Carry On Jack

Review: John Winterson Richards

While it might be a bit of a stretch to review the Carry On films as television shows, it cannot be denied that it was through television that most of us became familiar with them and they continue to enjoy a considerable cultural presence there long after their expulsion from respectable cinema. As a general rule, historically themed projects age better than those with a contemporary setting, so it is is no surprise that the "historical" Carry On films - not that there was ever much history about them - are among the best remembered.

The first of these historical comedies, Carry On Jack, represents a major turning point in the Carry On film series. Like several others, including its immediate predecessor in the series, Carry On Cabby, and at least two of the subsequent historicals, it was not at first intended to be a Carry On. It began life as Up the Armada, a "speculative script" sent to Carry On producer Peter Rogers by an experienced scriptwriter, Talbot Rothwell, who was also a successful playwright. Rogers liked what he read even if he was not yet ready for a project so far out of his comfort zone at that point. Rothwell was therefore given the commission to write what became the next Carry On film, Carry On Cabby, which was a great success. Only after Rothwell had proved himself with Carry On Cabby did production begin on his original idea, which became Carry On Jack. So Carry On Cabby was the first Rothwell script to be produced but Carry On Jack was the first to be written, at least in draft, and the one that really opened the door to all that followed. Rothwell went on to write all the Carry On films that defined the series until 1972.

One can understand Rogers' initial caution because Carry On Jack represents more than just a change of writer. There is a complete change of style and tone - and, to an extent, genre. Up until that point, each of the Carry On films had been about odd characters put into different contemporary work or social settings. Carry On Jack is the first of ten satires of historical periods, or rather of how historical periods are presented culturally, especially in film: Jack, Cleo, Cowboy, Don't Lose Your Head, Follow That Camel, Up the Khyber, Henry, Dick, England, and Columbus. All but the last two were written by Rothwell. To these may be added two more that were really satires of cinematic genres rather than of history but which had a vaguely historical setting, Screaming and Up the Jungle.

This required a paradigm shift in production values. While the franchise remained notoriously parsimonious - the Nelsonian frigate in Carry on Jack is crewed by about twenty men instead of the historical full strength of over two hundred - it was also very skilled at making the most of what it had. It helped a lot that it had access to costumes, props, and sets from previous productions at Pinewood Studios, where filming was based, and the British film and television industry in general, which was then far more active and well supplied with such things than it was in later years. So long as the viewer is prepared to exercise a little imagination and suspend a lot of disbelief, Carry On Jack  still looks pretty good on the small screen. The increased investment in the visuals required the best photography to show it off properly, so Carry On Jack became the second film in the series, after Carry On Cruising, to be shot in colour. Since both Carry On Cabby immediately before it and Carry On Spying immediately after were shot in black and white, this colour photography was still something of a novelty for low budget British feature films and not be taken for granted, but it was becoming the norm and all after Carry On Spying were shot in colour as a matter of course.

Like all the best historical and cultural, as opposed to political, satirists, Rothwell brought to his work a good understanding of, and apparently an affection for, what he was satirising. In Carry On Jack this was the naval fiction genre typified by the Hornblower novels. The cinematic adaptation of the novels starring Gregory Peck filmed in the UK some years before seems to have been a major influence and possibly a source of production material. Although an RAF man himself, Rothwell seems to have been well versed in the history of the Nelsonian navy - and the best line in the film suggests he at least visited HMS Victory. Not only was he historically literate as a writer, he assumed a degree of historical literacy on the part of the viewer which would be unimaginable today. Nevertheless the historical accuracy of the writer was still, as usual, exceeded by the attention to detail of the production design departments - not least in a carefully staged evocation of Devis' painting The Death of Nelson that opens the film.

Rothwell took the writing of the series in two opposite directions at once. On the one hand, it became more sophisticated, full of clever historical and cultural allusions for those who could spot them, but at the same time earthier and more risqué in the "seaside postcard" tradition for which the Carry On films are remembered today - and which would prevent them being made today.

There is therefore a definite change in the "feel" of the Carry On films between the first six rather innocent workplace comedies and those of the Rothwell years. Carry On Jack is very much a transitional film, itself quite different from any of those that followed, including the subsequent historicals. This is to a great extent due to it not having being planned as a Carry On but rather tacked on to the series for the marketing advantages of what was already a well established and successful brand name.

It may in fact be said to be a combination of three separate types of film. At one level it is played straight as the sort of Nelsonian naval adventure story is meant to be satirising, with three actors who were not in any previous Carry On films (or, in two of their cases, subsequent), Donald Houston as the aggressive Lieutenant out to make a reputation, Percy Herbert as the hardened Warrant Officer, and Cecil Parker as the pompous Admiral, playing it straight in exactly the sort of roles for which they would be cast in such an adventure story. On top of this adventure story is superimposed a romantic comedy with Bernard Cribbins and Juliet Mills as the juvenile leads: neither had appeared in a Carry On  before and Mills never did again. The third element is the usual Carry On farce, but even this is restricted. Only two of the established Carry On "regulars" appear, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey - as well as Jim Dale, who later became a regular but only has a small role here after a similar supporting role in Cabby.

Yet it is the farcical element that comes to dominate, Williams in particular stealing the film, proving he could handle what was in effect the leading comedic role rather than just supporting Sid James, or whoever was substituting for Sid James, as was more usually the case. Here he plays the unhappily named Captain Fearless, who is, of course, anything but.

An eclectic supporting cast includes Patrick Cargill (Father, Dear Father) as an unlikely but suitably urbane Spanish Governor, Peter Gilmore (The Onedin Line) and Ed Devereaux (Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) as anachronistic pirates, Sally Douglas almost inevitably as a wench, and Anton Rodgers as the historical Captain Hardy, who gets the second best line in the film.

Carry On purists tend to look down on Carry On Jack because it represents a point when the series had still not quite decided what it wanted to be and the same can be said of the film itself. Part of that is that the humour is relatively clean - purists can be puerile - but for that very reason it has aged better than most: it has some of the best of what we might now call "Dad jokes" in the whole franchise, and back in the early Seventies your reviewer enjoyed it more than some later classics which contained things that were difficult for a child to understand. It was the next "historical," Carry On Cleo that perfected the Rothwell formula and started the run of classics that lasted until at least Carry On Henry, but Carry On Jack was an important step in the process and deserves a lot more respect in its own right than it sometimes gets.