Keep Your Seats, Please
Keep Your Seats, Please | |
---|---|
ABFD | |
Release date | 1 August 1936 |
Running time | 82 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Keep Your Seats, Please is a 1936 British
The film, which features Formby's most famous tune, "
Plot
George Withers learns he is supposed to inherit some valuable jewels from his aunt, and enlists the aid of his dubious lawyer to ensure he gets them. It transpires the stones are hidden in the lining of one of six antique chairs, and his aunt has left instructions for her nephew to purchase the chairs at auction. But unfortunately they are sold separately, as he arrives too late to bid.
Cast
- George Formby as George Withers
- Florence Desmond as Florrie
- Gus McNaughton as Max
- Alastair Sim as A. S. Drayton
- Harry Tate as auctioneer
- Enid Stamp-Taylor as Madame Louise
- Hal Gordon as sailor
- Tom Payne as man from Child Welfare
- Beatrix Fielden-Kaye as woman from Child Welfare
- Clifford Heatherley as Doctor Wilberforce
- Binkie Stuart as Binkie
- May Whitty as Aunt Georgina Withers
- Harvey Braban as Detective Jones
- Ethel Coleridge as spinster
- Syd Crossley as bus conductor
- Maud Gill as Fanny Tidmarsh
- Jimmy Godden as X-ray doctor
- Mike Johnson as Mr. O'Flaherty
- Margaret Moffatt as Mrs. O'Flaherty
- Frank Perfitt as bus inspector
In Associated Talking Pictures' original publicity material for the film, Binkie Stuart is referred to as Fiona Stuart.[1]
Critical reception
Leslie Halliwell said: "Good star comedy on a theme later reworked in It's in the Bag [1944] and The Twelve Chairs [1970]."[3]
In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "good", writing: "One of the earliest versions of the Russian farce that has provided standard material for comics down the decades."[5]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's celebrated play The Twelve Chairs gets the George Formby treatment in this sprightly musical comedy. Taking time to intone such ukulele classics as "When I'm Cleaning Windows", Formby exhibits a bit more nous than usual, as he and girlfriend Florence Desmond pursue a set of antique chairs, one of which contains the jewels bequeathed him by an eccentric aunt. Formby is upstaged in every scene that he shares with the lugubrious Alastair Sim, as the shady lawyer hired to track down the furniture."[6]
References
- ^ a b "Keep Your Seats, Please". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
- Monthly Film Bulletin. 3 (25): 129. 1936 – via ProQuest.
- ISBN 0586088946.
- ^ "Keep Your Seats, Please - Sky Movies HD". Skymovies.sky.com. 23 May 2002. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
- ISBN 0-7134-1874-5.
- ISBN 9780992936440.