Keep calm and carry on watching CARRYON
With their bottom-pinching and wolf-whistling, the classic series risks being cancelled today. But a new book argues it was the men, not the women, who were the butt of the jokes
THERE are broadly two types of females in the world of traditional British comedy — battleaxes and nubile maidens; that’s to say, crones or tarts, ratbags or nymphets.
On the one hand, as it were, Hattie Jacques as Matron, pounding up the ward, and on the other, Barbara Windsor, ‘joyous, earthy, funny’, her assets, as Frankie Howerd said, for ever ‘tittering on the brink’.
As ours is a super-sensitive era of identity politics, however, the rollicking Carry Ons, with their bottom-pinching and wolf-whistling, are at serious risk of cancellation — so all praise to Gemma and Robert Ross, in The Carry On Girls, for defending the films as social history.
If Angela Douglas, for example, as Annie Oakley, in Carry On Cowboy, is slapped on the rump in the saloon, or Valerie Leon, in Carry On Camping, shows Charles Hawtrey how to stick his pole up (his tent pole, the censor insisted) — this is ‘just innocent fun’.
The authors also point out that when girls are propositioned by the likes of Sid James or Terry Scott, they react by giggling and running away. The men are always left looking like idiots (Kenneth Connor) or oafs (Bernard Bresslaw). The other joke, of course, is that when Kenneth Williams talks about how he is ‘throbbing with it’, having seen his busty secretary ‘getting them out’ and ‘you can’t believe your eyes’, this is all nonsensical jabbering, fooling nobody. Even as a child I could tell he was as gay as a goose, terrified of women.
WE ARE told in this largehearted and fabulously illustrated book to observe that though the films were made at a time when ‘marriage and home were pinnacles of aspiration’ for every woman, nevertheless the Carry Ons do show them becoming increasingly independent — girls want to have fun, too.
Hence, Carol Hawkins and Sherrie Hewson in short skirts and hotpants in Carry On Behind, or Sally Geeson in Carry On Abroad. Even June Whitfield succumbs to a holiday romance, having a fling in the resort of Els Bells with a Spanish waiter.
Nevertheless, it is true there were always lots of scantilyclad starlets in the background, cast as amorous typists, hospital receptionists, nurses, Vestal Virgins, serving wenches, giggly schoolgirls, shop girls, canteen girls and harem girls.
‘We all had that saucy look and expressive eyes,’ said Valerie Van Ost. ‘We had to make a definite impact in a couple of seconds.’
This masterful compendium of crumpet accounts for many of these actresses and models — most never heard of again: Nikki van der Zyl, who shared a moment with Hawtrey in Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head; Edina Ronay, the daughter of Egon Ronay, whom Peter Rogers, the producer, thought could be ‘the next Brigitte Bardot’; or Wanda Ventham, who gave birth to Benedict Cumberbatch.
Gemma and Robert Ross know that Margaret Nolan, who was a buxom lass in six Carry Ons, ‘retired from acting to settle in Spain’.
Julie Arnall went ‘to live by the sea in Brighton’. Jill Adams ‘moved to the Algarve’.
Less happily, there are those examples of prime pulchritude who died young or in penury. Carol White, from Carry On Teacher, went to America, where ‘pimps, pushers, liars and ex-husbands brought me crashing down’.
Imogen Hassall, from Carry On Loving, ‘a poor little girl, rather lost, but terribly sweet,’ died of a drugs overdose.
Many others, who remained in the business, became Bond girls (such as Shirley Eaton), or else were employed by Hammer Studios, to be bitten by vampires, menaced by zombies, and victimised by Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. Yutte Stensgaard, for
instance, was in Lust For A Vampire. Marjie Lawrence was in I, Monster. Even Barbara Windsor was slaughtered by Jack The Ripper in A Study In Terror.
I’m not saying this was a fate worse than death, but Leslie Duff ended up acting with Hale and Pace as well as Rod Hull and Emu.
Olga Lowe was with Sid James when he died on stage in Sunderland in 1976, at the age of 62.
Angela Douglas married Kenneth More, Jill Ireland married Charles Bronson and Shakira Baksh married Michael Caine.
This book properly accounts for the big stars, such as Barbara Windsor, with her high spirits and sharp intelligence, who first appeared in Carry On Spying, as Daphne Honeybutt. Liz Fraser was always good as a sultry fiancee or the attractive best friend next door.
Fenella Fielding had to buy her own costume jewellery to play the glorious vamp in Carry On Screaming — she came to a party I once threw at the Groucho in honour of Charles Hawtrey and was the same in real life, full of eccentric glamour.
Was Amanda Barrie ‘a better Cleo than Elizabeth Taylor’? She was certainly lucky to wear Taylor’s discarded costumes from 20th Century Fox’s Cleopatra epic. Wrapped in a towel after skinny-dipping in asses’ milk she was very sexy — as Sid James muttered in Latin: ‘Oh puer, oh puer, oh puer!’
I was saddened to learn Hattie Jacques, dead at 58, was dropped from the series because her weight issues presented insurance risks.
Joan Sims, too, felt herself to be increasingly fat and unattractive –— Leslie Phillips’ romantic interest in the early films became a scold later, though she looked marvellous as Lady Ruff-Diamond in Carry On Up The Khyber. I knew Joan, whom the authors are correct to say was ‘wise and warm’.
It wasn’t entirely pin-ups, of course, and Gemma and Robert do the character actresses proud. Dora Bryan, who owned the hotel in Brighton where they shot Carry On Girls, said: ‘If they wanted a shop girl, a barmaid or a tart with a heart, they would usually call me in.’
Betty Marsden in Carry On Camping drives Terry Scott into the arms of a minx played by Elizabeth Knight, who died in 2005.
SHEILA HANCOCK gave an energetic turn as Senna Podd, in Carry On Cleo, so is now a dame. Patsy Rowlands contributed depth and poignancy to a succession of frustrated or suspicious wives. Esma Cannon was a ‘mad little pixie,’ in Carry On Cabby.
Also on display as befuddled old dears were Irene Handl, Pat Coombs, Rosalind Knight and Joan Hickson, the latter with her ‘authoritative scowls’, which would make her the definitive Miss Marple.
‘The worst thing that ever happened to us was political correctness,’ said June Whitfield. ‘It’s quite ridiculous.’
Hearty cheers to that sentiment. Set aside contemporary woke anxieties and pretentious virtue signalling and the Carry Ons are to be cherished.