Carry On Nurse

The Carry-Ons are so much a part of our lives that it seems hard to believe there was a time when we had to carry on without them. What a lot of laughter we would have missed if producer Peter Rogers, (who previously worked on religious films) hadn't got together with a director (Gerald Thomas) and a writer (Norman Hudis), both new to comedy, to make a low budget quickie about the army from a script that nobody else would buy. That one-off farce. Carry on Sergeant, proved to be one of the biggest money-.spinners of 1958. Still with no idea of starting a series that would keep audiences rolling in the aisles for years to come, Rogers, Thomas and Hudis gave the Carry-On treatment to a stage play by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale called Ring For Catty. They cast it with what now reads like a roll call of British talent, added a daffodil that gave Hattie Jacques one of the best-remembered laugh lines in the history of British comedy, and Carry On Nurse broke all box office records, not only in Britain but also in the United States. Looking and laughing at Carry On Nurse now, we have the bonus pleasure of being wise after the event. From a cast of 44, some already famous in 1959, some still unknown, we can pick out the young faces of the Carry On team that was to be. Later Carry-Ons could be more openly saucy as censorship became more tolerant, so it is all the more amusing to recognise the dexterity with which the naughtiness is implied in a glance or an innocent sounding line of dialogue. It was no accident that Carry On Nurse broke all records in a year in which the competition included films like the first re-make of The 39 Steps, Broken Arrow, Separate Tables, The Big Country, and one of the first television spinoffs, Life in Emergency Ward 10.