Richard Webber - The Complete A–Z of Everything Carry On

He approached Associated London Scripts for a scriptwriter to pen the screenplay. Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes turned down the chance but, in September, fellow writer John Antrobus was commissioned to complete a script for £750. Unfortunately the script didn’t meet with Rogers’ approval and he asked Norman Hudis, a contract scriptwriter, to pen a comedy screenplay based on national service for a fee of £1000. Hudis delivered a script blending comedy with pathos, a rich example of the style that had become one of Hudis’ most coveted trademarks.

1958

Permission was granted by the War Office for the film to be shot at the Queen’s Barracks, Guildford. Filming started on 24 March, initially with interior shots at Pinewood, and continued until May. The final production cost of making the film was under £78,000. By this time, Norman Hudis was already working on the next script, Nurse , delivering the first draft in June. Filming began on 3 November and was scheduled until 12 December. But even before the film was released, Peter Rogers was thinking ahead to Teacher , Constable and Regardless ; for the first time, it was clear the foundations for an on-going series were being put in place. The final cost of making Nurse was £82,500, but before the year was out, scriptwriter Norman Hudis had already delivered the first draft of his screenplay for Teacher .

1959

Nurse was released in March and, like Sergeant , became a box-office hit in the UK: it also sold well abroad, particularly America. By March, the next production, Teacher , was already under way. Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey and Leslie Phillips were back, and now the basis of a Rogers-and-Thomas’ repertory company was forming.

A welcome introduction to the cast was Ted Ray, playing Mr Wakefield, the stand-in head at Maudlin Street School. Sadly, it was to be his one and only Carry On , much to Peter Rogers’ disappointment. With the children, including Richard O’Sullivan, recruited from London’s Corona Academy, location shooting took place at the Drayton Secondary School, Drayton Gardens, West Ealing, and was completed by 10 April. Filming, however, had begun back on 9 March at Pinewood with internal shots in Wakefield’s study.

The film was released in August, just as Hudis put the finishing touches to the first draft of his Constable script, which was based on an idea by Brock Williams. Filming began on the streets of Ealing on 9 November.

While the film saw Leslie Phillips make his last appearance in a Carry On until, thirty-three years later, he reappeared in Columbus , Sid James made his debut. He became the anchor for many of the future films, a pivotal point around which storylines revolved. Filming at Pinewood was completed by mid-December.

1960/61

Constable was released in February and Hudis began work on Regardless , which he’d later class as his least favourite script. A seven-week filming schedule ran from 28 November until 17 January 1961, with the film’s release in March. Peter Rogers registered the title, Carry On Cruising , subsequently to become the sixth in the series, with the British Film Producers’ Association in March 1961, by which time he’d already received a story treatment, initially entitled Carry On At Sea , from Eric Barker. The treatment was delivered by the summer of 1961, but although Barker was to receive a credit on the closing titles when the film was eventually released, it was, again, Norman Hudis who put pen to paper and wrote the screenplay, which was delivered to Rogers in December.

1962

Cruising was the first in colour and the last to be written by Hudis, who, on the back of Nurse ’s success, would be invited to America, where he’s become a prolific screen writer. Although he continued to write for the British screen, and later completed an unmade script for Spying , most of his subsequent work was in the States.

Filmed between 8 January and the middle of February, Cruising was released in April. Despite its title, no cruising on Mediterranean waters took place: instead, filming was contained within Pinewood, except for scenes of a liner leaving port which were filmed by a small camera unit. A new face to the Carry On s, although he’d worked for

Rogers and Thomas previously, was Lance Percival. He’d originally been considered for a more minor role, but was offered the part of Wilfred Haines when Charles Hawtrey’s dispute over billing resulted in his declining a chance to appear in the film.

1963

Hawtrey was back for Cabby , which had a working title of Call Me A Cab. Talbot Rothwell delivered the final draft of his first Carry On screenplay in January, which was based on an original idea by S. C. Green and R. M. Hills, who’d go on to write for such shows as The Roy Castle Show, Frankie and Brucie, Those Two Fellers, According to Dora, The Frankie Show and, in Hills’s case, latterly, Carrott Confidential. Sidney Green and Richard Hills had originally been commissioned to write a screenplay entitled Call Me A Cab , back in the summer of 1961, but by November 1962 Rothwell, who’d already completed a script for Rogers which would eventually be adapted into Jack , was brought in to turn the idea into a Carry On film. The film was shot between 25 March and 8 May, and after post-production formalities were complete, Cabby was released in June.

For the next Carry On picture, Rogers and Thomas returned to the draft script Talbot Rothwell had submitted prior to penning Cabby . It began life as Poopdecker, R.N. , before moving through other working titles, namely Up the Armada , Carry On Mate , Carry On Sailor and, finally, Carry On Jack.

Rogers explored the possibility of using library material from Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. or The Crimson Pirate , both released during the 1950s; initially it appeared costs would be prohibitive but although a deal was arranged with Warner Brothers, no footage was ultimately used. The first of Rogers and Thomas’s period pieces, the cast for Jack included some new faces, such as film veterans Donald Houston, Cecil Parker and Juliet Mills, all making their one and only Carry On appearance.

Filmed between 2 September and 26 October, Jack was released in the UK before the end of the year, by which time Talbot Rothwell was concentrating on Come Spy With Me , the working title for Carry On Spying , the final entry filmed in black and white. Rothwell – in collaboration with his friend Sid Colin – prepared a screenplay that was a parody of the successful spy movies, most notably the Bond pictures, that were receiving rave reviews during the period; but if events had turned out differently, a Norman Hudis script would have been developed. Hudis completed a draft screenplay in February 1963, spotlighting a group of secret agents who penetrate an atomic plant disguised as CND supporters before taking part in a CND demonstration themselves. Rogers rejected the script, but it wouldn’t be the last time Hudis’s work was considered for future Carry On s.

1964

Spying , which launched Barbara Windsor’s Carry On career, was made between 8 February and 13 March and released in June. Within a month of hitting the big screen, the cast were back in period costume, this time in the days of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra for Carry On Cleo , the tenth in the series and Rogers and Thomas’s twenty-first joint production. After completing the action between mid-July and the end of August, the film received its UK release in November. It was well received around the world, especially Australia, where its success was confirmed by various sources, including the managing director of Australia’s Greater Union Theatres, who stated that in most cinemas it had beaten pictures such as Lawrence of Arabia and El Cid , taken more money than any other Carry On and broken numerous box-office records throughout the country .