Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Delightful Dame exemplifies fantastic fun of silly series
My latest Advertiser feature is dedicated to the memory of the great Dame Barbara Windsor, who so perfectly summed up my feelings on the Carry On franchise when she said: “I think it is disgusting that the Carry On films haven’t had some sort of official acknowledgment when you consider all the money they brought into Britain.”
Even producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas could never explain the phenomenal worldwide success and acclaim that greeted them with a series of films that became one of the most popular and successful of any kind in any branch of showbusiness.
The title Carry On would become a household name, and the success of the films proved that even great institutions have modest beginnings.
When veteran actor Sydney James visited Phnom Penh in Cambodia he received an invitation from a wealthy gentleman to visit a cinema that he owned. James was amazed to discover that the cinema showed Carry On films 24 hours a day and the venue was packed; James said that he was treated like the second coming!
The series was pioneered and launched by two modest, low budget black and white comedies, Carry On Sergeant (1958) and Carry On Nurse (1959). The latter had a budget of £71,000 and wardrobe bill of £480 and broke all box office records in Britain and America.
It earned a whopping $1 million and ran for a year at the Crest cinema in Los Angeles, making it the biggest money-making film of 1959 and leaving all the other movies, including the Hollywood entries released, that year at the starting gate.
The actual name Carry On was stolen from an earlier film, Carry On Admiral, released in 1957. Peter Rogers, who produced all 31 of the Carry Ons, registered the title with the film registration board which would prevent the name from being used by any other movie company.
What then is the underlying formula that created such a fantastic icon in British film history? Obviously the popularity of the established cast, Kenneth Williams, Sydney James, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Connor, Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor.
The brilliant scripts by Norman Hudis and Talbot Rothwell were rich in puns and double entendres; some antecedents for the series can also be traced to those saucy seaside postcards with their sexism and lavatorial humour.
Like the films, they presented vulgar suggestiveness rather than vulgar explicitness and a degree of coyness about love and sex.
The subject matter was always one of simplicity, with familiar topics that the audience could readily identify with; the army; schools; the taxi service; history; hospitals; and horror.
On the production side, the films were shot at conveyer belt speed – usually completed within six weeks – and the finished picture often arriving in the cinema only 10 weeks after principal photography.
Gerald Thomas directed the entire series. If a cinematographer wanted to change the lens on the camera, or move it to a different position, Thomas would argue that if it doesn’t make the picture funnier, use the lens available and leave the camera where it is.
No-one exemplified the series more than Barbara Windsor. In the spring of 1964, with a cheeky smile and a beehive hairdo in the Diana Dors tradition, a very nervous Windsor arrived at Pinewood Studios to begin work on Carry On Spying – the first of nine Carry Ons in which she would become a comic caricature, with a boobs and bottom image, but never a sex symbol.
Barbara had made her first stage appearance at age 12, where she studied acting at the Aida Foster Stage School. Her big break came when she starred in the play Sparrows Can’t Sing, directed by Joan Littlewood.
She then repeated the role in the 1963 film based on the play. Her performance was excellent and earned her a BAFTA nomination as best British actress, which brought her to the attention of Carry On producer Peter Rogers.
He thought she was perfect for the role of trainee spy Daphne Honeybutt in Carry On Spying, a take on the James Bond films.
In 1974, Windsor made her final appearance in the series with Carry On Dick and was the last surviving member of the original team when she sadly passed away, aged 83, on December 10 last year following a long, brave battle with Alzheimer’s.
She was a British institution who is sorely missed.