Liz Fraser
Underrated actress who made her name playing big-hearted comedy blondes in the Carry On films
LIZ FRASER, who has died aged 88, was the bosomy blonde bimbo in a clutch of 1960s Carry On film comedies and was being groomed as the new leading lady for the series when she was abruptly dropped for speaking out of turn.
Her first sizeable film part, in the industrial relations satire I’m All Right Jack (1959), was as Cynthia, daughter of Fred Kite, the bolshie shop steward and the role that made Peter Sellers a star. The Boulting brothers who made it were struggling to cast Cynthia, and when Liz Fraser was initially seen by the director John Boulting, he took one look at her and said No.
“He couldn’t be bothered because it was lunchtime,” she later recalled, “but he said: ‘Have make-up do something with her and I’ll see her after lunch.’ So they put me in a different bra and a very tight sweater with a tight belt and a long wig and eyelashes so I couldn’t even recognise myself. Then I did the audition for John and I got the part.”
Made in black and white, the film became the biggest box office hit of the year.
Liz Fraser had already established herself on television, having appeared regularly in a live daily serial Sixpenny Corner (ITV, 1955-56), the first soap opera broadcast on British television. But the film role as Cynthia fixed her as a sex symbol in the public’s mind and led to her being typecast as the slightly provocative blonde in some of the early Carry On films.
She was Delia King, one of a bevy of clueless girls in search of a job in Carry On Regardless (1961), the sexy passenger Glad Trimble, who takes a holiday hoping to find a boyfriend for her friend Flo (Dilys Laye) in Carry On Cruising (1962) and the canteen cutie Sally in Carry On Cabby (1963) with Hattie Jacques.
In the meantime she had been cast as the comedian Tony Hancock’s love interest in the popular radio series Hancock’s Half Hour, which later transferred to television. Largely underrated on the strength of these comedy performances, she had always wanted to play the straight parts that did eventually come her way, starting with a housewife who commits suicide in Live Now – Pay Later and as the blackmailer Jo Lake in the thriller The Painted Smile (both 1962).
Although she made more than 50 films, she never quite achieved the same renown as her Carry On cohorts Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims and June Whitfield. This was on account of her losing her place within the franchise after she made a throwaway remark about how she thought the series could be better marketed.
When her opinionated views were reported back to the producer Peter Rogers, he sacked her, only relenting more than a decade later. Liz Fraser resurfaced as Sylvia Ramsden in Carry On Behind (1975), starring Elke Sommer and Kenneth Williams, but at less than half the salary she had previously been paid.
As well as I’m All Right Jack, she appeared with Peter Sellers as his girlfriend Ethel in Two Way Stretch (1960), and found herself the object of his attentions off screen when he repeatedly tried to seduce her. “He wined and dined me at his Hampstead penthouse and another time locked me in his dressing room having invited me there for lunch,” she remembered. “He had treated a girlfriend of mine badly, so I didn’t quite go there.”
Liz Fraser was born Elizabeth Joan Winch above a corner shop run by her parents in Southwark on August 14 1930. Her father died when she was 11, but her mother secured her a grammar school place and she trained at the London School of Dramatic Art before working in repertory theatre and in secretarial jobs.
She made her film debut using her original name in the 1955 Ealing comedy film Touch and Go with Jack Hawkins and Margaret Johnston, followed by television appearances in
Sixpenny Corner, Whack-o! and Dixon of Dock Green.
Imitating the looks of Vera Day and Diana Dors, and taking advantage of what struck her as the “party atmosphere” of postwar Britain, Liz Fraser defined herself as the bighearted comedy cockney blonde, attracting a string of admirers including Sean Connery (“we played lots of poker”) and Stanley Baker.
Although only cast in bit parts early on, she was being noticed in comedies such as Davy with Harry Secombe, and
The Smallest Show on Earth (both 1957), starring Bill Travers and Virginia Mckenna and featuring Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles and Peter Sellers – it was her first encounter with the then little-known actor. She also caught the eye of Tony Hancock, and as well as appearing in Hancock’s Half Hour worked with him in his film The Rebel (1961).
Her other early film roles included an uncredited one in Wonderful
Things! with Frankie Vaughan and the model turned actress Jean Dawnay, and another as a factory girl in
Dunkirk (both 1958), starring John Mills and Richard Attenborough. As Elizabeth Winch she appeared in the comedy Alive and Kicking (1959) about three old ladies (Sybil Thorndike, Kathleen Harrison and Estelle Winwood) who escape from their care home on learning of plans to separate them and place them in new accommodation.
For her portrayal of the sexually aggressive Cynthia in I’m All Right
Jack Liz Fraser was nominated for the Most Promising Newcomer Award by Bafta. In 1960 her appearances in Two
Way Stretch, Doctor in Love with Leslie Phillips and The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s paved the way for her roles in the Carry On series.
The same year, her role in the Hancock’s Half Hour television spin-off Citizen James as Sid James’s longsuffering girlfriend ended after just one series when the writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson left and she was written out. She and James sang the title song on the comedy film Double Bunk (1961). “He called me Lizzie,” she said. “We’d always have a lovely cuddle but there was never any funny business. Sid James was a gentleman.”
Her other British comedy films included Watch It, Sailor! (1961) with Dennis Price and Irene Handl, and The Amorous Mr Prawn (1962).
Cast in the Hollywood comedydrama The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews in the title role, Liz Fraser spent hours with the film’s genial co-star James Garner playing poker in his Winnebago.
Although she impressed as Mrs Mccarthy in Peter Collinson’s feature film of Nell Dunn’s novel Up the Junction (1968), and was Ian Lavender’s mother Mrs Pike in the film version of the long-running television favourite Dad’s Army (1971), she never clinched the sort of television roles that made household names of some of her contemporaries such as June Whitfield in Terry and June.
During the 1970s she surfaced on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), appeared in guest spots on The Benny Hill Show, Robin’s Nest and Rumpole of the Bailey and played an aristocrat in Crown Court. She joined Robin Askwith for two films in the smutty Confessions of … franchise, and on television appeared in an episode of The Professionals and, with Rodney Bewes, in the ITV sitcom Albert!, directed by her second husband Bill Hitchcock.
From the 1980s most of her work was for television, with a recurring role as Doris Entwhistle in the short-lived comedy series Fairly Secret Army (1984-86), starring Geoffrey Palmer, and as the increasingly tipsy Mrs Brent, unfazed at the disappearance of her daughter (“the little bint”) opposite Joan Hickson as Miss Marple in the Agatha Christie whodunit Nemesis (1987).
She made guest appearances as Olive Stubbs on Birds of a Feather and on Minder with George Cole, as well as The Bill, Last of the Summer Wine, Doctors, Foyle’s War and Holby City. She was interviewed for the ITV documentary Carry On Forever (2015) and her last role was in an episode of Midsomer Murders that is still in production.
Unlike many of her contemporaries who relied on unscrupulous advisers (she later helped her Carry On contemporary Joan Sims after she lost her home through financial misjudgement), Liz Fraser managed her own money, dabbling in stocks and shares and amassing a healthy property portfolio.
Her own neat home was close to the Hurlingham Club in Fulham, where she was a champion at bowls and high-level bridge player. With her Basset hound in tow – all had names beginning with B, the last being Brodie – she was a familiar figure in local cafés, but would sometimes bridle if recognised in the street.
Liz Fraser was twice married, first, to a salesman, Peter Yonwin, and, after they divorced, to the producer Bill Hitchcock. He died in 1974.