Beryl Ingham

George Formby and Beryl Ingham entertain the crew of the Headquarters ship HMS AMBITIOUS, off the Normandy coast in 1944

Beryl Ingham (1901 – 24 December 1960) was a champion clogdancer and actress, who was married to singer/actor George Formby

She was born in Haslingden, Lancashire, the youngest daughter of John James Ingham and his wife Elizabeth Ann née Jackson. At the age of 11 she won the All England Step Dancing Title. Later she formed a dancing act with her sister May, they called themselves The Two Violets.^[1]

It was in 1923 while they were appearing in music hall in Yorkshire that she met George Formby: They married in George's home town of Wigan, Lancashire the following year.^[2] They worked together as a variety act until 1932 when she became his full-time manager and mentor, though she did in fact appear in some of his films for which George was paid up to £35,000 per performance. It was due to Beryl's business nous that she guided George to be the UK's highest paid entertainer. At a time of high taxation he was paying 97.5% of his additional earnings to tax.

In 1946 the Formbys were on a tour of South Africa; despite threats from the National Party leader Daniel François Malan, George played to black audiences, and Beryl embraced a three-year-old black girl who had presented her with a box of chocolates. Malan had them thrown out of the country, and was reported to have told them "never come back to this country". Beryl, with a typical northern response replied "Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?"^[3] Beryl continued to manage George's career until she contracted leukemia. She died on Christmas Eve 1960 in Blackpool. After her death, Formby publicly confessed that "My life with Beryl was hell".^[4] He died three months after his wife.

Selected filmography

• Boots! Boots! (1934)

Notes