carrying on...for the 25th time!

Producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas have reached their Carry On quarter century in fifteen years. They started off with Carry On Sergeant in 1958 and are currently celebrating with Carry On Girls.

The first Carry On was unintentional... 'Its was originally called The Bull Boys' says Peter Rogers, 'but nobody liked the title so we changed it to Carry On Sergeant. It caught on at the box office so we repeated the formula, with different ingredients, and out came Carry On Nurse. You know what a success that one's been. And here we are, still carrying on.'

The first twelve were made by Anglo-Amalgamated, the remainder by the Rank Organisation. They have all appeared in the Top Ten box-office lists, and there was one memorable year when two Carry On's finished first and second. And by the way they're tremendously popular abroad.

Carry On Girls takes a saucy picture postcard look at a beauty competition, keeping up the Carry On record for good clean vulgar wholesome bawdy fun, with jokes of blue, and salty dialogue peppered with double meanings.

Naturally, this Carry On is more glamorous than its predecessors and the beauty contestant line-up in the holiday resort of Fircombe brings considerable uplift to the sagging seaside town. Women's Lib also enters the scene in the spirit of Equality or Bust... or, rather, equality without bust because they condemn the big show put on by the girls in their bikinis.

Sid James, as Councillor Fiddler, promotes the contest, assisted by Bernard Bresslaw as press agent Potter. Women's Lib leader is the redoubtable Councillor Augusta Prodworthy (June Whitfield) and two of the beauty contestants rejoice under the names of Hope Springs (Barbara Windsor) and Dawn Brakes (Margaret Nolan).

Names like these - and dozens equally comical - have adorned the Carry On cast list since the early days when Fenella Fielding played Penny Panting in Carry On Regardless and Charles Hawtrey was Pintpot in Carry On Cabby.

This particular name idea seemed to us a funny a subject as any for a Carry On Competition. Why not an identification parade of some of these comical characters?

So turn the page and try your luck for one of the 45 prizes in our great Carry On 25th Birthday Competition.

picture captions:

i) Director Gerald Thomas and producer Peter Rogers, Carry On creators, study the script of their 25th production in the series, Carry On Girls.
ii) Sid James in his 2oth Carry On plays Sid Fiddler, organiser of the beauty contest at Fircombe.
iii) Fabulous Fircombe on a rainy day; and a doggy response to the question 'What do you think of Fircombe?'
iv) Press Agents Peter Potter (played by Bernard Bresslaw) introduces beauty contestant Dawn Brakes (played by Margaret Nolan). Potter himself enters the beauty contest for a stunt, seen here dwarfing another of the contestants, Hope Springs (Barbara Windsor).