...And what better way to kick-start
the old Blog back into coughing, spluttering life after the New Year,
than with an in-depth look at the Cultural Issues affecting modern
life?. With a hasty, ill thought-out skim-over of the Carry On films,
that's what...
With 31 films from 1958's Carry on
Sergeant to the last Carry
on Columbus in 1992, the series
ranks second only to the James Bond films in durability – and if
you were like me, i.e. British, white and born anywhere around the
late sixties, chances are you grew up with these classics on the
telly. The style of humour in the Carry Ons is best defined as 'saucy
seaside postcard' and music hall – that end of the pier British
humour with busty girls and lusty gents. Wey-HEY!.
The team of Producer Peter Rogers and
Director Gerald Thomas hit on the idea of a series of low-budget,
(The lead players were paid just £5,000
a film) low-production value gag-fests, each featuring the
same basic cast members – the 'Carry On Gang' – in a different
set-up; they're Doctors and patients in a hospital, they're Explorers
in the Jungle... the main purpose of the plots seemed to be to cram
as many silly, hackneyed and genuinely hilarious gags into the whole
thing as possible. It was a national phenomenon. Whole generations of
British movie-goers trooped in to see these films. Art-house
producers must have wept...
The core of the Carry On Gang?; Sidney
James, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims,
Kenneth Connor, Bernard Bresslaw, Barbara 'Babs' Windsor, Jim Dale
and Peter Butterworth. Only a few of these names are still in the
land of the living – Barbara Windsor's bubbly blonde bombshell was
until fairly recently Peggy Mitchell of Eastenders fame. The
names in that list cover just about the whole spectrum of British
vintage comedy – Sid James made his name on Hancock's Half Hour
with Tony Hancock, as did
Kenneth Williams, who specialised in different characters and voices
before his run on Round the Horne.
Another Hancock regular was Hattie Jacques, famous for her Matron
characters. Aside from the Carry Ons, Jacques
found fame with Eric Sykes, working with him for many years,
including her final role, in the comedy short Rhubarb
Rhubarb released after her
death.
The
flavour of the series comes largely from Talbot Rothwell's scripts;
he wrote twenty of the films before retiring with exhaustion to
Worthing in West Sussex. (My two 'Lames' to fame here are apart from
living in Worthing, as a kid when we lived in Surrey I was almost run
over by the horribly unfunny Terry Scott in his Rolls Royce) A WWII
fighter pilot, Rothwell was shot down and was held in the notorious
Stalag Luft III, the camp famous for The Great Escape.
While there, he met future Carry
On regular Peter Butterworth who
performed in Rothwell's early plays – covering the noise of the
tunneling below!.
Solomon
Cohen was a Johannesburg hairdresser – changing his name to Sidney
James he went into acting. After some serious roles, he went into
comedy – almost always playing characters called Sid or Sidney. His
trademark was a dirty laugh and 'Cor, blimey!' (Pronounced;
BA-limey!). Famously, he carried on with
Babs Windsor, whose husband Ronnie Knight was a leading figure in
Gangland. Rumour has it Knight threatened Sid, whose other obsession
was gambling – a life-long gambler he would often be found on the
phone to his bookie, losing thousands. He collapsed onstage with a
heart attack in 1976.
How
you perceive the Carry Ons largely
depends on your age and background – today they are seen as
howlingly unfunny, cliche'd sexist and racist by turn. For example –
in various films Bernard Bresslaw turned up as either a native
African, an Arab, or as an Afghan warlord. These days a white
Englishman blacked up would provoke howls of outrage – especially
as, in the first example he was surrounded by actual black
actors. No surprise here; I see these films as a product of their
time, films made without malice for the entertainment and enjoyment
of the audience of that time. The far-off daze when Britain seemed
more innocent are long gone, sadly. I grew up with these films and
they are GREAT – the jokes are groan-worthy and brilliant one after
the other, all tongue-in-cheek and the very best of British post-war
humour. Judging films made forty years ago by society's mores today
is just madness – it doesn't work; instead of tut-tutting, sit down
and watch these gems – enjoy seeing the Britain of the sixties and
seventies (Even the 'foreign' ones were never filmed farther afield
than Wales) and have some laughs!.
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