleasantest tour

I've ever undertaken".

 

George returned to the mainland by way of the Isle of Man, where he entertained the troops guarding the internment camps. After further charity shows—raising £8,000 for a tank fund—Formby was the associate producer for the Vera Lynn film We'll Meet Again (1943).

 

In March he also filmed Much Too Shy which was released in October that year. Although the film was poorly received by the critics, the public still attended in large numbers, and the film was profitable.

 

In the summer of 1942 Formby was involved in a controversy with the Lord's Day Observance Society, who had filed law suits against the BBC for playing secular music on Sunday.

 

The society began a campaign against the entertainment industry, claiming that all theatrical activity on a Sunday was unethical, and cited a 1667 law which made it illegal.

 

With 60 leading entertainers already avoiding Sunday working, Dean informed Formby that his stance would be crucial in avoiding a spread of the problem. Formby issued a statement:

 

"I'll hang up my uke on Sundays only

when our lads stop fighting and getting

killed on Sundays ... as far as the Lord's

Day Observance Society are concerned,

they can mind their own bloody business.

And in any case, what have they done for

the war effort except get on everyone's

nerves?"

 

The following day it was announced that the pressure from the society was to be lifted.

 

At the end of 1942 Formby started filming Get Cracking, a story about the Home Guard, which was completed in under a month, the tight schedule brought about by an impending ENSA tour of the Mediterranean.

 

Between the end of filming Get Cracking and the release of the film in May 1943, Formby undertook a tour of Northern Scotland and the Orkney Islands, and had nearly completed shooting on his next film, Bell-Bottom George.

 

The reviewer for The Times opined that:

 

"Get Cracking, although a distinct

improvement on other films in which

Mr. Formby has appeared, is cut too

closely to fit the demands of an

individual technique to achieve any

real life of its own."

 

Bell-Bottom George was described 60 years later by the academic Baz Kershaw as being:

 

"Unashamedly gay and peppered

with homoerotic scenes."

 

Bret concurs, and notes that:

 

"The majority of the cast and almost

every one of the male extras was

unashamedly gay."

 

The film was a hit with what Bret describes as Formby's "surprisingly large, closeted gay following".

 

The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian was impressed with the film, and wrote that:

 

"There is a new neatness of execution

and lightness of touch about this

production ... while George himself

can no longer be accused of trailing

clouds of vaudevillian glory."

 

The reviewer also considered Formby:

 

"... our first authentic and strictly

indigenous film comedian."

 

After completing filming, the Formbys undertook a further ENSA tour. Although Dean personally disliked the Formbys, he greatly admired the tireless work they did for the organisation.

 

In August 1943 Formby undertook a 53-day tour of a significant portion of the Mediterranean, including Italy, Sicily, Malta, Gibraltar, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine.

 

He entertained 750,000 troops in thirteen countries, touring 25,000 miles (40,000 km) in the process and returning to England in October.

 

The couple travelled around the countryside in a Ford Mercury that Formby had purchased from the racing driver Sir Malcolm Campbell, which had been converted to sleep two in the back.

 

In January 1944 Formby described his experiences touring for ENSA in Europe and the Middle East in a BBC radio broadcast. He said that:

 

"The troops are worrying quite a lot

about you folks at home, but we soon

put them right about that.

We told them that after four and a half

years, Britain was still the best country

to live in."

 

Shortly after he began filming He Snoops to Conquer—his fifth picture for Columbia—he was visited on set by the Dance Music Policy Committee (DMPC).

 

The DMPC was responsible for vetting music for broadcast, and for checking if music was sympathetic towards the enemy during the war.

 

The DMPC interviewed Formby about three songs that had been included in Bell-Bottom George: "Swim Little Fish", "If I Had a Girl Like You" and "Bell-Bottom George".

 

Formby was summoned to the BBC's offices to perform his three songs in front of the committee, with his song checked against the available sheet music. A week later, on the 1st. February, the committee met and decided that the songs were innocuous, although Formby was told that he would have to get further clearance if the lyrics were changed.

 

Bret concluded that George had been the victim of a plot by a member of the Variety Artists' Federation, following Formby's scathing comments on entertainers who were too scared to leave London to entertain the troops.

 

The comments, which appeared in the forces magazine Union Jack, were then widely reported in the press in Britain. The Variety Artists' Federation demanded that Formby release names, and threatened him with action if he did not do so, but he refused to give in to their pressure.

 

Formby went to Normandy in July 1944 in the vanguard of a wave of ENSA performers. He and Beryl travelled over on a rough crossing to Arromanches giving a series of impromptu concerts to troops in improvised conditions, including on the backs of farm carts and army lorries, or in bomb-cratered fields.

 

In one location the German front line was too close for him to perform, so he crawled into the trenches and told jokes with the troops there. He then boarded HMS Ambitious for his first scheduled concert before returning to France to continue his tour.

 

During dinner with General Bernard Montgomery, whom he had met in North Africa, Formby was invited to visit the glider crews of 6th. Airborne Division, who had been holding a series of bridges without relief for 56 days.

 

He did so on the 17th. August in a one-day visit to the front line bridges, where he gave nine shows, all standing beside a sandbag wall, ready to jump into a slit trench in case of problems; much of the time his audience were in foxholes.

 

After the four-week tour of France, Formby returned home to start work on I Didn't Do It (released in 1945), although he continued to work on ENSA concerts and tours in Britain.

 

Between January and March 1945, shortly after the release of He Snoops to Conquer, he left on an ENSA tour that took in Burma, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

 

The concerts in the Far East were his last for ENSA, and by the end of the war it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel.

 

-- George Formby's Post-War Career: 1946–1952

 

In 1946 the song "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", which Formby had recorded in 1937, began to cause problems at the BBC for broadcasts of Formby or his music.

 

The producer of one of Formby's live television programmes received a letter from a BBC manager that stated:

 

"We have no record that "With My Little

Stick of Blackpool Rock" is banned. We

do however know, and so does Formby,

that certain lines in the lyric must not be

broadcast."

 

Between July and October 1946, Formby filmed George in Civvy Street, which would be his final film. The story concerns the rivalry between two pubs: the Unicorn, bequeathed to Formby's character, and the Lion, owned by his childhood sweetheart—played by Rosalyn Boulter—but run by an unscrupulous manager.

 

Richards wrote:

 

"The film has symbolic significance;

at the end, with the marriage between

the two pub owners, Formby bowed

out of films, unifying the nation mythically,

communally, and matrimonially".

 

The film was less successful at the box office than George's previous works, as audience tastes had changed in the post-war world. Fisher opines that because of his tireless war work, Formby had become too synonymous with the war, causing the public to turn away from him, much as they had from the wartime British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

 

Bret believes that post-war audiences wanted intrigue, suspense and romance, through the films of James Mason, Stewart Granger, David Niven and Laurence Olivier.

 

Bret also indicates that Formby's cinematic decline was shared by similar performers, including Gracie Fields, Tommy Trinder and Will Hay.

 

Formby's biographers, Alan Randall and Ray Seaton, write that in his late 40s, Formby "was greying and thickening out", and was too old to play the innocent young Lancashire lad.

 

The slump in his screen popularity hit Formby hard, and he became depressed. In early 1946 Beryl checked him into a psychiatric hospital under her maiden name, Ingham. He came out after five weeks, in time for a tour of Scandinavia in May.

 

On his return from Scandinavia, Formby went into pantomime in Blackpool; while there, he learned of his appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours. Although delighted, he was upset that Beryl went without official recognition, and said:

 

"If somethin' was comin' our way,

ah'd like it to be somethin' Beryl

could have shared."

 

Later that year the Formbys toured South Africa shortly before formal racial apartheid was introduced. While there they refused to play racially-segregated venues. When Formby was cheered by a black audience after embracing a small black girl who had presented his wife with a box of chocolates, National Party leader Daniel François Malan (who later introduced apartheid) telephoned to complain; Beryl replied:

 

"Why don't you piss off,

you horrible little man?"

 

Formby returned to Great Britain at Christmas and appeared in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre, Leeds for nine weeks, and then, in February 1947, he appeared in variety for two weeks at the London Palladium. Reviewing the show, The Times thought:

 

"Formby was more than ever the

mechanized perfection of naive

jollity. His smile, though fixed, is

winning, and his songs are catchy."

 

In September 1947 he went on a 12-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. On his return he was offered more film roles, but turned them down, saying:

 

"When I look back on some of the films

I've done in the past it makes me want

to cringe. I'm afraid the days of being a

clown are gone. From now on I'm only

going to do variety."

 

George began suffering increasing health problems, including a gastric ulcer, and was treated for breathing problems resulting from his heavy smoking. He finished the year in pantomime, appearing as Buttons in Cinderella at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, with Beryl playing Dandini.

 

In September 1949 Formby went on a 19 city coast-to-coast Canadian tour, from which he returned unwell. While subsequently appearing in Cinderella in Leeds, he collapsed in his dressing room. The attending doctor administered morphine, to which Formby briefly became addicted.

 

Further poor health plagued George into 1950, with a bout of dysentery, followed by appendicitis, after which he recuperated in Norfolk, before giving another royal command performance that April.

 

He undertook two further international tours that year: one to Scandinavia, and a second to Canada. His earnings of Ca$200,000 were heavily taxed: Canadian taxes took up $68,000, and UK taxes took 90% of the balance.

 

Formby complained to reporters about the level of taxation, saying:

 

"That's it. So long as the government

keeps bleeding me dry, I shan't be in

much of a hurry to work again!"

 

He and Beryl spent the rest of the year resting in Norfolk, in temporary retirement.

 

Formby was tempted back to work by the theatrical impresario Emile Littler, who offered him the lead role of Percy Piggott in Zip Goes a Million, a play based on the 1902 novel Brewster's Millions by G. B. McCutcheon; Formby was offered £1,500, plus a share of the box-office takings.

 

The show premiered at the Coventry Hippodrome in September 1951 before opening at the Palace Theatre, London on the 20th. October. The Times commented unfavourably, saying that:

 

"Although the audience were appreciative

of the play, they could not conceivably

have detected a spark of wit in either the

lyrics or the dialogue."

 

The paper was equally dismissive of Formby, writing that:

 

"He has a deft way with a song or

a banjo, but little or no finesse in

his handling of a comic situation".

 

A month after the play opened in London, Formby was the guest star on Desert Island Discs, where one of his choices was his father's "Standing on the Corner of the Street".

 

In early 1952 Formby's health began to decline and, on the 28th. April, he decided to withdraw from Zip Goes a Million. On the way to the theatre to inform Littler, Formby suffered a heart attack, although it took the doctors five days to diagnose the coronary and admit him to hospital.

 

George was treated for both the attack, and his morphine addiction. He stayed in hospital for nine weeks before returning home to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, where he announced his retirement.

 

-- George Formby's Health Problems and Intermittent Work: 1952–1960

 

During his recuperation, Formby contracted gastroenteritis and had a suspected blood clot on his lung, after which he underwent an operation to clear a fishbone that was stuck in his throat.

 

He had recovered sufficiently by April 1953 to undertake a 17-show tour of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), before a special appearance at the Southport Garrick Theatre. That September he turned on the Blackpool Illuminations.

 

From October to December 1953 Formby appeared at the London Palladium in 138 performances of the revue Fun and the Fair, with Terry-Thomas and the Billy Cotton band; Formby appeared in the penultimate act of the evening, with Terry-Thomas closing the show.

 

Although Formby's act was well-received, the show was not as successful as had been hoped, and Terry-Thomas later wrote that:

 

"Formby put the audience in a certain

mood which made them non-receptive

to whoever followed. Even though my

act was the star spot, I felt on this

occasion that my being there was an

anti-climax."

 

He requested that the order be changed to have Formby close the show, but this was turned down.

 

Formby suffered from stage fright during the show's run—the first time he had suffered from the condition since his earliest days on stage—and his bouts of depression returned, along with stomach problems.

 

Formby took a break from work until mid-1954, when he starred in the revue Turned Out Nice Again, in Blackpool. Although the show was initially scheduled to run for 13 weeks, it was cut short after six when Formby suffered again from dysentery and depression.

 

George again announced his retirement, but continued to work. After some television appearances on Ask Pickles and Top of the Town, in late 1954 and early 1955 respectively,

 

Formby then travelled to South Africa for a tour, where Beryl negotiated an agreement with the South African premier Johannes Strijdom to play in venues of Formby's choice.

 

They then sailed to Canada for a ten-day series of performances. On the return voyage George contracted bronchial pneumonia, but still joined the cast of the non-musical play Too Young to Marry on his arrival in Britain.

 

In August 1955 Beryl felt unwell and went for tests: she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and was given two years to live.

 

The couple reacted to the news in different ways, and while Beryl began to drink heavily—up to a bottle of whisky a day to dull the pain—George began to work harder, and began a close friendship with a school teacher, Pat Howson.

 

Too Young to Marry toured between September 1955 and November 1956, but still allowed Formby time to appear in the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.

 

The touring production was well received everywhere except in Scotland, where Formby's attempted Scottish accent is thought to have put people off.

 

For Christmas 1956 George appeared in his first London pantomime, playing Idle Jack in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Palace Theatre, although he withdrew from the run in early February after suffering from laryngitis.

 

According to Bret, Formby spent the remainder of 1957 "doing virtually nothing", although he appeared in two television programmes, Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular in July and Top of the Bill in October.

 

From March 1958 Formby appeared in the musical comedy Beside the Seaside, a Holiday Romp in Hull, Blackpool, Birmingham and Brighton. However by the time it reached Brighton the play was playing to increasingly smaller audiences, and the run was cut short as a result.

 

The play may not have been to southern audiences' tastes—the plot centres on a northern family's holiday in Blackpool—but those in the north, particularly Blackpool, thought highly of it and the show was a nightly sell-out. When the show closed Formby was disappointed, and vowed never to appear in another stage musical.

 

The year 1958 was professionally quiet for George; in addition to Beside the Seaside, he also worked in one-off appearances in three television shows.

 

He began 1959 by appearing in Val Parnell's Spectacular: The Atlantic Showboat in January, and in April hosted his own show, Steppin' Out With Formby.

 

During the summer season he appeared at the Windmill Theatre, Great Yarmouth, although he missed two weeks of performances when he was involved in a car crash on the August Bank Holiday.

 

When doctors examined him, they were concerned with his overall health, partly as a result of his forty cigarettes-a-day smoking habit. He also had high blood pressure, was overweight and had heart problems.

 

Formby's final year of work was 1960. That May he recorded his last session of songs, "Happy Go Lucky Me" and "Banjo Boy", the former of which peaked at number 40 in the UK Singles Chart.

 

He then spent the summer season at the Queen's Theatre in Blackpool in The Time of Your Life—a performance which was also broadcast by the BBC. One of the acts in the show was the singer Yana, with whom Formby had an affair, made easier because of Beryl's absence from the theatre through illness.

 

George's final televised performance, a 35-minute BBC programme, The Friday Show: George Formby, was aired on the 16th. December. Bret considered the programme to be:

 

"Formby's greatest performance—

it was certainly his most sincere."

 

However reviewing for The Guardian, Mary Crozier thought it "too slow". She went on to say:

 

"George Formby is really a music-hall

star, and it needs the warmth and

sociability of the theatre to bring out

his full appeal."

 

Beryl's illness was worsening. Worn down by the strain, and feeling the need to escape, Formby took the part of Mr Wu in Aladdin in Bristol, having turned down a more lucrative part in Blackpool.

 

-- George Formby's Final Months: a New Romance, Death, and a Family Dispute

 

Two hours before the premiere of Aladdin—on Christmas Eve 1960—Formby received a phone call from Beryl's doctor, saying that she was in a coma and was not expected to survive the night.

 

Formby went through with the performance, and was told early the next morning that Beryl had died. Her cremation took place on the 27th. December, and an hour after the service Formby returned to Bristol to appear in that day's matinee performance of Aladdin.

 

He continued in the show until the 14th. January when a cold forced him to rest, on doctors' advice. He returned to Lytham St. Annes and communicated with Pat Howson; she contacted his doctor and Formby was instructed to go to hospital, where he remained for the next two weeks.

 

On Valentine's Day 1961, seven weeks after Beryl's death, Formby and Howson announced their engagement. Eight days later he suffered a heart attack which was so severe that he was given the last rites of the Catholic Church on his arrival at hospital in Preston.

 

He was revived and, from his hospital bed, he and Howson planned their wedding, which was due to take place in May. He was still there when, on the 6th. March, he had a further heart attack and died at the age of 56.

 

The obituarist for The Times wrote that:

 

"He was the amateur of the old smoking

concert platform turned into a music-hall

professional of genius."

 

Donald Zec, writing in the Daily Mirror, called him:

 

"As great an entertainer as any

of the giants of the music-hall".

 

The Guardian considered that:

 

"With his ukulele, his songs, and his

grinning patter, the sum was greater

than any of those parts: a Lancashire

character."

 

In the eyes of the public, Formby's passing was genuinely and widely mourned.

 

Formby was laid to rest alongside his father in Warrington Cemetery with over 150,000 mourners lining the route. The undertaker was Bruce Williams who, as Eddie Latta, had written songs for Formby.

 

An hour after the ceremony the family read the will, which had been drawn up two weeks previously. Harry Scott—Formby's valet and factotum—was to receive £5,000, while the rest was to go to Howson; at probate Formby's estate was valued at £135,000.

 

Formby's mother and siblings were angered by the will, and contested it. In the words of Bret:

 

"Mourning Formby was marred by

a greedy family squabbling over

his not inconsiderable fortune."

 

Because the will was contested, Formby's solicitor insisted that a public auction was held for the contents of Formby's house, which took place over three days in June.

 

Howson offered to honour an earlier will by providing £5,000 for Eliza and £2,000 each for Formby's sisters, but the offer was rejected, and the matter went to the High Court in London.

 

The case was heard in May 1963 before Mr Justice Ormrod. At the end, Eliza was granted £5,000, and the sisters received £2,000 each. Formby's solicitor, John Crowther, acted for Howson, and explained that the bequest to Formby's sisters from the older will was made "with reluctance" by Formby, who had described his family as "a set of scroungers".

 

The family appealed the decision, and the matter lasted until September 1965, when it was finally dismissed in Howson's favour.

 

-- George Formby's Screen Persona and Technique

 

George once said:

 

"I'm just a clown without the make-up,

the circus clown who magnifies the

reactions of ordinary people to the

things that happen around them".

 

Richards considered that:

 

"Formby had been able to embody

simultaneously Lancashire, the

working classes, the people, and

the nation."

 

Geoff King, in his examination of film comedy, also saw Formby as an icon, and wrote that:

 

"Gracie Fields and Formby gained the

status of national as well as regional

figures, without sacrificing their

distinctive regional personality traits."

 

While the national aspect was important for success outside the north, the Lancashire accent remained to enhance his homely comic appeal.

 

The media historian Brian McFarlane wrote that:

 

"On film, Formby portrayed essentially

gormless incompetents, aspiring to various

kinds of professional success ... and even

more improbably to a middle-class girlfriend,

usually in the clutches of some caddish type

with a moustache.

Invariably he scored on both counts".

 

In an edition of ITV's The South Bank Show in November 1992, Richards commented that:

 

"Formby embodied qualities that people

admired and found reassuring in the

depression ... and you thought that here's

a man whom whatever is thrown at him,

will come through and come out smiling—

and people wanted that."

 

H.J. Igoe, contributing to The Catholic Herald, wrote that:

 

"Formby has a common English touch.

We warm to the kindly turnip face, the

revolving eyes, the mouth like a slashed

coconut, the silly little songs ... the

melodiously tinny voice and twanging

banjo.

The comedian is the universal works—

platoon and bar-room simpleton—

mother's boy—the beloved henpeck—

the father who cannot hang a picture

and underlying his everyday folly there

is the sublime wisdom of the ordinary

fool who loves and trusts the world.

His comedy is earthy, but never

lascivious."

 

Formby himself said of his suggestive lyrics:

 

"You know, some of the songs are a bit

near. But they'll take them from me in

evening dress; they wouldn't take them

if I wore baggy pants and rednose".

 

Richards identified in Formby:

 

"An innocence that was essentially

childlike ... which explains why

George was as popular with children

as he was with adults."

 

Formby's screen and stage persona of innocence and simplicity was not seen as ignorance or stupidity, although Basil Dean disagreed, and claimed:

 

"Formby didn't act gormless as

many successful Lancashire

comedians have done - he was

gormless."

 

Much of the innocence in Formby's performance is connected to sex, and the use of double entendres within his songs. John Caughie and Kevin Rockett, in their examination of British film, see a connection between Formby's approach to sex and the saucy seaside postcards of Donald McGill.

 

Richards also sees the function of Formby's humour as being the same as McGill's:

 

"The harmless diffusion of a major

source of tension in a deeply

repressed and conventional

society."

 

Formby's delivery of the sexual content—what McFarlane identifies as being "sung with such a toothy grin and air of innocence"—negated any possible indignation, and this contrasts with the more overtly sexual delivery of other performers of the time, such as Max Miller and Frank Randle.

 

George's musical skills have also been praised; ukulele expert Steven Sproat considers that:

 

"Formby was incredible ... There hasn't

really been a uke player since Formby—

or even before Formby—who played

quite like him."

 

Much of Formby's virtuosity came from his right-hand technique, the split stroke, and he developed his own fast and complicated syncopated musical style with a very fast right-hand strum.

 

Joe Cooper, writing in New Society, considered that:

 

"Nobody has ever reproduced

the casual devastating right-hand

syncopation, which so delicately

synchronised with deft left-hand

chord fingering".

 

-- George Formby's Legacy

 

Formby's screen persona influenced Norman Wisdom in the 1950's and Charlie Drake in the following decade, although both these performers used pathos, which Formby avoided.

 

Shortly after Formby's death a small group of fans formed the George Formby Society, which had its inaugural meeting at the Imperial Hotel Blackpool. George Harrison was a fan of Formby, a member of the Society and an advocate of the ukulele.

 

The rest of the Beatles were also fans—they improvised with ukuleles during the recording breaks on Let It Be—and Formby's influence can be heard in the song "Her Majesty".

 

The Beatles' penultimate song, "Free as a Bird", ends with a slight coda including a strummed ukulele by Harrison and the voice of John Lennon played backwards, saying:

 

"Turned out nice again".

 

As of 2014 there are two public statues of Formby. The first, by the Manx artist Amanda Barton, is in Douglas, Isle of Man, and shows him leaning on a lamp-post and dressed in the motorcycle leathers of a TT racer.

 

Barton was also commissioned to provide a second statue for the Lancashire town of Wigan, which was unveiled in September 2007 in the town's Grand Arcade shopping centre.

 

Formby has been the subject of five biographies as of 2014.

 

In the late 1960's, Harry Scott published his reminiscences of Formby, The Fabulous Formby, in 14 issues of The Vellum, the magazine of the George Formby Society.

 

Alan Randall and Ray Seaton published their book on Formby in 1974, and John Fisher published George Formby in 1975.

 

David Bret produced George Formby: A Troubled Genius in 1999.

 

The last of the five to be published was by Sue Smart and Richard Bothway Howard in 2011, It's Turned Out Nice Again!.

 

There have also been two documentaries on British television, an edition of The South Bank Show in 1992, and Frank Skinner on George Formby in 2011.

 

In 2004 Formby was inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame, a non-profit organisation for the preservation of ukulele history. His citation reads, in part:

 

"He won such love and respect for his

charismatic stage presence, technical

skill and playful lyrics that he remains

popular forty years after his death."

 

In June 2012, a Blackpool Boat Car tram, number 604, was repainted and returned to service with sponsorship from the George Formby Society. The tram was named "George Formby OBE," and images of him are affixed within the trolley.

"A light-hearted production: Keighley Amateurs' fine show", Keighley News, Saturday 8th October 1949. A review of the Amateur's 1949 production of "Wild Violets".

 

Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society's production of "Wild Violets" played at the Hippodrome Theatre in Keighley for six nights from Monday 3rd to Saturday 8th October 1949. The musical was by Bruno Hardt-Warden with English Lyrics by Desmond Carter and music by Robert Stoltz. The KAODS production was produced by Philip F. Howley, with musical director R. Lewis Scargill and stage manager Albert H. Preston. The Honorary President of the Society was the Mayor of Keighley, Councillor G. Samuel Mason.

 

The story is bookended in the The Stone Jug, an inn in the Swiss mountains in the 'present day'. The inn is run by Hans and Augusta Katzen (played by Arthur B. Hird and Margaret Best), who receive a visit from Paul Hoffman (Frederick W. Pye) who is on his way to a school reunion. Hans' and Augusta's daughter, Greta (Kathleen Hayes), is in love with Paul's son, Carl (Geoffrey Rundle), but Paul is not willing to give his consent to their engagement. This leads to the whole party remembering / speculating on the romantic engagements of the parents' generation back in 1902...

 

The main part of the musical takes part in and around a finishing school for girls called Chateau Violette. Paul and his friends, Otto Bergman (Frank Hopkinson) and Erik Schmidt (Keith Marsden), are students at a neighbouring college. They are hoping to see three girls - Liesel (Marion Walker), Mitzi (Rita Roberts) and Lena (Molly Spavin). Otto and Liesel are fond of each other. Paul, however, bets that within twenty-four hours he can win Liesel's affection. The boys go along to see Madame Hoffman (Alice Hanson), the Headmistress of the girls' school, to ask for her help during a forthcoming students' celebration. Madame Hoffman, who is Paul's aunt, is extremely uncooperative. While she is welcoming a new pupil, Mary Rutherford (Margaret Shackleton), Paul intercepts a telegram which is meant to inform Madame Hoffman that the new music master, Dr Franck (George Park), will not be able to arrive until the following day. In order to ingratiate himself with the girls, Paul makes an 'arrival' at the school disguised as Dr Franck. There is a great uproar when the real Dr Franck arrives. Realising that as a result of this episode he will not be allowed near the school again, Paul and Mary arrange a rendezvous outside the school and depart to get married.

 

In the epilogue, back in the 'present day', Carl and Greta elope to get married, having learned from the example of his father. This infuriates Paul, but his wife Mary reminds him of the precedent they themselves had set, and everyone ends up toasting the health of the young couple.

 

The musical also starred John O'Connell, Marjorie J. Riley, Peter Blakeney, Ernest Marsden and John H. Crabtree. Irene Ogden was the Director of Dancing.

 

The newspaper cutting was part of an anonymous donation given in 2022.