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Louise Burton starred in Carry On England in 1976 and 1978’s Carry On Emmanuelle, but although the provocative comedies have been criticized for their portrayal of women, the actor claims she never felt sexualised on screen or on set.
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Gemma Ross and Robert Ross’s The Carry On Girls celebrates 50 years of the women who starred in the iconic franchise.
I’m extremely proud to have been one of the Carry On girls, they were films that made people laugh and I never felt like we were being portrayed as sex objects by being part of them.
It’s such a different era now, isn’t it? Of all those things that were on TV, they didn’t even get past the first word, let alone make whole series of movies. But it was harmless fun, there was nothing terrible in it.
It was just funny and we spent the whole week laughing and laughing. I think it’s fantastic and I think it’s a shame that that kind of humor, which is completely harmless, is all gone.
Now if you look at the dramas, some of today’s sex scenes are incredible, they border on porn, but it’s just completely acceptable.
We didn’t do nearly as graphic, but if it’s in a drama, is that okay? Nowadays you think of things. I think they are much more sexual and explicit. Personally, I would prefer the humor, the outright humor without the actual graphic scenes.
Is someone portrayed as obscene because he or she does a sexual scene? Of course not. It’s part of life and it was part of life then. You could never get away with what you’re doing now, and you could never get away with what we did then.
The most bizarre thing is that it is reversed. It seems that the visual is allowed, but the story is not.
My time in Carry On films started with Carry On England as Private Evans. I was still at drama school or had just left when I was told they were casting for the new Carry On film, at the time they were really iconic and for me it was really exciting to even dream of going to Pinewood let alone go for a casting.
When I got there, Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers said to us, ‘Look, initially we’re just looking for certain types, we’re literally going to see who we think would be good for the film, height-wise and size-wise. hair color etc.’ and they literally had us all lined up – but it wasn’t like a cattle train, I can’t explain it. Those who were rejected were not made to feel like they were not good enough.
They looked at us and said, ‘They would look really good on that person, and they would look good on that one,’ and then I heard the name Melvin Hayes mentioned. Melvin is a very small boy, and funnily enough he was teaching at my drama school, and they, I think, initially wanted me to do quite a bit with him. So I became one of the Carry On girls, that’s how it all started.
I was 17 or 18 and driving through Pinewood Studios, and here was this young nobody from Brighton, from a very ordinary working-class family. It was just mind-blowing, exciting and mind-expanding.
The first day I went straight to makeup and met the other girls. The first morning I was so nervous, excited and terrified. What if they don’t like me? What if they decide to send me home again? What would I say to my father and mother? What would I say to all my friends? What excuse would I give if they didn’t like me as soon as they got me on set? Stupid things like that go through your head.
Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers were absolute gentlemen, very kind and caring. Being from Brighton I never had a place to stay, every night I stayed somewhere different. They were genuinely concerned about me, I was the youngest on set and they always asked, ‘But where are you staying tonight? You’re going to be fine, and how are you going to get to the station and how are you going to get back in the morning?’ They were genuinely concerned, but absolute gentlemen.
I ended up filming a lot of scenes that weren’t in the movie, but I shot a lot of scenes with Melvin Hayes. All my scenes were real with the group of girls.
When we shot the scene where the girls were naked from the waist down, you couldn’t see anything. Back then you could be topless on most beaches, so the guys, the actors, had seen it all before. They weren’t at all interested in us being topless. Seriously, it was just nothing.
It’s not what people thought, that wasn’t the men, all the people behind the scenes and all the cameras all standing there with their tongues sticking out. They’re too concerned about the lighting and “did that person get in line fast enough?” and ‘what was that noise in the background? Was that a bird flying over? Is that going to ruin the sound?’
And it was so black and white, it wasn’t sexual at all. It just wasn’t sexual. I think all the girls came late and weren’t dressed, it’s funny. What’s so terrible about that?
I haven’t thought about it at all, I have to be honest, I haven’t thought about doing it either. And of course back then you had all the girls in The Sun every week, and that was just part of everyday life.
My next film was Carry On Emmanuelle where she played a girl at the zoo, who was such a lovely character, Jack Lyons was a lovely man and it was just full of nonsense.
He meets me at the zoo and I suck on a lollipop, which has apparently become iconic. I turn the lollipop over and on the other side it says underwear, and Jack’s character comes up and says ‘do you want to go for a walk?’ We end up in an empty cage, and it’s a gorilla cage. I mean, it’s really ridiculous.
Read more: Jim Dale: Carry On Cast was a resentful ‘clique’
It’s total nonsense, but the lollipop became iconic. Apparently I was supposed to make other films, but they never got made again, which was a shame.
I’m really glad I was one of the people involved with Carry On and that kind of humor. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that we have been objectified or empowered by them; I don’t feel like you need to feel validated. I just saw it as a job to make people laugh, to entertain people.
It was nothing more than that, you were in an iconic movie with iconic people making everyone laugh. So that made me happy, and I came out smiling every day and looked forward to going back the next morning. I think the majority of people enjoy watching the films so much that it’s just pride, that’s what I feel: pride. Nothing more than proud to have been in it.
Louise told her story Roxy Simons
The Carry On Girls by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross will be released on November 23, 2023.