George Posford

George Posford was born Benjamin George Ashwell at Folkestone on 23 March 1906 and was educated at Downside and Christ's College, Cambridge. He studied originally for the legal profession, but by 1930 - when with Rodney Hobson he contributed 'additional' numbers to Robert Courtneidge's touring musical Lavender - had decided to become a professional composer and (according to his regular collaborator Eric Maschwitz) studied at the Royal College of Music. As well as turning out so much theatre music throughout his career, Posford also composed a deal of light orchestral music (such pieces as 'Transatlantic Rhapsody' and 'Broadcasting House') and some film scores.

The major turn in Posford's career was his meeting with the writer Eric Maschwitz in the early 1930s, a meeting that catapulted them into a sometimes highly lucrative and certainly prolific collaboration. Maschwitz's first impression was that Posford 'looked not in the least like my conception of a composer. His hair was short and he arrived in a very small sports car laden with tennis rackets.' Their first effort was an operetta written for radio, Good-Night Vienna. The morning after the broadcast the property was bought by Herbert Wilcox for £200. His film version, starring Anna Neagle and Jack Buchanan, came out in 1932, but it was 1946 before Good-Night Vienna was professionally mounted on stage for a successful tour.

In 1933 Posford's first full stage score was heard when The Gay Hussar, with book and lyrics by Maschwitz using his nom-de-plume of Holt Marvell, toured for five months. Although the show didn't get to London, Maschwitz recognised its potential and - a trick he was to use again - decided to alter and revise the show. For the new edition, Bernard Grun, a Czech conductor and composer who at that time spoke no English, was brought in to add to Posford's existing score. The revised Gay Hussar reappeared as Balalaika in a resplendent production by Leontine Sagan, opening at the Adelphi Theatre in December 1936 and running 570 performances. Late in rehearsals, Maschwitz and Posford wrote one of the show's finest songs, 'At The Balalaika' (one of Posford's best known melodies). The romantic goulash of Balalaika was even more overcooked in the 1939 film version with Nelson Eddy and Ilona Massey.

Tailored to the blitz

There was another Posford-Grun score for Maschwitz's next musical, Paprika (Maschwitz was hooked on continental glamour) seen at His Majesty's Theatre in September 1938. This Hungarian romance - some of it, indeed, written in Budapest by Maschwitz and Posford who had gone to soak up the local colour - was, in Maschwitz's words 'a dismal failure', closing after only 11 performances. Maschwitz records that 'On the second night of Paprika there were more people on stage (78) on stage than in the auditorium (53).' But the impresario Jack Davies at once decided to re-stage a revised version, which opened at His Majesty's Theatre (cheekily, the same stage on which it had so decidedly flopped) as Magyar Melody. The trick did not work quite so well this time, with Magyar Melody achieving only 105 performances. Manning Sherwin contributed one new number, but otherwise the score was as heard in Paprika, best remembered today for the ballad 'Mine Alone', sung by Binnie Hale.

Still, Posford seemed happy to be credited as co-composer. The Cicely Courtneidge-Jack Hulbert vehicle Full Swing, in which the couple revived the roles they had created in their earlier success Under Your Hat, had a score from Posford and Harry Parr-Davies. The show was tailored to the needs of blitz-torn Londoners, getting through 468 performances. Posford's own contribution to the war effort (apart from his jolly music) was with the London Fire Service and the Royal Corps of Signals, and he subsequently worked for the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service.

Posford's peacetime project, shared with composer Harry Jacobson, was altogether less successful than Full Swing. Evangeline, an adaptation of James Lavers's Nymph Errant (for which Maschwitz wrote the lyrics) had Frances Day for its heroine, but even she couldn't save it from unwelcoming notices when it opened at the Cambridge Theatre in 1946. Posford's music was not well received, but surely deserves re-evaluation.

Vehicle for George Formby

Five years later he at last had sole credit for a theatre score, the first time since 1933 that he had worked without a collaborating composer. Zip Goes A Million, cleverly crafted by Maschwitz for its star George Formby, was a solid success at the Palace Theatre in 1951. Its score showed Posford at the top of his form, writing easy and immediately appealing music that worked beautifully as theatre. He was at his most captivating in numbers such as the plaintive and longing 'Ordinary People' and 'I'm Saving Up For Sally'.

He was once again sole composer for his final collaboration with Maschwitz, but the result was unhappy. A doomed attempt to make a musical from Arnold Ridley's tired old comedy-thriller The Ghost Train, Happy Holiday eventually surfaced at the Palace Theatre for December 1954 billed as 'a Christmas show of fun, mystery and song'. Posford's music was probably the best thing of the night, but the show opened to general derision and closed within a month. Posford turned to Maschwitz for a proposed musical version of Blood and Sand, but the piece didn't materialise.

George Posford died in Worplesdon, Surrey on 24 April 1976. Much of his music lies in neglect, and deserves to be heard. Perhaps we could resist the need to hear full accounts of such pieces as Paprika (or Magyar Melody) but we would particularly welcome the opportunity to hear such scores as Evangeline and Happy Holiday, the work of an energetic, hard-working and highly talented English composer whose work, when needed, had the common touch.

ms of 'Sew A Silver Button On the Moon' from Happy Holiday

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