Under New Management

Lisbon Story

George in Civvy Street

Gaiety George

I’ll Turn to You

Meet the Navy

Amateur Night

Piccadilly Incident

London Town

Spring Song

The Laughing Lady

Walking on Air

February

The generous contribution of the Mancunian Film Corporation to the nation’s welfare had catapulted George Formby to prominence with two cheaply produced entertainments, Boots! Boots! (1934) and Off the Dole (1935), after which he never darkened Mancunian’s doors again. Although the company would not find another performer with so much potential, Mancunian went on building modest pictures around some of the most dependable comedic artistes of the 1930s and beyond, among them Nat Jackley, Norman Evans, Sandy Powell, Betty Jumel, Douglas Wakefield, Tessie O’Shea (like Formby, an enthusiast for a ukulele), and, most prominently, the uncontrollably anarchic Frank Randle. A regular repertoire of actors peopled Mancunian’s ‘Somewhere’ series begun in 1940 with Somewhere in England, followed by Somewhere in Camp and Somewhere on Leave, both in 1942, and, very much along the same lines, Demobbed (1942). Unashamedly offered as low comedy, the usually pantomimic proceedings were often flavoured with musical items provided by such middle-of-the-road purveyors of culture as husband-and-wife team Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, and piano duettists Rawicz and Landauer; such acts threatened Mancunian productions with something similar to sophistication.

The first post-war product, Under New Management, proved that even Mancunian could come up with a neat title that might as well describe the times, had the advantage of a well-established, tightly knit team that worked almost as a family made up of people who knew what sort of pictures its customers wanted, and knew how to make them. At the helm was the untiring John E. Blakeley, not the finest of British film-makers but certainly one of the least pretentious. Nevertheless, the young Blakeley aspired to greatness, and under the umbrella of Song Films Limited produced twelve two-reel ‘Cameo Operas’ in the 1920s, the bravest of enterprises before film sound had been officially invented.