Two Classic Carry Ons on the box this Saturday!

The television schedules have a couple of treats in store for Carry On fans this weekend with two classic series entries showing this coming Saturday 15 September. As usual they are on ITV3 and Film4, both now regular homes to different ends of the film franchise. While ITV3 tend to show the later, Talbot Rothwell era films, Film 4 shares the more innocent, usually black and white Norman Hudis gems.

So get these times in your film watching diaries!

Carry On Loving (1970) - ITV3, 15.05.

Carry On Loving is the twentieth in the series to be made, and was released in 1970. By 1970 times were most certainly a changing. The cosy postwar years which launched the Carry Ons were long gone and everything was a lot more liberated and up front, as it were. After nearly twelve years of hit films, the Carry On team were still at the top of their game but perhaps there was felt to be a need to adapt and change to maintain their position at the top of the comedy charts? Carry On Loving saw an attempt at this. Basically Loving is a saucy seventies tribute to Norman Hudis' classic 1961 film Carry On Regardless. Instead of the Helping Hands Agency of the earlier film, this 1970 update saw Talbot Rothwell set the film at the Wedded Bliss Matrimonial Agency, run by Sid and Sophie Bliss. Loving even saw the outside of the Wedded Bliss Agency filmed on the same location in Windsor that had been used for Regardless almost a decade earlier.It features series regulars Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Terry Scott, Charles Hawtrey and Bernard Bresslawalongside newcomers Richard O'Callaghan (in his first Carry On) and Imogen Hassall (in her only Carry On role). The dialogue veers toward open bawdiness rather than the evasive innuendo characteristic of the earlier films in the series. 

Further reading: Carry On Blogging: Hattie Carries On as Sophie Bliss
Carry On Blogging: Five Reasons I Love Carry On Loving 

Carry On Constable (1959) - Film4, 17.00. 

Another glorious black and white feature, this film yet again plays to Norman Hudis' strengths by focusing on another British institution, the police force. There's the figure of authority pitched against a group of bumbling incompetents too as new recruits battle to success during a flu epidemic at the local station. This film marks a major turning point for the Carry Ons as it sees the debut of a certain Mr Sidney James in the starring role of Frank Wilkins. It's a fairly low key entrance for Sid, given what was to come but it's a superb performance and it's clear he's firmly in charge! Eric Barker returns for the first time since Sergeant, playing a similar officious role while the new recruits are played with relish by Leslie Phillips, Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor. Throw in some lovely supporting turns from Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques and a cameo from original Carry On girl Shirley Eaton and you have a great afternoon matinee film to enjoy!

Further reading - Carry On Blogging: Connor Carries On as Constable Constable!
Carry On Blogging: Joan Carries On as WPC Gloria Passworthy
Carry On Blogging: Hattie Carries On as Laura Moon

I hope you enjoy them both!

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram 

Happy Birthday Amanda Barrie!

It's hard to believe it but the wonderful Amanda Barrie celebrates her 83rd birthday today. The ever-youthful star of stage and screen was born Shirley Anne Broadbent on 14 September 1935 in Ashton Under Lyne.

Amanda is a real fans favourite, starring in two early Carry On films in the 1960s. She first of all played the supporting role of Glam Cab driver Anthea in Carry On Cabby before following this up with a starring role as Cleo in the classic Carry On Cleo in 1964. Sadly Amanda did not return the Carry On team for further adventures as her agent sent her off for a season at the Bristol Old Vic instead! 

Amanda was a natural in the Carry Ons, working beautifully with the likes of Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor. Other film appearances at the time included A Pair of Briefs (with Joan Sims), Doctor in Distress (with Dennis Price) and I've Gotta Horse (with Billy Fury). On stage, Amanda played leading ladies in a host of West End productions including She Loves Me, Cabaret, Hobson's Choice, Absurd Person Singular, Stepping Out and Private Lives. 

Of course we all know her best these days for her long stint playing the wonderful Alma in Coronation Street. Amanda first appeared in the Street in guest spots as the cafe owner in 1981 and 1982 before returning on a permanent basis from late 1988. She would play the role until the character's death from cancer in June 2001. Alma featured in some memorable storylines which included marrying Mike Baldwin, being kidnapped by Don Brennan and being romanced by Ken Barlow. She also had wonderfully strong female friendships with the likes of Audrey, Gail and Hayley. Fourteen years after her last appearance she is still much-missed by fans.

Amanda has gone on to appear in the likes of Doctors, Bad Girls, Holby City and most recently Benidorm with her former Corrie co-star Sherrie Hewson. Amanda has also become a regular on the pantomime circuit.

Amanda married her longterm partner Hilary Bonner at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2014. 

Whatever she is up to today, I hope Amanda has a terrific birthday!

You can read Glenda Young's blog post about Amanda's autobiography here

You can read my interview with Amanda from earlier this year here

You can read about my meeting with Amanda at the London Film Convention here

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan 

Cribbins released on DVD!

Network are releasing yet more classic, yet rare British comedy onto DVD. Bernard Cribbins starred in his own television comedy series over twelve episodes between 1969 and 1970 on ITV.

Comedy legend Bernard Cribbins had been a key presence in British film and television comedy for over a decade before he landed his own headlining television series at the tail-end of the 1960s. An off-beat revue of quickfire sketches in the "Cribbins style", this fast-moving mixture of comedy and song (including chart hits Hole in the Ground, Gossip Calypso and Right, Said Fred) featured a gallery of outrageous characters in a myriad of seemingly inexhaustible situations! Bank clerk, burglar, tramp, librarian, cowboy and even spaceman Cribbins is all these, and many more!

With comic support from Sheila Steafel, The Benny Hill Show's Bob Todd and the always glamorous Maddie Smith, this zany mix of fun and music also guest stars Patrick Cargill, Dennis Price and Dad's Army's Bill Pertwee. Written by sitcom legends Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke (then riding high on the success of Father Dear Father), this set features all twelve editions from both series of Cribbins.

Bernard has enjoyed a long and varied career on stage and screen which of course has featured three Carry On appearances - Carry On Jack in 1963, Spying the following year and  Carry On Columbus in 1992. Still working in 2018, he will celebrate his 90th birthday this December.

The two disc set costs £13.00 and is available to buy online from www.networkonair.com

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Guest Blog: Carry On Crooks

I'm delighted to bring you another guest blog. Writer and teacher Paul D. Brazill very kindly got in touch and has sent in this fine blog. I hope you enjoy it.

It’s been said that the British like eccentrics and I think it’s certainly true that we have a predisposition towards the odd, the awkward – especially where our entertainers are concerned. Britain has had its share of slick matinée idols of course, but there was always something a bit rough around the edges about the likes of Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and Sean Connery.

And what a bunch of rough diamonds the Carry On team were! True British eccentrics and every last one of them great character actors.

A couple of years ago, over at his regular column for The Highland Times, crime writer Tony Black talked about the seemingly perennial plans to reboot the Carry On film series.

And I stuck my neb in too!

I said:

 “I think it was very much a product of its time. It was the end of the era of seaside postcards. A celebration of absurdity and the grotesque. Things are cleaner these days and people are more delicate. It’s best to keep it in its world of pent up sexual frustration and class war. I think one of the reasons that it worked was because the actors were just that—actors. Not just comedians.”

Not that it’s stopped me trying to write a Carry On crime fiction novel – I’ve been trying for ages! Of course it’s not that easy but the influence is certainly there in a few of my books.

In my first book - Guns Of Brixton - the two hapless and hopeless criminals who dress in drag to rob a jewellery store in Brixton- were based on Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James. And the influence is even stronger in my book Too Many Crooks.

The title was filched from a 1950s comedy that starred Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw. The book’s high- class fence Sidney Hawkins, with his cackling laugh and coarse looks, is completely Sid James. After all, Sid played Charlie Hawkins in Carry On Cabby. Sidney Hawkins even shouts ‘Carry On Criminal!’ at one point.

At least one reviewer spotted the influence and said: ‘If you can imagine a Guy Ritchie film re-cast with Carry On actors, you will come close to understanding this book’s offbeat charm!’

So, I’ll Carry On!

Paul D. Brazill’s books include Last Year's Man, Guns Of Brixton, Too Many Crooks, and Kill Me Quick. He has had writing published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. He has even edited a few anthologies, including the best-selling True Brit Grit – with Luca Veste. His blog is here: https://pauldbrazill.com

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Happy 80th Birthday Patrick Mower!

 

Today we wish the suave, evergreen actor Patrick Mower a very happy 80th birthday! Patrick, a real Seventies heartthrob if ever there was one, is now best known for his long running role as Rodney Blackstock in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale. Patrick has played the part since the year 2000.

Patrick has been a fixture on television and cinema screens since the 1960s with his most memorable roles coming from a variety of gritty, small screen detective shows in the 1970s. As well as roles in The Sweeney, The Avengers and Jason King, he took lead roles in both Callan and Special Branch. To Carry On fans, Patrick is best remembered for his role as Len Able in the less than successful 1976 film Carry On England, in which he played love interest to Judy Geeson.

Patrick took part in the 2015 ITV tribute show, Carry On Forever, and remains proud of his involvement with the Carry Ons. A further Carry On link comes in the shapely shape of Emmannuelle actress Suzanne Danielle, who was Patrick's real life partner for seven years. 

 

Whatever Patrick is up to today, I hope he has an excellent birthday!

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan 

Fenella Fielding has left us

Fenella Fielding OBE has died. The past week has seen us lose wonderful, talented actresses with Carry On links - first of all Carole Shelley, then Jacqueline Pearce and most recently the incredible Liz Fraser just last Thursday. The death of Fenella is, quite simply the end of an era.

Goodness but I cherish the memories of meeting this legendary actress on four different occasions in recent years. Her career, in resurgence as she approached a very glamorous 90 years young, reached fans old and new with the publication of her superb, truly original memoirs last year. Not only that, Fenella wowed us all with a series of performances, reading chapters from her memoirs as only she could. She held the audience spellbound, her voice her greatest gift. A quietly unassuming lady, delicate rather than frail, she was transformed when her voice reached that microphone and the years fell away. 

I first glimpsed Miss Fielding several years earlier as I stood perched at the back of a packed tube train arriving in Covent Garden station. As I glanced to one side there she was, sitting on a bench on the platform as the world swirled around her. I locked eyes with her for a brief moment and she smiled the twinkliest smile I've ever seen. Then the doors closed and we were off. In 2012 I attended a screening of Carry On Screaming during which Fenella was interviewed and did a reading. We even had a photo with her at the end. We loved her on sight and that never wavered. 

I met Fenella again at the London Film Convention one year for another photo and some warm wishes, but it was the two memoir shows at the Phoenix Artist Club in London's West End which will stay long in my memory. Unexpected, striking, powerful yet gentle and emotional but never an instance of self pity, Fenella told her life story to us in the most intimate of settings and it was a joy. Of course it was funny, outrageously camp and frothy but there was real heart and more than a hint of the difficult times she, like so many of us, endure. 

Fenella's was a long, rich and varied life. A huge star of the stage, she was never far from a theatre or a live performance and continued to delight audiences right up until very recently. Many people wrote that the late Liz Fraser was one of those actresses that perhaps were underestimated or taken for granted and I think the same applies to Fenella. She had an iconic sense of style and unique delivery but I don't think enough members of the establishment realised quite what a star she was. Carry On Screaming came to dominate her screen career and while many actors could become bitter about this turn of events, Fenella was always so proud and down to earth about that particular film. She revelled in being recognised, of having young children rush up to her in the street and quote her most oft-repeated line, which fittingly became the title of her memoirs. "Do You Mind if I Smoke?"

Fenella's role as Valeria Watt in Screaming is iconic. Nobody else could have played that part. It remains one of the highlights of the entire run of films and although I'm sad she only made two Carry On films in total, Fenella's talents were so unique I can't imagine her being a full time regular. There were other film roles including three Doctor films, a superb comedy horror, The Old Dark House, the Norman Wisdom film Follow A Star and Drop Dead Darling, in which she co-starred with Hollywood legend Tony Curtis.

My first memory of seeing Fenella on the small screen was in the BBC children's series, Uncle Jack, in which she played the gloriously evil Vixen across four series. See, I loved her even before I discovered the Carry Ons. There were many other appearances, such as the anthology series on the tales of Saki and guest spots in The Avengers, Danger Man and of course, the voice of the Announcer in The Prisoner. 

For me though, Fenella excelled in live performance. Sadly, I never saw her in a play, but those irresistible memoir shows more than proved what she was capable of. Fenella's big break was in Sandy Wilson's musical of Valmouth in the late 1950s. She went on to star opposite Kenneth Williams in the revue Pieces of Eight, a notorious production which is recorded vividly in Kenneth's diaries. Fenella and Kenneth butted heads and he didn't enjoy her able competition for top spot. During her career, Fenella appeared in countless plays all over the country - Ibsen, Shakespeare, Sheridan and Chekhov, Fenella excelled in all of them.

Fenella's life and career had incredible highs and some darker times too but she came out on top. At the grand old age of 90, everyone wanted her all over again. Her memoirs went down a storm, she was loved wherever she went and enjoyed a delightful 90th birthday party last November. The cherry on the cake was the wonderful news of Fenella's OBE earlier in the summer. Sadly, Fenella Fielding will now not make that trip to the Palace to collect her honour. We can take comfort in the knowledge she knew this long overdue honour had been confirmed. I hope it brought her as much pleasure as she has brought us over so many years, so many performances and so many laughs.

It really is the end of an era and I'm just so sad this force of nature has gone. 


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Carry On Fan of the Week: Mel

I was delighted when Carry On fan and blog reader Mel, from Oxford, got in touch wanting to be one of my Carry On fans of the week. I featured many of these blogs a year or so ago so it's good to have them return. So let's see what Mel had to say...

What was the first Carry On film you ever saw? 

I 'think' it was probably Carry On Girls - I remember these films were shown frequently on Saturday afternoons in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I would watch these when I was at my Nan and Gramp's house as a young child! 

Who is your favourite Carry On actress and why? 

Joan Sims - she played so many different roles and, apart from her role in Carry On Doctor, I've enjoyed every single one. I actually get fed up of everybody claiming Barbara Windsor is the 'Queen of Carry On', she's not! To me, Joan played the widest variety of characters of nearly all of the Carry On stars, male or female.

Who is your favourite Carry On supporting actor? 

I think, although he only appeared in 2 Carry On Films, Richard O'Callaghan is my favourite supporting actor. If I'm honest, I just like his delivery.

Have you ever visited any Carry On film locations?  

Kind of! A few years ago, we went to see a comedy show being filmed at Pinewood and took the opportunity to drive around the local streets to see the houses that appeared in films such as Carry On Camping. That was interesting. Also, when we were at Pinewood, I'm sure I could feel the presence of Sid James, laughing away to himself! 

Have you ever met any Carry On actors? 

Unfortunately not.

Do you have any Carry On memorabilia? 

I have a few of the Carry On From The Film Books by Norman Giller, and a jigsaw puzzle - I prefer to watch the films and read biographies/books rather than collect memorabilia!

Finally, what's your all time favourite Carry On film? 

Carry On At Your Convenience. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is my favourite in the franchise. I know it didn't do so well when it was released but, to my mind, this is the one that was probably the truest representation of how life was in the 1970s! 

And Mel had a question for me too...

I have a question for you now - what film/theme would you like to have seen made into a Carry On movie? Personally, I would have liked to have seen a Carry On Butliins/holiday camp movie made! I know there was a holiday camp movie made at Butlin's in the 1940s (Holiday Camp from the Huggets series) but I think the Carry On team could have made something amazing in the 70s!

A difficult question to answer! I always think it's a shame that the much-heralded Carry On Again Nurse was never put into production. There were several versions of this film mooted over the years but my favourite idea came from the 1980s with the proposed film starring the likes of Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey. With the deaths of Williams and Hawtrey that year it didn't go ahead. I love the idea that the film was a tribute to Hattie Jacques with her great friend Joan playing the Matron character. 

A big thank you to Mel for taking the time to submit her answers to my questions. If you fancy having a go, do get in touch! 

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram