Much Too Shy

Much Too Shy
Opening title card
Directed byMarcel Varnel
Written byWalter Greenwood (screen adaptation)
Michael Vaughan (additional scenes)
John L. Arthur
Jack S. Marks
Based onoriginal story by Ronald Frankau
Produced byMarcel Varnel
Ben Henry (associate producer)
StarringGeorge Formby
Kathleen Harrison
CinematographyArthur Crabtree
Edited byMax Brenner
Kitty Spreckley
Music byHarry Bidgood (uncredited)
Production
company
Distributed byColumbia Pictures Corporation (UK)
Release date
  • 12 October 1942 (1942-10-12)
(UK)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office£140,919 (UK)[1]

Much Too Shy is a 1942 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring George Formby, Kathleen Harrison, Hilda Bayley and Eileen Bennett.[2] The cast includes radio star Jimmy Clitheroe (as George's brother), later "Carry On'" star Charles Hawtrey, Peter Gawthorne and Joss Ambler.

Formby's featured songs are They Laughed When I Started to Play (Formby/Cliffe), Talking to the Moon About You (Day), Delivering the Morning Milk (Formby/Gifford/Cliffe) and Andy the Handy Man, written by Eddie Latta.[3]

Plot summary

A simple handyman, who also is an amateur artist, gets into trouble when the head and shoulders portraits of some prominent local females are sold without his knowledge to an advertising agency and are published with nude bodies added to them.

Cast

Critical reception

Halliwell's Film Guide called the film "a slightly vulgar and talkative farce which restricts the star".[3] A Radio Times reviewer commented, "although he was still Britain's biggest box office attraction, George Formby was already showing signs of the novelty fatigue that would result in the collapse of his screen career four years later...The cheeky wit that informed so many of Formby's songs is to the fore in this contrived comedy, but the storyline about the handyman with aspirations to become an artist simply isn't strong enough to sustain so much smutty innuendo".[4]

References

  1. ^ James Chapman ‘The Billings verdict’: Kine Weekly and the British Box Office, 1936–62' Journal of British Cinema and Television, Volume 20 Issue 2, Page 200-238, p 211
  2. ^ "BFI | Film & TV Database | MUCH TOO SHY (1942)". Archived from the original on 2 September 2009. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  3. ^ a b "Much Too Shy".
  4. ^ "Much Too Shy (1942)".