Carry On Faces in Different Places: Heavens Above!

Here we go with another in my 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 the the Gordon Jackson drama, Floodtide. 

And last week I looked at the Carry On links with the wonderful film I'm All Right Jack and the Diana Dors' prison drama, Yield to the Night

Today I'm going to blog about the 1963 comedy film, Heavens Above!

 

What's it about?

A naive but caring prison chaplain, Smallwood, is accidentally assigned as vicar to the small and prosperous country town of Orbiston Parva, in place of an upper-class cleric (Carmichael) with the same name. His belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are belied in Smallwood's eyes by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard to provide free food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. However, all his good works lead to trouble.

Who's in it?

Heavens Above! is produced by the Boulting Brothers, so as with several other films of the period, their stars include Peter Sellers and Ian Carmichael (who also starred in the brilliant I'm All Right Jack). Also in the cast is Bernard Miles, Eric Sykes, Miriam Karlin, Isabel Jeans and the wonderful character actor, Roy Kinnear. 

 

Carry On Faces?

Lots of them! Carry On original actor William Hartnell plays the town councillor, Major Fowler. Regular Boulting Brothers' favourite Irene Handl, who also had cameos in Carry On Nurse and Constable, plays Rene Smith. Carry On Jack guest star, the great Cecil Parker, stars here as Archdeacon Aspinall while Eric Barker, seen in authority roles in Carry On Sergeant, Constable, Spying and Emmannuelle, plays a bank manager in this film.

There are also a whole host of regular Carry On actors in small parts throughout the film. Joan Hickson plays a housewife, Harry Locke a shop steward and Carry On Up The Khyber actor Cardew Robinson appears as a tramp. Also, look out for Marianne Stone in the role of Miss Palmer, Ian Wilson as a Salvation Army Major and George Woodbridge as a Bishop.

 

Did you know?

The film features small uncredited roles for future well known actors John Junkin and Rodney Bewes.

The film was the 12th most popular film in the UK in 1963.


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan on Facebook and on Instagram

Carry On Originals: William Hartnell

This is part of a new series of blogs looking back at the stars of the original Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant. 2018 marks 60 years since Sergeant was made and released so what better time to turn the focus on all those brilliant actors who brought our favourite series of comedy films to life?

We're starting off today with a legend in British film and television history, William Hartnell.


Role in Carry On Sergeant: Sergeant Grimshawe

Other Carry On roles: Sadly not

Other notable film performances:  Dallow in Brighton Rock (1947); D.I Martin in Will Any Gentleman? (1953); Sergeant Sutton in Private's Progress (1956); Fowler in Heaven's Above! and Dad Johnson in This Sporting Life (both 1963).

Best remembered for: Playing the very first incarnation of Doctor Who for BBC Television between 1963 and 1966.

Did you know?: Hartnell reprised his role as Doctor Who for the tenth anniversary special on television in 1972-73. Due to failing health, this proved to be his very last acting work. 

What happened to him?: Suffering from ill health from the early 1970s onwards, William Hartnell sadly passed away aged 67 on the 23 April 1975.

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan on Facebook and on Instagram

Connor Carries On ... as Horace Strong

 

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 start right back in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant. This film is quite unlike most of the others that followed. The National Service comedy is fairly down to earth, gentle fare and the comedy content is generally light on innuendo. It represented the austere, post war Britain and the main reason for its stunning success at the box office was that the vast majority of the cinema going public could easily identify with the characters on screen and the situations in which they found themselves. While much of the content of Sergeant is pretty much unrecognisable as a Carry On compared to the bawdy antics of later entries, some of the faces debuting here would become long standing series contributors. Along with Kenneth Connor we have Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jacques. All would be mainstays, returning again and again to Pinewood Studios for fun with Peter Rogers Productions over the next decade or so. 

 

Other actors in Carry On Sergeant would reappear in later films (Shirley Eaton, Terence Longdon, Bill Owen to name a few) however none of these original stars of Sergeant quite left their mark like the Kenneths and Charles. The leading names in Sergeant were William Hartnell, Bob Monkhouse, Eric Barker, Dora Bryan and Eaton. All reliable actors, well versed in the art of comedy and film making. However even from the get go, it's the actors further down the cast list that shine the brightest, and none more so than Kenneth Connor. Quite simply, his Horace Strong is a comedy masterpiece. 

Horace is the most fragile, ineffective, reluctant hypochondriacal recruit in the entire film. He flinches at army life, shared barracks, technical tasks and most of all, any form of physical activity. Strong has so many mythical medical complaints he pays daily visits to the medical Officer (Hattie Jacques) whose no nonsense approach meets Horace's dithering head on in several beautifully played scenes. Most of the other recruits take the mickey out of Horace and see him as a major factor in their poor performance compared to other platoons. However there is a great deal of affection in these performances and the camaraderie shines though.

 

For me, the highlight of the film is Horace's battle to put off his persistent love interest, the wide-eyed, love struck Norah, played to perfection by the brilliant Dora Bryan. Dora and Kenneth are comedy gold and together they share many of the best moments. I really wish they had worked together more often as their chemistry and shared comedy timing is just superb. Norah chases Horace throughout the film and this only sends him into even more of a pill-popping panicked frenzy. In the end though, it is Norah (with a little help from Jacques) who helps Horace see the light. On the eve of their final passing out parade, Strong finally acts as his name suggests and wins over Norah before becoming one of the best performing recruits in the film's best of British, proud as punch finale.

Kenneth Connor is the very heart and soul of Carry On Sergeant. On the strength of this performance, it is no surprise that he came to be the Carry On films' leading light in many of the early black and white films that followed.  

 

Next up will be my blog on Kenneth's return to the world of Carry On later in 1958 when he grabbed the starring role of injured boxer Bernie Bishop in the classic Carry On Nurse. Stay tuned for that! 


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan on Facebook and on Instagram
 

Carrying On with Doctor Who!

 

I'm afraid Doctor Who is one of those phenomenons which completely passes me by. I've never really understood the appeal although what I do get is that it is very much a peculiarly British show. Since it first debuted back in 1963 it has enthralled, scared, entertained and captured the imagination of each and every generation.

As with many classic series of the era, Doctor Who called upon the talents of many wonderful character actors to add spark and charm to its endless out of this world adventures. And some of these faces will be familiar to Carry On fans, so let's take a look back at some of the Carry On actors who moonlighted across at the BBC in Doctor Who serials! 

We must start with two familiar faces who became the Doctor himself. The first, and the very first to play Doctor Who was none other than William Hartnell. Hartnell had another first of course, playing Sergeant Grimshawe in Carry On Sergeant, the beginning of the franchise in 1958. William played the Doctor in the very early black and white days of the series and its the role he's still best remembered for. 

 

Fast forward ten years or so another familiar face to pick up the reigns of the series was Jon Pertwee. Pertwee was the third incarnation of the Doctor, playing him between 1970 and 1974. To Carry On fans Jon is best remembered for his cameo roles in Carry On Cleo, Carry On Cowboy and Carry On Screaming before returning to the series in 1992 as one of the few original faces to join Carry On Columbus. 

Wanda Ventham, who had small parts in Carry On Cleo, Up The Khyber and The Big Job, played the character of Jean Rock in the 1967 adventure "The Faceless Ones". A year before, series regular Peter Butterworth, a popular part of the Carry On team between 1965 and 1978, appeared in eight episodes of Doctor Who as the memorable villain, the Meddling Monk. He appeared alongside William Hartnell, Jean Marsh and Peter Purves, the future Blue Peter presenter!

 

Fellow Carry On regular Bernard Bresslaw played yet another villain in Doctor Who during 1967 when he portrayed the Ice Warrior, Varga. There are some wonderful shots of Bernard getting into costume at the BBC Television Centre. Another veteran of British film, the legendary character actor Victor Maddern popped up in Doctor Who for six episodes in 1968. Victor played Mason in the story "Fury from the Deep". Kenneth Cope, best known for Coronation Street, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and of course Carry On At Your Convenience and Matron, played the role of Packard in four episodes of Doctor Who broadcast in 1981. 

Five years after Kenneth, the brilliant Joan Sims signed up for four episodes, playing the character Katryca in the Colin Baker adventure "The Trial of a Time Lord". According to Joan's autobiography, her appearance left her completely cold as she failed to understand the script or the point of the series! She just said the lines and picked up the cheque - Fair enough! Joan's Carry On Emmannuelle co-star, the lovely Suzanne Danielle also appeared in four Doctor Who episodes broadcast the year after she joined the Carry On team. In "Destiny of the Daleks" she played Agella.

 

Angela Douglas, the star of four 1960s Carry Ons - Cowboy, Screaming, Follow That Camel and Up The Khyber - played the recurring character of Doris Lethbridge-Stewart in the 1980s adventure "Battlefield". Angela's Up The Khyber co-star and love interest, that multi-talented entertainer Roy Castle appeared in the big screen outing Doctor Who and the Daleks in 1965. This film starred the legendary Peter Cushing as the Doctor while Roy played Ian, the boyfriend of Jennie Linden's Barbara. 

Carry On Jack and Spying favourite Bernard Cribbins holds a unique place in the heart of many a Doctor Who fan. Bernard first joined the Doctor for the big screen follow up to Doctor Who in the Daleks, released in 1966. His film, also starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor, was Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 AD. Cribbins played a young special constable, Tom Campbell. This film also featured future Carry On Abroad cast member Ray Brooks playing the character David. Bernard would return to the world of Doctor Who four decades after making this film, this time on television, playing Wilfred Mott opposite the tenth Doctor, David Tennant. 

 

Finally, one more cheeky addition before I go. In 2009, British comedy legend June Whitfield guest starred in a two part Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The End of Time". Playing the rather fruity pensioner Minnie Hooper, who rather memorably cops a feel of the Doctor's bottom...

So there you have it, a run down of some of the most famous, familiar Carry On actors to have appeared in Doctor Who over the years. I'm sure I've missed out plenty of others so do feel free to write in and let me know!

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan on Facebook and on Instagram