Barbara Carries On ... As Babs!

 

Barbara Windsor will be celebrating her 80th birthday this August. In the run up to this milestone, I've decided to blog profiles of each of her nine famous Carry On roles. Much the same as I did with both Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques, these blogs will take each part in turn and provide my own personal take on them. 

Barbara, or Dame Babs as it is now, is a showbiz legend in the UK, with a career dating back to the 1950s. As the recent Babs drama on BBC1 revealed, things haven't always been easy for Windsor, but her hard work and determination have seen her bounce back time and time again. No matter what else she has done in her career, the Carry Ons will always dominate and from our point of view, as Carry On fans, rightly so! So let's continue today with Barbara's third role in the series, as Babs in the 1968 film Carry On Camping. 

 

Carry On Camping really needs no introduction. Everyone knows it, everyone has seen it. Even those poor souls who don't enjoy the Carry Ons as much as we do have seen Carry On Camping. It's quite simply part of modern British culture and our way of life. It sums up a certain kind of life in Britain that both once was and to a certain extent still exists. Rubbish holidays, failed dreams and the realities of everyday life but of course, we see the funny side of everything. The film has no real plot, it's just a bunch of classic British eccentrics coming together to share in the dubious delights of a camping holiday in the glorious British summer time. Of course being a Carry On, British summer time is actually November in the Pinewood Orchard. As with Up The Khyber made earlier the same year, Camping topped the box office for 1969 and remains one of the biggest money spinners in the entire series.

It's not hard to see why. The film features countless classic sequences and performances that have gone into legend from a prime cast of favourites. Everyone is playing their classic Carry On persona to the hilt, from Sid James as the lusty Cockney on the make, Bernard Bresslaw as his dim-witted accomplice, Hattie Jacques as the ample Matron, Charles Hawtrey the slightly peculiar loner and Kenneth Williams the upper class, pompous know it all. When most people think of Carry On they think of Camping and for many reasons, rightly so.

 

The first half of the film sees all the main character groups make their way to Peter Butterworth's Paradise Camp. They include Sid's gang (Bresslaw, Joan Sims and Dilys Laye) who wrongly believe Paradise is a nudist camp; Kenneth's charges from the Chayste Place finishing school (more of this later) and the Potters (Terry Scott and Betty Marsden) a dreadfully middle-class pair, Scott on fine form as a bored husband with a wife who never listens to a word he says. Add in wonderful cameos from the likes of Brian Oulton as an imperious shop owner, Valerie Leon as his glamorous assistant ("we don't sell toothpaste sir"), Amelia Bayntun as Joan's irritating mother and Derek Francis as a suspicious farmer and you have ninety minutes of innuendo-laden British film joy. It's a massive warm hug of a film.

Barbara Windsor takes certain stage in more ways than one in Camping. Following her return to the series with Carry On Doctor the previous year, Barbara secured her most iconic role in the series as Babs, the saucy Chayste Place girl on the make and on the take! Together with co-conspirator Fanny (Sandra Caron), the two girls run rings round Dr Soaper and Matron, not to mention Sid and Bernie. Full of memorably saucy one liners, Babs fights with the other school girls, embarrasses her teachers with suggestive questions and flirts outrageously with much older men.
 
Of course the classic sequence involves the girls doing their early morning exercises with Kenneth's Dr Soaper. It has gone down in film history and is probably the most repeated scene from any of the Carry Ons. Barbara's bra-bursting antics proved incredibly successful and proved a seminal moment for many a young cinema-goer! It was first hint of the future of the series and there was increasing amounts of mostly female flesh in many of the later series entries. Barbara has never lived this scene down and it came to define her Carry On career and influence how she has been perceived since. She has often told the story of what a low-tech solution was used to hoik that bikini top off (a fishing line with a hook and a Pinewood backroom lad). Allegedly it took several attempts to get it right and the first two involved Babs hitting the mud. Suffering for her art again...

 

I think it's a wonderfully funny scene, mainly due to the dialogue and the reactions of both Kenneth and Hattie. However it started a trend towards saucier behaviour which eventually led to the tendency for a more Confessions like approach to the comedy. However it did its job at the time and became a must see for millions. Towards the end of the film, everything is wrapped up in a very satisfying way. Alright Sid and Bernie didn't make it with their clandestine party with Babs and Fanny, but Joan Sims and Dilys Laye proved themselves rather interested after all. Last shot of Barbara is being carried off on the back of a low loader with the rest of the Chayste Place girls, a bunch of local hippies and Charles Hawtrey! 

So there you have it. Not much in the way of character development. Not much in the way of a storyline. Not much in the way of production values. Yet Carry On Camping is still seen as a classic of the genre, filled to the brim with memorable moments and beautiful comedy performances from some of our greatest comedy actors. That film will forever be linked to the bubbly blonde from Shoreditch and why not? Next up will be Barbara's fourth Carry On, as Maude Boggins/Goldie Locks in Carry On Again Doctor. But for now, I'll leave you with that wonderful bra-popping scene from Paradise Camp. Matron, take them away!

 

 

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Hattie Carries On ... As Miss Haggerd

 

Having covered every one of Joan Sims' 24 Carry On roles it now only seems fair that I turn the spotlight onto another great and loyal member of the team. Sticking with the wonderful women, I've decided to focus on all 14 of Hattie Jacques' Carry On appearances. Hattie's contribution to Carry On comedy was immense. Although appearing in far fewer films that Joan, Hattie created some iconic roles, none more so that the infamous Matron, a character which came to dominate her later career.

However there was far more to Jacques than that. She played Matron in all four of the medical films but there were ten other roles to enjoy too, from a budgie obsessed housewife to an angry, aggressive Spanish cook! So sit back and enjoy a run of blogs which looks at Hattie's Carry On contribution from the very first film in 1958 right through to her last supporting role in Carry On Dick 16 years later. So let's continue our journey today with a look back at Hattie's eighth role in the series, as Miss Haggerd in the 1968 film Carry On Camping.

There's not much new that I can say about Carry On Camping - it's probably the most famous of all the Carry Ons. It's a real rights of passage film that practically everyone in this country has seen at some point. Apart from being the highest grossing film at the UK box office for 1969 and being the first in the series to push the boundaries of nudity, thanks to Barbara Windsor's memorable bikini popping moment, it's also just a bloody funny film. There is no real plot as such, it's just a ragbag group of people all travelling to a campsite and enduring the wonders of the British countryside in the height of summer (alright, the misery of a damp Autumn in the Pinewood Orchard). 

At the centre of Camping is the tale of Sid and Bernie attempting to further their relationships with reluctant girlfriends Joan Sims and Dilys Laye. They hit on the idea of a nudist camp however, as we all know, things do not go to plan. However Paradise Camp does bring them into contact with the young ladies of Chayste Place finishing school, including Babs and Fanny, beautifully brought to life by Barbara Windsor and Sandra Caron. Leading the young ladies on their excursion back to nature are Dr Soaper (a nostril flaring performance from Kenneth Williams) and Miss Haggerd, the gorgeous Hattie Jacques. Miss Haggerd is basically another outing for Hattie's Matron persona and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all!

 

Camping takes the onscreen relationship between Williams and Jacques to another level. They had worked wonderfully together since the Hancock days on BBC radio but their definitive partnership must certainly be in these films. Having come up against Hattie's Matron as a rather lofty patient in Carry On Nurse, by Doctor nearly a decade later both Williams and Jacques were on the medical staff together. As characters we loved to hate, they struck fear into the hearts of the patients and nursing staff alike before getting their comeuppance. Doctor had ended with Matron declaring her affections for Kenneth's Dr Tinkle in some very funny scenes. Carry On Camping sees this story progress even further with Miss Haggerd entering Dr Soaper's tent!

While different characters on the page, Kenneth and Hattie are really just playing the same characters. They are just sublime though so it doesn't really matter. One of the genius moments in Camping sees Miss Haggerd declare her lust for Dr Soaper and in doing so, refers back to the previous film. In her self-referential line, "I used to work in a hospital...there was a doctor there, he looked just like you!" Talbot Rothwell is being very clever and rewarding the long-term Carry On audience. It's a joy. Of course this romantic scene under canvas is brought to an abrupt end by the rave up in the next field but it's not the end of that particular story arc in the Carry Ons. 

 

Rothwell kept bringing it back - we would see it again with different characters but the same actors in Carry On Loving in 1970 before we would finally see Kenneth and Hattie's characters marry at the end of Carry On Matron in 1971. Hattie is glorious throughout Camping, enduring the gross indignities of filming in the freezing cold and the mud along with the rest of the Carry On cast. She has some wonderful scenes opposite Barbara and Sandra Caron and is at her formidable best as the school Matron. 

In a cast so packed with regular favourites - Sid, Joan, Charles Hawtrey, Bernard, Barbara, Terry Scott, Peter Butterworth - Hattie stands out in her role as Miss Haggerd and in many ways it's her definitive Carry On performance. Her role in the classic bikini popping sequence means she is part of the one of the most frequently repeated moments not just in Carry On history but in British film. Kenneth's classic line "Matron! Take them away!" the character of Matron went down in cinema history. As I've written before, this run of films sealed Hattie's fate as the perfect Carry On Matron and certainly typecast her in the kind of role. While it must have been frustrating for Jacques the actress, a lady who was bursting with talent, it did give her a lasting place in the nation's affections.

By the end of 1968, Hattie was firmly ensconced back in the bosom of the Carry On team. That year saw the film franchise at the height of its powers - both releases that year (Camping and Khyber) topped the charts and guaranteed a long future for the series, even after ten years and countless films. Who can blame Hattie for sticking with the Carry Ons when they could guarantee that kind of exposure? 

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, which will be looking at Hattie's role as, yes you guessed it, Matron, in Carry On Again Doctor. 

 

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