Carry On Faces in Different Places: Davy

Here we go with a brand new series of blogs looking at some of the cream of British comedy film making from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Although this blog is all about the Carry Ons, believe it or not, there were some other joyous comedy films made away from Peter Rogers Productions. However, given the quality of the actors Peter employed to make his series, it's no wonder that most of them popped up elsewhere.

So far I've looked at the wonderful 1959 crime caper Too Many Crooks , the 1954 domestic comedy starring Dirk Bogarde, For Better For Worse , the big screen spin off Please Sir! and the wonderful Up Pompeii and the brilliant John Gregson and Diana Dors vehicle, Value for Money.
  
More recently I blogged about the Sid James and Kenneth Connor comedy horror What A Carve Up! and just last week I blogged about the Gordon Jackson drama, Floodtide

Today I'm going to blog about the 1958 comedy film, Davy.

 

Who's in it?

Davy stars Goon Show legend Harry Secombe as the title character, Davy Morgan, with able support from Alexander Knox as Sir Giles Manning, Ron Randell as George and Isabel Dean as Helen Carstairs.

Carry On Faces?

Several! Carry On original Bill Owen has a starring role as Eric while future fellow Carry On Nurse actress Susan Shaw also stars as Gwen. Carry On favourites and lifelong best friends Joan Sims and Liz Fraser (here billed as Elizabeth Fraser) play a couple of tea ladies alongside reliable character actress Gladys Henson.

Also look out for Carry On great Kenneth Connor in the role of Herbie and George Moon (who played small roles in Carry On Camping and Carry On Dick and is the father of actress Georgia Moon - Camping and Behind) plays Jerry. And keep your eyes peeled for an uncredited appearance from future national treasure Bernard Cribbins as a stage hand at the Collins Music Hall!

What's it about?

A young entertainer is conflicted over the chance of a big break. He has to decide whether to remain with his family's music hall act or to go solo. An audition scene at Covent Garden includes an especially fine rendition of Puccini's Nessun Dorma by Secombe, who, while known mainly as a comedian, had a fine tenor voice, and Mozart's Voi Che Sapete performed by opera singer Adele Leigh.

Did you know?

Davy was the very last comedy film to be made by the legendary Ealing Film Studios.

It was also the first British film to be made using Technirama, an alternative to Cinemascope.

The film was an attempt to turn Harry Secombe into a movie star, however it was only a modest success despite its sterling supporting cast and failed to perform well overseas.

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Carrying On at the Holiday Camp

 

Lately I've been watching a lot of classic black and white post war British films. It's mainly thanks to the fabulous Talking Pictures TV and it's made me realise just how many wonderful old films I've never seen. Yesterday, Talking Pictures showed a real classic from way back in 1947 - Holiday Camp. And as I've discovered, there's a fair few Carry On connections with this lovely film.

Holiday Camp, directed by the legendary Ken Annakin for Gainsborough Pictures, is a perfect time capsule of post-war British life. As with most films made over seventy years ago, it has dated a great deal but there is much charm to be found in it nonetheless. In many ways this film is a much more innocent precursor to Carry On Camping. It's premise is quite simple - a motley group of British eccentrics gather together for a traditional holiday and this brings together a right old rag bag of stories. Holiday Camp features a little bit of everything: character comedy, farcical situations, drama, romance and even a touch of tragedy. It also features some of the best character actors around at the time.

 

The first major Carry On link with Holiday Camp is its main writer, the one and only Mr Peter Rogers. In the late 1940s Peter was working for Gainsborough and years before he became a film producer he was known as a writer. Coming from a background in the theatre, for several years he worked with Muriel Box. It was also at Gainsborough that Peter met his future wife, the trailblazing female film producer, Betty E Box, best remembered for being at the helm of the Doctor series of comedy films throughout the 1950s and 60s.

The central characters of Holiday Camp are the Huggett family, a working class bunch headed up by mum and dad, played by Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison. They are accompanied by their grown up son and daughter Harry (Peter Hammond) and Joan (Hazel Court). Joan becomes romantically involved with Jimmy (Jimmy Hanley). I have recently really enjoyed seeing Warner and Hanley acting together in the 1950 crime drama, The Blue Lamp. It was in this film that Jack Warner originated his most famous role, as P.C George Dixon. Warner would go on to play the character for over twenty years in the BBC series, Dixon of Dock Green. Hanley was, at the time, married to the lovely British actress and star of Genevieve, Dinah Sheridan. And legendary character actress Kathleen Harrison, who lived to the grand old age of 103, is best remembered to me as the landlady of Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips in the 1962 film The Fast Lady.

 

The Huggetts were so successful in this film that they were carried over and featured in three spin off films all of their own - Here Come the Huggetts in 1948 and two more films in 1949 - Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad. These films made a star of a young actress who also featured in Holiday Camp - Susan Shaw. Susan, of course, went on to play Kenneth Connor's wife in the second film in the Carry On series, Carry On Nurse, in 1958. 

The main star of Holiday Camp is the renowned British actress Flora Robson. Robson, more often found in serious productions, plays Esther Harman and it's a stand out performance for me. Harman is a middle aged lady who has seen most of her life pass her by. Spending most of her adult life caring for an elderly, infirm mother, Esther's visit to the camp is her first proper holiday. During the film, the camp announcer's voice appears to mean a great deal to her but I won't give any more away. It's a lovely performance though. Esmond Knight, another legendary actor, plays the announcer who's voice is heard throughout the film. Esmond was the father of the brilliant Rosalind Knight, who would go on to appear in both Carry On Nurse and Teacher.

 

Another great actor starring in Holiday Camp is Dennis Price, playing the most caddish of all the cads he frequently played! Dennis, as Hardwicke, spends the film chasing all the available women and telling many a fanciful tale about his supposed war record and glamorous lifestyle. Hardwicke reminds me very much of Price's role in another of my favourites, The Naked Truth, in which he plays a conman blackmailing the likes of Peggy Mount, Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas. However, in Holiday Camp, there is a much harder, nastier edge to his character. 

One of the ladies Price takes in is played by my favourite performer in the whole film, the one and only Esma Cannon. Esma, a diminutive 4ft 10, plays bubbly working class spinster Elsie Dawson. Elsie spends all her holidays at the camp intent on finding a husband. As she theorizes, if there are 2000 people in the camp and half are men, she stands a fair chance! Esma is an absolute star in this film, much younger than the Carry On roles we know her best for. Energetically joining in with all the camp activities and bobbing about with her hair in ringlets, she even takes part in the camp beauty contest. Esma also shares several very believable scenes with Flora Robson as her chalet mate. The contrast in the two characters is lovely and there is a genuine warmth between the two women. It's great to see Esma grab a major supporting role in a film like this given that she became so well known later in her career for scene stealing cameos.

 

There are other Carry On connections behind the scenes on Holiday Camp. The film's editor is Alfred Roome, who would go on to work on over a dozen of the later Carry Ons, his last film before retirement being Carry On Behind in 1975. And Julie Harris designed the actresses' costumes. Julie worked on countless films during her career, including none other than Carry On Cleo in 1964. There is also a uncredited cameo from future acting great Bill Owen, who would feature in four of the early Carry Ons. And watch out for a young Diana Dors doing the jitterbug in the dance hall! Yes, I know she never 'carried on' but come on, it's Diana Dors!!

Holiday Camp isn't the best British film ever made, not by a long way. So why should you check it out? Well it features a large cast of superb, prolific British character actors the like of whom we just don't see anymore. As a curious period piece, Holiday Camp is also an irresistible glimpse at the post-war Britain. There is a tangible sense of ordinary working class people learning to have a good time again after many years of war and hardship. And above all else, it's just such easygoing enjoyable lighthearted fluff.

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Connor Carries On ... as Bernie Bishop

Next June will mark Kenneth Connor's centenary. This feels like the right time to celebrate the man's legacy and what better a legacy that his seventeen glorious performances in the Carry On films. As I've already done with the three main leading ladies of the series, I plan to embark on a series of blogs profiling each of Kenneth's roles in the Carry Ons, giving my own take on his contributions.

Kenneth is another one of those actors who worked steadily, prolifically and across all mediums throughout his career. From his very early days in film before the outbreak of World War Two, through the 1950s which saw him become an integral part of British radio comedy to the Carry Ons and his unforgettable roles in several 1980s sitcoms, Connor was an incredibly gifted actor. He worked right up until his death at the age of 75 in November 1993. However unlike Sid, Kenneth Williams or Barbara Windsor, I feel that Connor never really got the credit he deserved. He didn't have an outrageous private life, no scandals to be told. He shunned the limelight and his many performances as the ordinary man in the street mirrored his own life away from the cameras. 

Kenneth was also one of the precious few actors who's career spanned pretty much the entire run of the Carry Ons. He was there at the very beginning in Carry On Sergeant and, a five year gap in the mind 1960s aside, remained loyal to the films until the very end of the original run in 1978. Connor, along with Williams and Eric Barker were the only actors to appear in the very first and the very last of the series. Kenneth was still around when Columbus was made in 1992 but declined to take part, probably very wisely. This new series of blogs will be a celebration of all those wonderful comedy performances in the Carry Ons - from bumbling romantic lead through to crumbling character parts, Kenneth could play them all.

So let's continue with Kenneth's second role in the series, as injured boxer Bernie Bishop in the hit film of 1959, Carry On Nurse. After the surprise success of Carry On Sergeant earlier in 1958, Peter Rogers seized on the opportunity of a follow up and set writer Norman Hudis the task of coming up with a medical comedy, tackling another great British institution - the National Health Service. Fortunately Norman's wife Rita was a nurse so he had plenty of real life experience to help make Nurse the biggest hit of the year and also a massive success in the United States. Rogers was clearly beginning to form a team for a series of films as Nurse sees the return of several key faces who not only contributed to Sergeant's success but would also go on to be series regulars for decades. As well as popular actors Shirley Eaton, Terence Longdon and Bill Owen, Nurse saw the return of Kenneths Williams and Connor, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jacques. Other new faces included the important additions of Joan Sims and Leslie Phillips.

As with Sergeant earlier that year, Connor proves to be the star of Carry On Nurse, at least for me. Bernie Bishop, arriving in hospital with a broken hand after a boxing match, is the film's every man. Although there are lapses into the funny voices that made him such a vital part of Ted Ray's radio gang and there is a fair amount of bumbling and farce, Connor also proves himself as a straight actor in several scenes which tug at the heart strings. Norman Hudis always added a grounded reality and a touch of social realism to his scripts and in Kenneth Connor, he found a way to contrast the daft antics of Leslie Phillips, Joan Sims and Charles Hawtrey. Resisting treatment and determined not to stay in a hospital "full of sick people" Connor's Bishop is quickly taken in hand both by his straight-talking wife and the hospital nurses and very wisely gives up on his second fight of the night!

Connor shares a few brief but satisfying scenes with Susan Shaw as his wife Jane. Shaw had been a rising star in the British film industry however by the time she appeared in this, her one and only Carry On, her fame was on the wane and a sad future lay ahead. Susan is great in Nurse and forms a believable and touching on screen partnership with Kenneth that leaves the audience wanting more. Kenneth also interacts beautifully with several other male patients on the ward, most noticeably in his chalk and cheese relationship with the snobbish, snotty intellectual Oliver Reckitt played by Kenneth Williams. A solid friendship and mutual respect was formed between these two actors and it's clear they enjoyed sparring together on screen.

Kenneth also features in one of my favourite scenes in Carry On Nurse. No, not the laughing gas sequence although that is pretty great. Michael Medwin and Norman Rossington both provide brilliant cameos as Bernie's boxing manager Ginge and the rather slow-witted fellow boxer Norm. The scene during visiting time sees Medwin try and teach Connor's Bernie a few sly tricks of the trade with the help of dim Norm with calamitous results! Full marks to Norman Rossington for winning all the prizes here when he has very little to say or do. Classic stuff. The mix of shy reluctance and masculine phwoar-ing from Connor is a joy to behold in Nurse. He goes from deep, caring and sensitive husband to shy patient as Nurse Susan Stephen 'reaches the bottom' of things during a blanket bath. That doesn't stop him Cor-ing away as Stephen steps up on a chair next to his bed to open a window. Typical Carry On stuff but quite tame compared to what would follow in the years to come.

Kenneth plays well as part of the gang of male patients which includes Williams, Cyril Chamberlain, Terence Longdon, Bill Owen, Leslie Phillips and Charles Hawtrey, already the loner on the fringes of the action. Bernie plays an active part in the climatic hospital operating scene towards the end of the film and Connor's gift for comic timing comes to the fore. Leslie's upper class twit of a character (Ding dong, you're not wrong!) is anxious to have his bunion removed so he can escape for a weekend of forbidden fruit with girlfriend Meg (Dame June Whitfield no less). Under the guidance of Williams, the gang decide rather drunkenly to get rid of Leslie's bunion once and for all! However, unfortunately the laughing gas in the theatre gets the better of them. Kenneth Connor's delightful giggles steal the show and the entire scene is a joy and an early example of Carry On humour at its very best.

Finally special mention to the delightful cameo from Jeremy Connor, Kenneth's very own son at the end of the film. When Bernie Bishop is discharged, wife Jane and son Jeremy (what a coincidence) turn up to take him home. As Kenneth greets his son, there is an unscheduled slap to the face from young Jeremy which clearly takes Kenneth by surprise but Gerald Thomas wisely left in the final print! As the family strolls off down the corridor, it brings Kenneth's beautifully played performance in Carry On Nurse to a satisfying conclusion.

Next up will be my blog on Kenneth's return to the world of Carry On in 1959 when he played bumbling, lovable science teacher Gregory Adams in Carry On Teacher. Stay tuned for that! 

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Whatever Happened To ... Susan Shaw?

I must level with you from the start, this blog is probably going to be quite a sad one, but it's a story well worth telling. Susan Shaw only appeared in one Carry On and in that film, Carry On Nurse, she only featured in a few scenes. Shaw played Jane Bishop, wife of main character Bernie Bishop, the boxer with the broken hand so beautifully played by the wonderful Kenneth Connor.

Susan Shaw worked well with Connor and they made a very believable husband and wife. She was frightened for her husband, worried that his job as a boxer would seriously damage his health. Things ended happily for them and Kenneth's real life son Jeremy made a cameo appearance at the age of three playing Bernie's son. It is obvious from Shaw's performance in Nurse that she was a good actress. 

So what happened to Susan Shaw's promising life and career that lead to her sad, early death at the age of just 49 in 1978? 

Susan Shaw was born on 27 August 1929 in London. The name she became known for was a stage name, she was actually born Patsy Sloots. Shaw began her film career in 1946 and became the latest in a long line of Rank Starlets, signed as she was to the Rank Organisation. She was a pin up, featuring in many glossy publicity photographs and training at the so-called Charm School. 

Shaw found fame early on in life, starring in three of the famous post-war film comedies with the Huggetts. The Huggetts were a working class London-based family and each film followed their ups and downs. Shaw was cast as their daughter Susan and starred alongside the likes of Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Diana Dors, Jimmy Hanley and a young Petula Clark.

Building on this success, Shaw went on to appear in many more films during the late 1940s and 1950s. Among them were: London Town in 1946 (starring Sid Field and Kay Kendall); It Always Rains on Sunday in 1947 (starring Googie Withers); Marry Me! in 1949 (with Derek Bond, David Tomlinson and directed by Betty Box); Pool of London in 1951 (with Bonar Colleano, Renee Asherson, Leslie Phillips and James Robertson Justice) and The Good Die Young in 1954, with a cast that included Joan Collins, Stanley Baker and Laurence Harvey.

Having risen to prominence as a young leading lady in British film, what went wrong by the end of the 1950s? Susan Shaw first married the German actor Albert Lieven in 1949 but this marriage ended in divorce in 1953. A year later, she married the actor Bonar Colleano, who Susan had met in 1951 whilst filmed Pool of London. Colleano was a rising star in British film and a close friend of future Carry On legend Sid James. Shaw and Colleano settled into married life and soon Susan had given birth to a son, Mark. 

Tragedy struck in 1958 when Bonar was killed in a road traffic accident at the age of just 34. As a result of this, Susan Shaw struggled to work and look after her young son. Sadly, she developed a drinking problem. Shaw's last credited appearance came in 1963 in a film called The Switch. 

As far as I can find, from then on Susan Shaw's acting career seemed to come to a complete halt. By the 1970s her alcoholism has taken hold. Susan Shaw passed away on 27 November 1978. She died from cirrhosis of the liver at just 49 years of age. 

It came to light after her death that Susan died in poverty. Her subsequent funeral was paid for by the Rank Organisation. What a sad end for someone who showed such promise and talent. 

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