User Reviews

A local newspaper launches a 'Keep Fit ' campaign in response to a local competitor who has doubled their sales after running a cookery competition. As part of this, the impassioned editor determines to find a local athletic champion: 'a Hercules, an Adonis, a superman'. Cut to our scrawny, gullible, weakling, George Green, a typecast working class underdog, so archetypal a role for Formby. When challenged as to his sporting prowess, George declares he came second once in an egg and spoon race where there were only two runners. Employed as a barber in the local department store, he is drawn into the physical contest in his attempt to not lose face with his love interest in the shape of the pretty store manicurist, played by Kay Walsh. His fortunes look bleak, given that he has a rival for her affections in the muscle-bound, thuggish sports department salesman, ably performed by Guy Middleton - a muscular Terry Thomas-like cad. The audience gradually learn that the latter is an ex-con, still answerable to the local heavies. When money is taken from the department store's tills, he ensures that suspicion falls on George, who consequently is dismissed. Thus, George's mission becomes one of clearing his name as well as of capturing his girl.

By this time the ukulele-wielding star was at the height of his box-office success, and Formby's long-standing producer, Basil Dean, gathered together a dedicated crew at Ealing Studios to develop vehicles starring the Lancastrian comedian. Chief amongst these was former naval officer and successful comedy playwright and director, Anthony Kimmons, who wrote and directed this release and would go on to direct Formby in his next four outings on celluloid.

This storyline serves as a sardonic commentary on the 'Women's League of Health and Beauty', a mass keep-fit movement started in 1930, which at that time had spiralled in popularity, albeit with some unnecessary racial undertones in its published ethos.

A serial womaniser, it was not only his talents in music-hall comedy performance that Formby inherited from his father. The latter was a notorious bigamist who was already married when he took George's mother to the altar in 1899. Equally distrusting and jealous, his browbeating wife and manager, Beryl, had already ensured his previous leading lady, Florence Desmond, was substituted. Unfortunately for her, her replacement, Kay Walsh, the future wife of David Lean, fell for Formby's charms and they started a brief affair. When Beryl found out she tried to have Walsh removed from the project, but found her demands obstructed by Dean, who informed her that the young actress would not only remain contracted for this picture but also for its follow-up, 'I see Ice'. In an attempt to mollify her, he would raise her husband's salary for that latter project.

The rest of the cast provide effective support, none more so than George Benson in perhaps his best ever role as the equally downtrodden store assistant, Ernie. As well as the jaunty titular theme tune, with its advice of 'don't flit to the armchair/You'll win no medals there', the film features one of Formby's catchiest tunes in 'Biceps, Muscle and Brawn' in which he comically declares that he 'wears most of my chest on my back'. However, the strength of the picture undoubtedly lies in its frequent opportunities to illustrate Formby's competent skills in physical comedy. Though no Charles Chaplin, who was prompted to seek his fortune in America by Formby Senior, he provides fine moments from the unfortunate attempt to perform on the parallel bars, to a lack of prowess in a rowing boat leading to a collision with a pleasure steamer, to the humorous training and sparring sessions ahead of the advertised boxing bout with his underhand love rival, to the grandstanding finale in which Formby sallies victorious, triumphantly borne aloft by the adoring crowd. As an interesting footnote, these boxing scenes were supervised by the uncredited champion wrestler, Bob Gregory, who would sail to New York the following year to try and launch his own Hollywood career, accompanied by his 'bride-to-be', British actress, Victoria Brooke, formerly Princess Baba, the youngest daughter of the last British Rajah of Sarawak.