Doll-A-Day 56: George Harrison

Today we take a break from the Yard Sale Tale and celebrate what would have been George Harrison's 71st birthday with the George Harrison figure by Hamilton.

These dolls are approximately 10" tall. They're all pretty good likenesses.I've seen a lot worse.

They have a problem though, which you can see on George here.The legs sometimes turn red.

But I love the guitars and the drum set.

The bases all have the name of the appropriate Beatle on them.A stand screws into the base. George gets short changed, as usual: John and Paul's stands both have a hole for a microphone stand. George's doesn't.(Ok, he usually shared with Paul, but still. What if you just want to display your George doll? They were sold separately.)

George Harrison was born on this day in 1943. Earlier this month was the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first performance on American TV, which means George was just short of 21 years old at the time.

 He was the first Western musician to use Indian instruments in a pop song,when he played a sitar on The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood". Although he is always looked upon as the lesser of the three song writing Beatles, (Ok, so Ringo wrote a couple.), George actually wrote the second most covered Beatles song. Something,(which Frank Sinatra called "The greatest love song of the past 50 years", and wrongly accredited to Lennon and McCartney!), has been covered at least 150 times. It's one of my favourites.

 Although John is generally regarded as being the funniest Beatle, I think George had the best sense of humour.He was genuinely funny himself,and was a big comedy fan. He loved Monty Python, even funding "Life of Brian" just because he wanted to see the movie, and so becoming a movie producer. George once said he would almost have preferred being in Monty Python to being in the Beatles.

Well, he almost made it. (Scene from Life of Brian, with Eric Idle, George,Michael Palin, and John Cleese.)

Well, thankfully he was in the Beatles. But just to prove what a sense of humour he had, how many people would appear in a parody of their life?

George as a reporter in the Beatles parody "All You Need is Cash", with Michael Palin.

 George died of cancer on November 29th, 2001. He left behind his wife Olivia, and his son Dhani. Dhani is also a musician, and apart from being George's son,is most famous, (Well, around here anyway.),for saying my daughter Emma had "lovely coloured hair".(No, really, he has actually put out a couple of albums with a couple different bands.)

You have to love a man with a Muppet on his head. 

See you again tomorrow for more of the latest Yard Sale Tale.