The Usherette Carries On With Graeme

Welcome to the first ever guest blog spot on The History Usherette. I’ve invited Graeme, who runs the wonderful carryonfan.blogspot.co.uk to give us his take on the Carry On film and social history.

From the Happy Wanderer to Els Bells: The Social History of the Carry Ons

The Carry On films are a cultural phenomenon. They hold a unique place in British culture and British life. No other series of comedy films has lasted so long, either in terms of the number of films produced or their durability. Nearly sixty years after Carry On Sergeant was released, the films are still shown regularly on television and discussed endlessly in blogs just like this one.

As well as being madly passionate about British film, the Carry Ons and their stars in particular, I also trained as a social historian ten years ago. I studied social history at Glasgow University, eventually clawing my way to a Masters degree. Had the focus of my thesis been on the Carry Ons, that distinction may have become a reality. I grew up on these films: cheaply made yet bursting with quality actors and memorable lines. As I have gone through life they have stayed with me, as a comfort blanket, as a hobby and most of all just for fun. The Carry Ons were meant to be churned out and be instantly forgotten but these days, in the digital age, they have become a time capsule. Although they often represent a Britain that never truly existed, they still provide a valuable insight into how much our country changed during their twenty year reign at the box office.

They started in black and white with National Service. Twenty years later, in glorious technicolour they crawled towards the end of the 1970s with a send up of the soft porn genre. For the likes of Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor, who appeared in the credits of both Sergeant and Emmannuelle, the changes must have been distinctly obvious. While neither of these films are my own personal favourites, the difference is plain to see - coy romance between Connor and Dora Bryan in the NAAFI in 1958 to plenty of flesh and mentioning the unmentionables in 1978. Had Britain really changed that much in those years? Probably.

William Hartnell in Carry on Sergeant by @aitchteee

To flesh this out, as it were, let's take two films from the series with a similar theme - Carry On Cruising, released in 1962 and Carry On Abroad, brought out exactly a decade later. Both films dealt with foreign travel and the challenges of taking Brits abroad. Both are excellent examples of Carry On comedy but they are light years apart in terms of content.

Carry On Cruising was the first film in the series to be released in colour. It revolves around a fairly upmarket ocean liner taking passengers on a cruise around the Mediterranean. Quite a commonplace activity in 2015, but in early 1962 just how many working class people (the Carry On's core audience) would have been able to treat themselves to such a holiday? The film is very reminiscent of one of the lighter, frothier Doctor films. It's all coy romantics from the likes of Kenneth Connor and Dilys Laye. Laye and Liz Fraser are the lovely young ladies on board however it's all sweet, innocent japes and nothing is taken too far. Laye wants a husband - that's the main plot thread. Everything is very polite and bright and middle class and the ladies parade around in an endless stream of gorgeous gowns and swimming costumes.

Kenneth Connor in Carry on Cruising by @aitchteee

Cruising is a delightful example of early 60s froth. It clearly shows a Britain emerging from the austere 1950s and beginning to live again. It lacks the social comment of earlier entries like Nurse and Teacher but it is still an enjoyable watch. Let's fast forward ten years now and see what had changed by the time Carry On Abroad was released in 1972.

Abroad is one of my all time favourite Carry Ons. It was a timely pastiche of the then ever growing popularity of the package holiday. The 1960s had seen a growing affluent middle class with a taste for foreign travel. Package holidays to Spain and Italy were commonplace as Brits became increasingly adventurous. At the same time, horror stories of awful accommodation and dreadful food were the stuff of legend. What better than to take the nation's favourite band of eccentrics and send them off a fictitious Spanish island?

From the very beginning, Abroad is a very different film from Cruising. Sex is very much on the agenda. From marriages on the rocks to young girls out for a good time and Barbara Windsor's suitcase full of underthings, it's all in your face from the opening credits. Britain was arguably a much more liberal place by the early 1970s and this is reflected in the attitudes in Abroad. Infidelity was very much a possibility and for the first time a potentially gay couple are seen on screen. A very cliched example of course, but there nonetheless. The film is also much more risqué with Barbara Windsor flashing much more than is strictly necessary throughout the 90 minutes.

At the end of the film, all is well in the world of Carry On. There is no infidelity (on screen at least), warring couples are reunited and one of the (possibly) gay young men finds the lure of Sally Geeson just too much to refuse. Everyone returns to Sid and Joan's pub for what must have been the best lock-in in cinematic history.

So Carry On Abroad provides the much needed happy ending, very much like that of Carry On Cruising ten years before. Were the two films that different all things considered? And can the Carry Ons really be taken seriously as a telling demonstration of how this country changed in the mid twentieth century?

Joan Sims by @aitchteee

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It All Adds Up!

I recently caught up with ‘Windbag The Sailor’, a Will Hay vehicle from 1936. This is the sort of film that BBC2 used to show regularly on a Saturday morning and I remember seeing it several times in my teens and early twenties. However, it doesn’t seem to have been on television for years – so a discovery of the full film on You Tube delighted me. The film is standard Will Hay fare, which I do not mean to sound derogatory in any way.  Standard Will Hay fare is miles better than most other stuff, and the belly laughs are guaranteed.

‘Windbag’ stars Hay at his “pompous ass” best, pretending to have led a heroic life on the high seas in order to secure an endless supply of free booze in the pub.  Of course it turns out that the nearest he has been to captaining a ship is driving a coal barge down the canal.   However, a gang of sea-faring criminals coerce him into captaining their ship and he soon finds himself lost at sea. His sidekicks Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott are with him all the way, adding to the delights to be found in Windbag’s company.   

Will Hay by @aitchteee

One of the trio’s bits of business on board the ship reminded me of a similar scene in ‘Oh! Mr Porter’.  In both films, they find themselves in the position of needing to solve a mathematical problem. In ‘Windbag’ this is working out how many miles they have travelled in order to find their approximate location. In ‘Porter’ the scenario is working out when the express train is due to pass.  I think that this spotlights the variety stage roots of Hay and his sidekicks. For the routine to be more or less repeated like this, I feel sure that it must have been something that was a great success in front of a live audience.  A Hay trademark, perhaps. And thinking about it, this would have been the case because it was so reminiscent of scenes in households across the land. We are watching a period in time before the invention of the pocket calculator.  People did have to rely on their own brainpower and a pencil and paper to make sure that their grocery bill was right.  Some people have a better aptitude for maths than others, and perhaps households or streets had their go-to person who was known to have a head for numbers.

Many years ago, my uncle apparently made a tape recording of my great grandmother and great aunt working out how much they owed each other for catalogue purchases.  He did this because the conversation was so convoluted that he found it very funny.  It was played repeatedly for family entertainment purposes. I have no doubt that they were not alone in regularly tying themselves in mathematical knots, just like Will and friends in these films.

Will Hay was a clever man with a good grasp of maths, which is probably why he came up with the routine.  He wasn’t afraid to make himself look the fool though, and I love the comic way that he uses his fingers to count on alongside the corner of his mouth. And as well as making us guffaw, he reminds us how daft a lot of us would have felt before we had access to our own mathematical machines.

Go on, have a look at my books then, you won't be wasting yer time.