DB7

'Carry On': The innuendo is nigh

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 14/09/2008

The Carry On films were full of double entendres, saucy slapstick and outrageous acting, but was there anything more to them than that? Fifty years after the series started, Carry On fan William Leith argues they were much subtler - and darker - than we think.

I've always had the same relationship with Carry On films. I like them. Most people I know do not like them. I find them funny. Most people I know do not find them funny - or at least that's what they say. They talk about the films in terms of what they lack - namely quality, gravitas and subtlety. They say they are vulgar. Certain scenes are mentioned - for instance, Barbara Windsor's bra coming off in Carry On Camping. But do you know how they did that? They attached a fish hook to the bra, and whipped it away on a fishing line at just the right moment.

If you asked me which is my favourite Carry On film, I wouldn't know what to say. Sometimes I think it's the very first one, Carry On Sergeant, made 50 years ago, in 1958. It's so fresh. The producer, Peter Rogers, and the director, Gerald Thomas, didn't think they were making a series. They weren't trying to do anything important. In the film, a young man, played by Bob Monkhouse, is conscripted into the Army on his wedding night. So he's sexually frustrated for much of the film. Everybody in Carry On films is sexually frustrated. People sometimes think Carry On films celebrate sex. But they don't. Sex is always a torment, for all of the characters, in all 31 films.

Think about Sid James. He's always leering, right? I can think of a scene in Carry On Camping in which he takes his girlfriend, played by Joan Sims, to see a film about nudists.

"I don't know where to look," says Sims.

"I do," says James.

He's leering in front of his girlfriend - a huge no-no. But he can't help himself. He's not in control. So he's vulnerable, in a way. It's rather like the scene in Carry On Cleo, when James is playing an envoy sent by Caesar to put Cleopatra in her place. But when he sees Amanda Barrie in her milky bath, all he can do is make growling noises. He's completely helpless.
advertisement

And consider Kenneth Williams, as the archaeologist Professor Roland Crump in Carry On Behind, getting into his tent with his Swedish colleague, played by the German actress Elke Sommer. When it comes to sex, Williams, as always, is absolutely terrified. And of course there's Jim Dale, as the doctor in Carry On Again Doctor, trying to treat his patient, a woman dressed in a skimpy bikini, played by Barbara Windsor. His lust makes him lose control of his medical judgment. He's all over the place. Hattie Jacques, who plays the nurse, says something like: "What are the symptoms? Raised heartbeat? Dizziness?"

So the Carry On films are subtler, and perhaps darker than you might think. I have another example - possibly the most tormented figure anywhere in a Carry On film: Major Leep, the character played by Kenneth Connor in Carry On Behind. He's a creepy old guy who runs a campsite. He's driven by sex in an appalling way. At one point, he chats up a girl, and suggests (can you believe this?) that he might meet her later to massage her thighs. She seems to agree, for reasons which are not important here. But when he walks away, he's twitching and shaking, not only with lust, but with fear - fear at what might happen, and also because he understands how monstrous he is.

The Carry On films, which are celebrated in Richard Webber's enjoyable new book 50 Years of Carry On, are not just about sex. They are also about two other things: class, and the incompetence of institutions. The first six films, written by Norman Hudis, were satires of institutions: the Army in Carry On Sergeant, the NHS in Carry On Nurse, education in Carry On Teacher, the police in Carry On Constable…

In fact, what gives the Carry On films their flavour - a sort of respectful mocking of the status quo - stems from the fact that so many of the people involved were in the entertainment sectors of the forces during the war. Hudis performed in RAF camp concerts; Kenneth Williams worked for Combined Forces Entertainment, and Talbot Rothwell, who wrote many of the later scripts, met Carry On actor Peter Butterworth in Stalag Luft III, where they put on concerts together. This is the heart of the Carry On culture: men trying to make each other laugh in desperate circumstances. They make jolly jokes about the incompetence of institutions, and much darker jokes about sex.

But what's my favourite Carry On film? With a few exceptions, such as Carry On Behind, which was made in 1975, the films tended to get better towards 1970, reaching a peak with Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) and Carry On Camping (1969), then declining as the Seventies went on. Khyber is great. It was made in Snowdonia, which was pretending to be the Himalayas. The plot is simple: a kilt-wearing British regiment in the Raj puts the fear of God into the natives by not wearing underpants. But then one soldier, Private James Widdle, played by Charles Hawtrey, makes a terrible mistake. He does wear underpants. So now the natives, led by Kenneth Williams as the Khasi of Kalabar, can attack. There's a superb scene in which Sid James, as Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond, pretends not to notice as his house collapses around him. It's about the death of the British Empire, and somehow it almost jerks a tear.

But yes, the films are mostly about sex, and, as the years progressed, they became coarser and crasser. In Carry On Girls, which is about beauty queens, there's a fight between two girls in which one, played by Barbara Windsor, pulls another's bra off, and then tries to pull her pants off. But the thing is - everybody in the room is screaming. They're horrified, covering their eyes. They don't want those pants to come off. It's as if they know, collectively, that nudity would ruin the Carry On formula.

And later, in Carry On England, in which several girls appear topless, and later still, in Carry On Emmannuelle, which is a spoof of Emmanuelle, the soft-porn film, something seemed to have been lost. The films had crossed a line. As Larry Dann, who played the part of a young man who is seduced by Emmannuelle, said, "There weren't any double entendres, it was all single entendres."

Of course, Carry On is itself a double entendre: it's Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond's stiff upper lip, and it's also "a right old carry on". It expresses something about the Sixties and Seventies; the crumbling of institutions and the new permissiveness, which was as terrifying as it was exciting. On the one hand, there was Sid James as Sid Boggle in Carry On Camping, wanting far more sex than he could ever have, and on the other hand there was James as Bill Boosey in Carry On Up the Jungle, who gets captured by a tribe of beautiful women, to be used for breeding - a nightmare, it turns out.

I like the Carry On films, I think, because they encapsulate a moment in history; the moment when post-war Britain turned, very quickly, into something new. Now that Carry On moment has gone, and so have most of the players. Sid James died of a heart attack, aged 62, on stage, as his co-star flashed her breasts at him. Kenneth Williams, who had grown disheartened with the Carry On films, died, also at 62, of a suspected overdose of barbiturates. Charles Hawtrey died, aged 73, of complications from alcoholism. Bernard Bresslaw, who was in some of the best films, died of a heart attack before a stage appearance, aged 59.

The Carry On moment may have gone, but the films will always exist. And there's a new one in production, starring Shane Richie and former Playboy model Victoria Silvstedt. I can see where they're coming from. I just hope they remember that it has to be all about torment.

And who knows? They might just get it right.

Jamesbo

Enjoyed this. Made me think of the particularily dark portrayal of Charles Hawtreys character in 'Abroad as a raving alcoholic, even going so far as drinking tanning oil. The writer must have known he was alcoholic in real life.

MB

I enjoyed the article. I used to watch them as a kid, completely bemused as to what was going on and focusing on the locations and other stories. I do find it difficult to fully get in to the mindset and, if I examine it, I suppose I only really enjoy them for their retro ‘Kitsch’ value. Although, I do find them funny, particularly, Kenneth Williams. Barabara Windsors ‘I’m lovely me, I just hang round with men with shooters’ brand of ‘being’ I just find annoying, even now.

But, as the generation after the generation after the ‘sexual’ revolution, I’d say that the concept seems alien to people more of my age and I would have thought it was unlikely to be popular again. I think there is an identifiable element that might still enjoy it, but I doubt they are the cinema going public, more the types to wait until it pops up (oh my word!) on TV.

Keechelus

Carry On was either a bridge from The Goons to Monty Python -- or an outdated music hall revival that echoed Norman Wisdom and foreshadowed Benny Hill.

Maybe both? The broad laffs were so very low-brow, but there was an undercurrent of sharp comment (best, I think, in SERGEANT, NURSE and UP THE KHYBER).