-- Newspaper and Website Reviews
Norman Hudis reveals why being a Carry On writer was not always a laugh
by Candice Krieger
Norman Hudis is perhaps best known for writing the first six Carry On films. Four decades on, the veteran writer is still hoping to entertain us — this time with his memoirs.
In his debut book No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On (Apex) Mr Hudis, 85, reveals what he has been up to since he left the series, and spills the beans on what it was like working with the Carry On crew.
“I was particularly close to Kenneth Williams,” he tells People. “I don’t believe he committed suicide. He was far too much in love with himself for that.”
He also sets the record straight on his relationship with Joan Sims: “We seriously tested the springs of the couch: a shower of kisses, hugs and gropes... but no sexual storm.”
Mr Hudis’s first Carry On film was Carry On Sergeant in 1958, but it is Carry On Nurse that he cites as his favourite. “I got all the funny experiences for that from my wife Rita, who was a nurse.” It took him just 10 days to write.
He says: “Writing the films was a big turning point in my life in terms of public acclaim and career progression. We had high hopes for the series, but nothing like the worldwide success it received.”
After his Carry On success, he moved to Hollywood, where he wrote for TV shows including The Man From UNCLE, It Takes a Thief, and the award-winning The Story of Esther, with Olivia Hussey.
Born in London in 1922, Mr Hudis began writing while in the RAF in the Second World War. He was on the reporting staff of the Air Force News, stationed in Cairo and covering the entire Middle East. Following the war, he became an apprentice screenwriter at Pinewood Studios. He then went freelance, writing for producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas, and then for the Carry On series. Mr Hudis has dual British and US citizenship and describes himself as a political Jew.
No Laughing Matter will be out on March 24 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first Carry On film.
The Jewish Chronicle
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A lively memoir, full of colourful anecdotes.
Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent
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A CARRY ON IN THE NEWSPAPER OFFICES
Ham & High (Hampstead and Highgate Express)
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Mid Devon Star
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CARRY ON ... WRITING
Screen International
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WHAT A CARRY ON THAT WAS!
East Anglian Daily Times
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What a Carry On!
STILL CARRYING ON: Norman Hudis, writer of the early Carry On films
FIFTY years ago, a young screenwriter named Norman Hudis was given someone else's script to re-write. It was an amiable comedy about a motley collection of conscripts doing their national service.
The movie was Carry On Sergeant and no-one could have known it would spawn a succession of films so successful that a 31st sequel would be in production half a century later.
Norman Hudis would go on to write Carry On Nurse, Carry On Teacher, Carry On Constable, Carry On Regardless and Carry On Cruising, before leaving Britain for success in Hollywood. But, as he writes in a new book, he never really severed his connection with the series.
In the book, No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On, he tells how he would keep generating ideas for Carry On films in the hope that one day he'd be asked to return home and write another.
Among those ideas were Carry On Under the Pier If Wet, which sent up both the seaside concert party and the resort boarding house, and Carry On Shylock Holmes.
The Daily Echo interviewed Mr Hudis, now 85, in Mudeford, where he was relaxing after an exhausting round of interviews to promote the book and celebrate the 50th birthday of the Carry On series.
While some of the actors may have grown weary of their association with the Carry Ons, Mr Hudis harbours no such complaints.
"It comes up in anything I do. I don't object to that. Why would I want to shake them off? It founded my career," he said.
"I'm grateful to them. I'm glad I was in the right place at the right time and had the right talent."
Naturally enough, his memoirs start with that life-changing writing assignment from producer Peter Rogers.
"I knew the major attraction would be the Carry Ons. That's why I arranged the book in that order, starting in the middle and going back on my life," he says.
Some of the Carry On regulars were complex, troubled personalities, but Mr Hudis uses anecdotes from his time on the series to shed fresh light on the likes of Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques.
He believes the early Carry Ons were successful because they exploited situations that were familiar to almost everyone in Britain, starting with the national service that was an obligation for a generation of young men.
"All of us - Peter Rogers, director Gerald Thomas and myself - were very fortunate, first of all that we picked on Sergeant to do," he said.
"And when the clamour for another film and then another and another erupted, we were equally lucky in at least the next three - Nurse, Teacher and Constable - because they were all familiar targets.
"People only had to put their money down at the box office to see Carry On Sergeant and there's a familiarity about it - they knew half the jokes before they went in.
"Nurse was even more acceptable because the British concept of hospitals is pretty nurses, lascivious men and mountainous matrons. You've got your archetypes before you start."
Mr Hudis parted company with Peter Rogers after turning in a treatment for Carry On Spying which didn't find favour. He dug the material out again recently and didn't care for it.
After that, the Carry Ons continued under a new writer, Talbot Rothwell, while Mr Hudis went to Hollywood.
There, he wrote for TV shows including The Man from UNCLE, Marcus Welby MD and It Takes a Thief.
In Hollywood, a screenwriter can make a pretty good living from turning in scripts that never get filmed. The memoirs tell how Mr Hudis was hired to write a film for Elvis Presley. But the script, which would have seen Elvis play a secret agent, was never made, and Mr Hudis was left with the consolation of a larger-than-normal fee and an invitation to that year's Oscars.
But such blows are part of the entertainment industry. "By its nature, showbusiness schools you in disappointment," he says.
"I suppose there are some people - writers, actors - who've gone from success to success. But I've never met anybody in those fields, nor have I read anything of their life stories, without at least one bitter disappointment being recorded years afterwards and still with a residual strangled sob."
No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On, by Norman Hudis, is from Apex Publishing, priced £7.99.
* Mr Hudis was in Waterstones, Poole, recently, signing copies for fans.
The Bournemouth Daily Echo
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When I first read No Laughing Matter I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Hudis has a unique way of putting together a manuscript, and it’s very hard to categorise the genre. No Laughing Matter is autobiographical, but it also gives a peephole insight into the world of Carry On films and the social impact they’ve had on our society.
Hudis wrote the scripts for the first six Carry On films, and for that alone he must bear at least 50% of the blame (and 75% of the credit) for the state of our nation several decades down the line. I jest, of course, but where would we have been without the Carry On film? Culturally impoverished, I reckon. Hudis had produced a delightful book which gives us an amazing behind-the-scenes peek at the greatest comedy icon, collectively speaking, that has ever been spawned within our isles.
Eventually No Laughing Matter strays from Carry On, and Hudis recalls other vignettes from his rich life. The time he scripted an episode of C.H.I.P.S. is an example, and his thoughts about one of the co-stars, Erik Estrada, portray a man who may have been happy to work for Hollywood, but one who certainly wouldn’t sell his soul to the glitzy devil that had beguiled so many other writers. Hudis kept his head and his influence spread farther than even he possibly realises throughout the movie industry, I suspect.
In a sense, Hudis closes the door on the Carry On era, for his book dispels much of the mystery. Crucially, though, it leaves intact the mystique.
Good job done, Mr. Hudis. Few people can claim to have made an entire nation laugh for years on end, but you did.
Mike Hallowell, The Shields Gazette
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No Laughing Matter is a fascinating autobiography by one of Britain's unsung comic heroes. Norman Hudis wrote the first six Carry On movies before carving a successful scripwriting career in Hollywood, and his book contains many revealing anecdotes about Carry On stars like Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams as well as Tinseltown legends including Joan Crawford and Anne Baxter.
Bill McBride, Weekly News
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'CARRY ON' WRITER REVISITS HIS OLD EAST END HAUNTS
By Michael Parker
FIFTY years after the first Carry On film had us all in stitches, the original screenwriter is returning to his home in East London.
Norman Hudis, now 87, was born on Cannon Street Road in Whitechapel in 1922 and spent his youth in the East End before getting a job as a reporter on the Hampstead & Highgate Express.
He was in the RAF for a time during the Second World War, when he began writing scripts for camp concerts.
Norman later began writing for Pinewood Studios.
But it was only when he began working for himself that he was noticed by producer Peter Rogers, who put him to writing Carry on Sergeant, which would become the first in a long line of successful Carry On films that would epitomise British comedy for decades.
He would go on to write the next five Carry On films, Carry On Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless and Cruising.
Norman and his wife are returning to Britain from California as part of the 50th anniversary of Carry on Sergeant, to celebrate this iconic run of films.
His credits while living in America include Hawaii Five-O, The Saint, Buck Rogers and The Man From UNCLE.
He will be dropping by to see how the East End has changed, before visiting Pinewood Studios and signing his book No Laughing Matter at events around the country.
East London Advertiser
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
East London Advertiser
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A RIGHT CARRY ON
By Lesley Richards
THE innuendo-packed Carry On films are never far from our TV screens.
They're so corny they are funny - and my favourite, if there is one, has to be Camping.
This year the surviving stars and crew of the 31 films and hundreds of fans descended on Pinewood Studios to celebrate the series that started in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant.
Among the guests was 85-years-old Norman Hudis, the screenwriter of the first six films, the Londoner who flew in from California to launch his autobiography "No Laughing Matter".
Hudis wrote Sergeant when he was 34 and then went on to pen Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless and Cruising.
He realised when he started to write the autobiography 49 years later that the root of Sergeant was an incident in Egypt during the war and Carry On Nurse was inspired by stories from wife Rita, a former nurse.
In his book, he reveals that he carried on writing Carry Ons after he left the series in the early 60s in the hope that he might be asked back one day, drafting Carry On Under the Pier If Wet and Carry On Shylock Holmes, but never was.
The book, which reveals his frank opinions about some of the stars, is a must for collectors and is published by Apex Publishing Ltd at £7.99.
Leigh Journal
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CARRY ON AFTER 50 YEARS? IT'S A FUNNY IDEA
The Times
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Southend Echo
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This review will appear here shortly.
Movie Scope Magazine
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CARRY ON GOING STRONG: FARCES OF NATURE
The Carry On films are 50 – and still they're planning more. Geoffrey Macnab celebrates a British institution
The setting is a British film studio, 40 or so years ago. Two producers meet on the backlot and have the same conversation they always do: Hugh Stewart, the producer of many Norman Wisdom films, asks Peter Rogers, the producer of the Carry On series, what he is working on now. "Same story, different title," Rogers always replies.
Stewart told me this anecdote when I was researching my book, J Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry. It sums up perfectly why the Carry On series (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year) is both so cherished and so reviled. It would be unfair to accuse the Carry On team of remaking the same film 30-odd times and of continually recycling the same jokes in a slightly different context – hospital one year, the French Revolution another, up the Khyber one moment, down Cleopatra's cleavage the next. Nonetheless, familiarity helped ingrain the series in British public consciousness. The reason you remembered the gags was that they were so reminiscent of one another. There was something reassuring about Sid James's leering, Charles Hawtrey's rubbery nincompoopishness and Kenneth Williams' oohs, ahhs and facial gymnastics. There was always a bit of healthy voyeurism for the men (Barbara Windsor's bra becoming unstrapped, or maybe a striptease at the caravan site), but the matronly Hattie Jacques was normally on hand to give a symbolic scolding.
Over the last decade or so, the Carry Ons have achieved a respectability that once would have been unthinkable. "The Carry Ons are a brisk, beaming, no-nonsense coachload of cliché and innuendo," enthused the university lecturer Andy Medhurst in Sight and Sound at the time of the release of Carry On Columbus (1992). "They are films that display a dread of significance, a refusal of nuance, an indifference to complexity that is almost shocking – and at the same time deeply wonderful." Another Carry On fan, Robert Ross, recently wrote his university dissertation on "Male Sexuality in the Carry Ons," something that left Norman Hudis, the writer of the first six Carry On films, "silent and awed".
Ask Hudis today how he regards male sexuality in the comedy series he helped originate and he recounts an anecdote about the US writer and film-maker Garson Kanin discussing character motivation with a New York police officer. "Kanin said to the cop that it was very difficult to get any kind of a slide rule about character. The cop said: 'It's very simple, Garson – in my experience, all men are pricks and all women are crazy.'" That, Hudis suggests, is the philosophy of Carry On in a nutshell.
Fans hold a mind-boggling depth of knowledge about the series. They know how many Carry On films Terry Scott appeared in, and can give the name of Bernard Bresslaw's jealous wrestler in Carry On Loving (Gripper Burke) without blinking; they can tell you who played Busti in Carry On Up the Khyber, or Citizen Bidet in Carry On Don't Lose Your Head, and just which buildings at Pinewood Studios housed the lavatory-making factory in Carry On At Your Convenience.
Just as popular lore has it that no one in London is ever more than a few feet from a rat, no would-be spectator today need ever be more than a few minutes from a Carry On film. They are repeated often on British TV (especially on bank holidays), have been given away with newspapers and many are available to be downloaded. And just as there are regular attempts to remake Hammer horror movies, there are frequent stabs at revivifying the Carry On franchise. At the 2006 Cannes film festival, it was a case of "here we go again" (in Peter Rogers' words) as details were announced of Carry On London – the 32nd film in the franchise. An array of former EastEnders actors and ex-Playboy models were expected to star in the film, which was about a limousine company to the stars. There were even rumours that Burt Reynolds was to play Hollywood movie magnate IP Freely.
Two years on, the film has yet to begin production. The project's lengthy gestation – Carry On London was first mooted as early as 2003 – suggests that financiers and stars alike have qualms about reviving a franchise whose heyday was roughly four decades ago. The original investors backed out after changes to UK film tax legislation; more recently, the subprime mortgage crisis has apparently deprived the producers of other potential backers. However, Brian Baker of Carry On Films Limited, who holds the rights, is adamant that Carry On 32 will be made. Baker says he has found new investment through Bulgarian-based financiers. The title is no longer Carry On London, Baker says, and casting details are yet to be confirmed, but he promises it will return to "the double entendre, sexual innuendo and slapstick which is typical British sense of humour. What we are trying to do is to bring [Carry On] into the 21st century."
Norman Hudis, now 85, is bemused by the longevity of the series he ushered into existence in 1958 with his screenplay for Carry On Sergeant. No one had especially high expectations for the film, Hudis says, which was shot quickly on a small budget with the hope of capitalising on the popularity of a recent TV sitcom.
"My father and some of my uncles were all tremendous music hall fans," Hudis says. "They regaled me with stories of Florrie Forde and Harry Champion – names which today may be virtually forgotten."
Hudis was a former publicist who made his name as a writer with The Tommy Steele Story. "He always struck me as a no-nonsense character, and I would not have imagined in those days that he was particularly endowed with a sense of humour," says Peter Rogers (who put Hudis under contract). "Norman could write anything."
Nobody involved – Rogers, the director Gerald Thomas, Hudis – had any idea they were launching a full-blown franchise when they embarked on Carry On Sergeant. "None of us had any idea that there would be even a second film, let alone this extraordinary stream of movies that followed," Hudis recalls.
The critical response was lukewarm. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a conventional farce, in which all the characters come from stock" and pointed out its debt to seaside postcard humour. The reviewer conceded that Hawtrey's "weedy incompetence" and Williams' "condescending intellectualism" yielded a few laughs, but dismissed the rest as "either overdone or half-baked".
However, when Carry On Sergeant became an unlikely success – hitting No 3 in the UK box-office charts for 1958, behind Dunkirk and Bridge On the River Kwai – the producers decided to make another. "It seemed a pity not to continue," Rogers remarked. A former publicist and journalist, Rogers began his film career as part of J Arthur Rank's religious film unit. He had seen some of Rank's films pelted by audiences, and so had a strong idea of what the public didn't like. Carry On was as far removed from Rank's Sunday Thought for the Week as it is possible to imagine.
Hudis knew that the Carry On phenomenon was taking hold when he began noticing references to it elsewhere in British culture. After a nurses' strike was averted, a newspaper carried the headline "Carry On Nurse". Even Noel Coward included a reference to Carry On in something he wrote.
Carry On script conferences were brisk in the extreme. "[Rogers] was not terse to the point of being dismissive, but had very clear ideas of how he wanted a script to go," says Hudis, who turned out his screenplays at a relentless pace – he calculates that he took only a week and a half to finish Carry On Nurse. He stuck to a formula: naughtiness rather than vulgarity; music hall-type humour; changes rung only on familiar themes.
After Carry On Cruising, his sixth in the series, Hudis decamped to Hollywood, where he wrote for such TV series as Danger Man, Hawaii Five-O and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He is full of praise for his successor, Talbot Rothwell, who wrote over 20 Carry On films. "He took the series into more esoteric areas, playing with things like Cleopatra and so forth, whereas with mine, I was very lucky to have easy targets to snipe at – the army, hospitals, schools and so forth."
Arguably, though, what really distinguished the Carry On series was less the writing or directing than the actors. Without Sid and Babs, without Kenneth, Hattie and Joan, the formula didn't really work. It was their absence that sunk Carry On Columbus despite the presence of such familiar faces as Jim Dale and Bernard Cribbins.
The challenge for Brian Baker in reviving the franchise is unearthing talent as distinctive as Williams ("such a fireworks, such a Catherine wheel of talent", in Hudis's words), Joan Sims ("such a bubbly girl – she had had a lot of disappointment in her life, but on screen she emitted this sense of warmth and fun"), Hawtrey ("an enormously gratifying eccentric") and Kenneth Connor ("so down to earth").
Brian Baker says the new Carry On film is looking to attract audiences "from the ages of 13 up to about 40". Filmgoers of that age are unlikely to remember the Carry On films, but Baker is confident there is still an audience for salty, seaside humour. "We're not going to copy Sid James and Kenneth Williams, but develop new artists equally as funny in their own right," he says.
One prediction can safely be made: if Carry On 32 is a success, 33 will be just around the corner – and will copy its predecessor shamelessly. After all, as Rogers' "same story, different title" adage attests, there is no need to change a winning formula.
* Norman Hudis's autobiography 'No Laughing Matter' (Apex Publishing) is published this month, as is a new edition of the official 'Carry On Quiz Book', compiled by Chris Cowlin and Paul Burton
The Independent
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
The Bournemouth Daily Echo
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WHAT A CARRY ON IT WAS
By Francine Wolfisz
TAKE Kenneth Williams, Sid James or Hattie Jacques, add a good dose of double entendres and mix well with a handful of bra-flinging moments: these were just some of the ingredients that made the Carry On films, which were produced at Pinewood Studios, so popular with the British public.
Now Norman Hudis, the man who penned the first six in the series, has released his autobiography, No Laughing Matter. The timing of the book coincides with the 50th anniversary of the films' launch with Carry On Sergeant.
On Sunday, Norman flew in from his home in California to join the half century celebrations at Pinewood. There he was joined by a host of surviving stars including Leslie Phillips, Anita Harris, Frank Thornton, Jack Douglas, Valerie Leon, Richard O'Callaghan, Jacki Piper, Kenneth Cope and Larry Dann.
Speaking about the enduring success of the Carry On films so many years later, Norman says that when he first wrote Carry On Sergeant he had "no idea it would become something exceptional".
The 85-year-old scriptwriter adds: "At the time I was just thinking about getting a job, doing the job and finding the next one. Showbusiness makes such a speciality of being unpredictable, so something like this is really to be treasured."
Norman, who was born and bred in London, began his Carry On career after coming to the attention in 1957 of film producer Peter Rogers, who was looking to adapt R F Delderfield's play, The Bull Boys.
Believing the original title was too flat, Norman and Peter selected one of the final lines from the script as the name.
Carry On Sergeant proved a huge hit and so the Carry On prefix was used again for the next film, Carry On Nurse, which was a box office hit in both the UK and America in 1959.
This was followed by Teacher, Constable, Regardless and Cruising, the first Carry On in colour.
"I've enjoyed every line I've written," says Norman, who adds that his personal favourite is Carry On Nurse, because it was inspired by his wife, Rita.
"Showbusiness makes such a speciality of being unpredictable, so something like this is really to be treasured."
Norman Hudis
He explains: "She worked as a nurse and used to come home and tell me all these stories about matters of life and death. Some were quite serious, and others not at all. She certainly provided me with much material!"
Norman says me he also still relishes memories of the film's "unforgettable" press night.
He continues: "The publicity men got the idea of packing the balcony with off-duty nurses. They were half-crazed with fatigue, but they loved it. They saw every joke coming and validated my script with their hearty laughter. That was a real compliment."
After Carry On Cruising, Norman was replaced by Talbot Rothwell and the series took an increasingly bawdy direction. But as No Laughing Matter reveals, Norman continued to pen Carry On scripts in the hope he might be asked back one day, including Carry On Under The Pier If Wet and Carry On Shylock Holmes. He tells me he even had an idea for Carry On Fleet Street, based on his early days as a local newspaper reporter.
Norman says: "It's one of those things in the business. There was a parting of the ways and it was hurtful, but it was never done maliciously. I knew that I belonged to the pioneering stage."
After his Carry On success, Norman moved with his wife and two children to America, where he has now lived for 40 years.
He secured work on a number of hit shows, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Saint, Hawaii Five-O and ChiPs.
With little sign of slowing down just yet, Norman tells me he "loves" writing and continues to work every day.
He adds: "I always feel I have somewhere exciting to go each morning - and that's my desk. I love picking up my pen and I always wanted to be a writer.
"I do count myself genuinely thrilled at what I do. I just thank God that I was given this knack of writing."
No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On by Norman Hudis is published by Apex Publishing, priced £7.99.
Bucks Free Press
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NORMAN HUDIS
The Sunday Post
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Somerset County Gazette
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Yeovil Express
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Carry On and celebrate 50 years! Three books celebrate a British institution
By Harris Dee
No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On', by Norman Hudis
HE'S 87 and you've probably never heard of him.
He wrote scripts for episodes of The Saint, Hawaii 5-O, Buck Rogers and The Man From Uncle, all smash hit TV series.
But what he's more famous for is the writer of the first six Carry On films - that typically English film genre of the double entendre and not so double entendre.
Norman Hudis has now written his autobiography, No Laughing Matter: How I carried on', to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Carry On' films.
And if you are a Carry On anorak who likes nothing better than to slip into a hardback (oooo matron!) there are two other books to help you pass the evenings in the run-up to spring.
First, Norman Hudis who for the first time has revealed his secrets about the stars from the series and how he became the master of the comedy big screen because Carry On still has a big following around the world, and is still being shown weekly on digital TV.
Hudis is very proud of his connections. He moved into Carry On after great success writing for the stage and screen and "wallowed in the instant riotous success and all it brought me, all around the world".
It was when he started working for himself that producer Peter Rogers asked him to write Carry on Sergeant' which would go on to epitomise British comedy for decades. This was followed by Carry on Nurse', Teacher', Constable', Regardless' and Cruising'.
The Official Carry On Facts, Figures and Statistics', by Kevin Snelgrove
For a very Brit comedy' Carry On Nurse still holds an American record - running for a whole year at a Los Angeles cinema. Nurse in fact came after the first, Sergeant, and was written in just ten days: A work takes as long to write as it takes..' The first four of the scripts were in fact aimed at towering British institutions, with the audience needing no reminder of the ready-made comic aspects'.
Public familiarity with the subject was everything, or at least desirable. Well meaning people could not grasp that we'd have to spend time at the start of Carry on Stock Exchange explaining the unfamiliar market before we could make fun of it.' Carry on Angling promised to be rather static: someone falls in the water - then what?' For the first time Hudis tells us of two couldabeens' that finished up as neverwases' written just in case he was asked to come back and write another film. Carry On Under the Pier If Wet', celebrating two formidable British institutions, the seaside concert party and the boarding house. And Carry On Shylock Holmes': I would have turned the Doyle images on their heads.' Hudis gives frank opinions about the Carry On stars like Ted Ray, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Connor (a giant comedy talent') and Kenneth Williams. And of his later time in Hollywood, among others, Elvis and Joan Crawford.
As the bishop said to Bach: "Well I'll be fugued" (ooooo, no matron!), you can get a real insight into this delightful man, a giant of his industry who nobody remembers!
AT the same time we have The Official Carry On Facts Figures and Statistics' by Kevin Snelgrove.
Such crazy facts as: there were 20 (really?) Carry On television programmes broadcast as well as the films, some as Christmas specials but 13 in 1975 alone, while Kenneth Connor appeared in most (18 or 90 percent), followed by Jack Douglas (wu-fwhey!) on 17 and Barbara Windsor 15.
There were also three stage shows - Carry on London', Carry on Laughing with the Slimming Factory' and Wot a Carry On In Blackpool'.
Every film is detailed with technical data, stars and production staff, while some even have details of where each scene was shot.
More amazing are details of what the films cost to make - from just £74,000 for Sergeant in 1958 to £2.5m for Columbus in 1992.
And the wages paid to the stars seem like peanuts today - a total of just £10,985 for Sergeant while the highest were only £50,000 for Follow That Camel' in 1967 and Behind' in 1975 due to payments of £30,000 each to Phil Silvers and Elke Sommer.
There are even all the vehicle registration plates seen in the films, kissing scenes, the number of people cast, when films were started and finished production .. the list is endless. So stop messin about' and go and get your copy now, matron!
This is a brilliantly researched compilation of information that will have Carry On fans rolling in the aisles (ooooh, I say!) with every conceivable statistic you could wish for, well almost, and anecdotes and memories from some of the actors.
Author Kevin Snelgrove was born in Frome and is considered one of the country's leading experts on Carry On films.
AND finally we have the official Carry On Quiz Book'.
It contains 1,000 questions covering every feasible subject, such as the films, the actors, behind the cameras, actors birthdays, movies' release dates, locations and catchphrases.
As the sleeve notes say: "You could end up in hospital screaming for the saucy nurse and ending up with the grumpy old matron."
Oh, and there are answers too.
Infamy, infamy they've got it in for me! Oooh, matron.. A-har-har-har (cue Sidney James laughter..) No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On', by Norman Hudis, published by Apex Publishing Ltd (paperback) on March 24 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first Carry On film, £7.99.
The Official Carry On Facts, Figures and Statistics', by Kevin Snelgrove, published by Apex (hardback), £9.99.
The Official Carry On Quiz Book', by Chris Cowlin and Paul Burton, published by Apex (paperback), £7.99.
Somerset County Gazette
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HOW I CARRIED ON
In an extract from his new memoir, scriptwriter and Guild member, Norman Hudis, tells how he came to write the first Carry On films.
I’d had a stage play, Here Is The News, produced in repertory to not bad reviews. Executive Producer Earl St John took me out of publicity and gave me a modest screenwriting contract.
Two years of enthusiastic but unfilmed scripting and off I went into freelancing, scripting about twenty or so “B” features. The Americans paid the stars and got the rights of the films in the Western hemisphere; a British company made the film, usually a hearty thriller, in three weeks tops; and television wiped out the B-feature industry in not much more time than that.
One such script of mine did not fit the pattern, and did without American involvement. This was the unexpected million-pound box-office success The Tommy Steele Story for Peter Rogers at Beaconsfield Studios. We went on to another Steele musical, my first film with director Gerald Thomas, by which time I was under contract to Peter Rogers Productions Limited.
For the next six years Peter and Gerry loomed largest in my writing life and became, in my mind, the indissoluble pairing I will refer to as P-G, not failing to point out that this stood also for ‘Please God’.
Then, the Carry Ons …and the story of how they came about has been told many times over the past 50 years, in wild variation and unexpected places. Can I ever forget the American club theatre owner, deep in the heart of California’s San Fernando Valley, who told me to my face that he had “directed all the Carry Ons”?.
I will not sully these memories with obscenity and blasphemy but, at the time, I had no hesitation in employing both to his jawdropping face.
I will quote, here, in this connection, the cautionary old saw: “Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.”
Further, let it simply be said that, for Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas, I scripted the first six and wallowed in the instant riotous success, and all it brought me, all around the world. Still something of an American record, I believe, for a very Brit comedy, Nurse ran for a year at the Crest Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles.
Enough of that. Let’s settle for the accolade of Karen Pedersen, Library Director of the Writers’ Guild of America (West). She has declared that the Carry Ons have “gone beyond mere Cult into the realm of full blown Phenomenon”.
A simple concept
My major contribution to what, rather pompously, might be called ‘The Concept of Sergeant’ (and, to a great degree, the others of mine) was very simple: Sergeant Grimshawe (the ageless William Hartnell) is about to retire. He has never trained a No. 1 Squad.
He’s passionately devoted to mould one aided by Corporal Copping (the rock-solid Bill Owen) out of his last intake.
Alas, these National Service conscripts prove to be the Original Awkward Squad - unwilling, uninterested and unlikely to grant him his dream. But, when they hear that Old Leatherlungs has bet his fellow NCOs £50 that he can turn this bunch of dedicated civilians into a unit that even the legendary Guards Regiments would respect, the new soldiers consider:
“Grimshawe shouts. Well, that’s what sergeants do. But when has he ever done any of us actual harm? Never.”
And so they decide, without fuss, to help him show his fellows he can do it, as well as demonstrate to him that they’re not such a gang of incorrigible misfits after all.
This set the style, to a great extent, of the ones I wrote: the incompetent, the uninterested or the plain unlucky, seen at their worst for most of the story, but triumphing in the end, against all expectation, and to rousing effect, in hospital, school, police force, cruise ship and Helping Hands Agency.
So, with Sergeant (No. 3 in Britain’s box-office returns for 1958, chirpily trailing Dunkirk and The Bridge on the River Kwai - a well-deserved banner year, cinematically, for the British Army), there we were: with a story thoroughly British in rough-and-ready humour, briefly topped by underplayed sentiment.
Immediately after Sergeant, two businesslike consequences were to be expected, both absolutely routine in The Biz, and not calculated to leave hard feelings.
One: Peter would offer me a substantially improved contract. Two: I would nicely refuse, in order to take up offers from companies now flashing really big money.
One happened - par for the course.
Two? My agent was Peter Eade, as practical and knowledgeable a manager as any in that field, and so gentlemanly that his Cork Street office HQ was once described as possessing the atmosphere of a country solicitor’s chambers. In spite of Peter’s advice, to move on, and my wife Rita’s similar plea (she, with no real experience of The Biz, instinctively knew the score), I metaphorically struck a loyal pose and stayed with Peter Rogers.
Career progressions, in any business, are of obvious, though sometimes overstated importance. An example of the latter, probably apocryphal, but I hope not, is what one Biz pundit said when Elvis Presley died:
“Bad career move.”
Okay. So, staying where I was - how was that move rated?
Gerald Thomas said it all, when Peter, unable to believe that I had not responded in the expected manner by rejecting his proposal and heading for other, welcoming doors, asked: “What’s the matter with him, Gerry? Is he mad?”
“No. Just an NJB.”
“What’s that?”
“Nice Jewish Boy who doesn’t want to be thought mercenary.”
Nurses carrying on
Let me here nail the surprise often expressed, because even an average script, let alone an outstanding one, is written very fast.
No one I know of has ever matched the young Noel Coward penning Hay Fever in three days, but this and my drafting of Carry On Nurse in ten days should not evoke wonderment any more than did James Joyce spending 17 years on Finnegans Wake at the rate of one-and-a-half lines per day. A work takes as long to write as it takes.
So, to recall that Carry On Nurse hit the foolscap, virtually unchanged, in a week and a half, is merely to report a statistic, not to make claim for inclusion in any book of records.
Rita. So many of the film’s gags were from her own nursing years, first at Princess Beatrice Hospital, Earls Court, as a student, and then at Hackney General for midwifery (though already an SRN, she was considered a student - at £2 a week), and The Royal Marsden in the operating theatre. And she linked, unforgettably, gratefully, with present members of her profession at the morning Trade Press show.
A public relations master from Anglo-Amalgamated Distributors packed the balcony of Studio One Cinema, in Oxford Street, with a couple of hundred young nurses, just off night duty and half-crazed with fatigue.
But not so wiped out that they didn’t see every authentic joke coming, begin to laugh and continue laughing through its screening, and for seconds after it was over. What I can only call the ‘Ritauthenticity’ of so many key scenes received validation from her fellows in gales of innocent merriment that still echo in these old ears.
Not to say that the regular audience didn’t respond heartily too. But this first public, deafening reception of Carry On Nurse was invaluably endorsed by those exhausted girls. Their presence was an inspired way of validating the film for the rest of the audience. Those young voices, raised to the golden heights of laughter, resonate for me, to this minute.
Acclaim like that happens once in a lifetime or, at any rate, if ever repeated, never recaptures the elemental force of its first eruption. It is at such rare moments that the most battered movie writer knows that there is a God and that He has a sense of humour.
Paul Dehn, highly civilized critic of the London News Chronicle, deemed the notorious daffodil gag to be one of “unsurpassed vulgarity”. We met later, at 20th- Century Fox in Beverly Hills, where he was scripting Planet of the Apes, and giggled about that remonstrative notice.
Time magazine advised that the picture was ideal entertainment for all who had completed toilet training. So, a good time was had by all.
INSET
Norman Hudis: Selected scripts
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (2 episodes, 1981)
• The Man From U.N.C.L.E (6 episodes, 1967-68)
• The Saint (4 episodes, 1964-5)
• Carry On Cruising (1962)
• Carry On Regardless (1961)
• Carry On Constable (1960)
• Carry On Teacher (1959)
• Carry On Nurse (1959)
• Carry On Sergeant (1958)
• The Tommy Steele Story (1957)
(Source: IMDB.com)
BOX
Working with Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams excelled in a Constable drag sequence, investigating shoplifting.
I first met him when he was starting out and prone to say earnest things such as: “The actor’s job is to interpret the writer’s intention.” That didn’t last long.
And nowadays (says Greybeard) new thespians, even in the first flush of innocence, tend not to place any trust in the writer. At the first reading of a stage play of mine, the leading young man once informed me: “With due respect, I never take any notice of the author’s instructions about mood or moves.”
One has to admire the odd, glancing use of the word ‘respect’.
A born actor and homosexual, Kenny considered his talent essentially uncreative and his orientation so despicable in its physicality that he suffered from a fanatical fastidiousness. He was a glittering wit who took his spiritual and philosophical leanings desperately seriously. And he had the intellectual and literary equipment to do so.
I only once tried conclusions with Ken on the main drive of his life: acting. And got nowhere.
I likened him, in this one area, to Ernest Hemingway. As deeply as I admired Ken’s acting (I can never forget him as The Dauphin in St Joan at the Arts Theatre), so did I pay homage to Hemingway’s controlled prose. But I had no patience with Mr H’s self-lacerating contempt for his writing gift as ‘unmanly’.
Why did he have to shoot rhinoceroses to compensate for being so effete as to write masterly novels? And refer to any woman under 60 as ‘daughter’ to reinforce the
masculine, generative image?
That, I said, was literally balls. And, equally, there was no reason why Ken couldn’t amuse or move thousands, and, if he still felt he was contributing nothing of value to society, do a couple of weeks in a leper colony between engagements - where they’d probably ask him to sing a couple of Rambling Syd Rumpo rural ditties rather thanroll bandages.
Customarily professionally fearless, Ken on one occasion endured agonies over a light romantic scene with Jill Ireland (a subsequent cancer victim). His alternately frustrated and defiant attitude towards sex of the gay kind was as nothing compared to his apprehension over a mild hetero romance scene, no matter how lacking in physical contact (he in a hospital bed; she the visitor, bringing him nougat).
“I’d rather,” he told me, “do ‘Lear’ on stilts.”
I reminded him of the trouper who advertised, in The Stage newspaper, “No Known Accent Shirked”, but don’t claim that this shining example influenced him to settle down and give his all. But he did, acquitting himself nicely, chewing doggedly on
the stick-jaw nougat to top the scene.
Extracted from No Laughing Matter, by Norman Hudis (Apex Publishing Ltd).
UK Writer: The Writers' Guild Magazine
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Inside Time: The National Monthly Newspaper for Prisoners
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Powys County Times and Express
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If you are or were a big fan of the Carry On films, and let's face it, who wasn't, this is a great peep behind the scenes into the genius who penned the scripts for the first and probably finest six Carry On films, Norman Hudis. The author tells us many stories and answers many questions that any fan of the Carry On series would love to know about. In many ways Norman Hudis's book is autobiographical, for sure he was part of the glitzy film world in-crowd, but to the reader also comes through as a very grounded, down-to-earth man too. I wish they still made films like the Carry On capers of yesteryear. Today, everything seems to be driven by violence, near pornography and foul and abusive language and jokes. This book takes you back to the very early days of those Carry On films, packed with double meanings and just a bit of titilation that made you laugh and happy too. Get this book and go back to those bawdy, but innocent days, for a bit more carry on insights you never dreamed you would know about. You won't regret it.
Philip Solomon, Wolverhampton Express & Star
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
The Self Publishing Magazine
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
The Brit (Madeira Newspaper)
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NO LAUGHING MATTER
Tenerife Property Guide
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-- Radio and TV
As a massive follower of all things Carry On, I had only seen the films on TV before. To hear some of the stories from behind the scenes from someone who was involved in this British tradition was hugely insightful. The book gives a true picture of how it was back when Carry On was created and what the stars of the time were really like. It is an essential guide for anyone who wants to get a real feeling for the birth of Carry On. I enjoyed it hugely.
Simon Hawkins, Brunel 107.7 FM (Presenter)
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio Devon 103.4FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio Devon 103.4FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on Hope 90.1 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
Hope 90.1 FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live. Norman answered questions about what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio 5 Live
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio 2 88-91FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio 2 88-91FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on 'The Philip Solomon Show'. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
Wolverhampton City Radio 101.8FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio Suffolk 95.5FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio Suffolk 95.5FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Beds, Herts & Bucks 4 94.7 FM. Norman answered questions about what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio Beds, Herts & Bucks 4 94.7 FM
If you are or were a big fan of the Carry On films, and let's face it, who wasn't, this is a great peep behind the scenes into the genius who penned the scripts for the first and probably finest six Carry On films, Norman Hudis. The author tells us many stories and answers many questions that any fan of the Carry On series would love to know about. In many ways Norman Hudis's book is autobiographical, for sure he was part of the glitzy film world in-crowd, but to the reader also comes through as a very grounded, down-to-earth man too. I wish they still made films like the Carry On capers of yesteryear. Today, everything seems to be driven by violence, near pornography and foul and abusive language and jokes. This book takes you back to the very early days of those Carry On films, packed with double meanings and just a bit of titilation that made you laugh and happy too. Get this book and go back to those bawdy, but innocent days, for a bit more carry on insights you never dreamed you would know about. You won't regret it.
Philip Solomon, Wolverhampton City Radio 101.8FM (Presenter)
Norman Hudis was interviewed on Wythenshawe 97.2 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
Wythenshawe 97.2 FM
CARRYING ON, 50 YEARS LATER
By Tim Masters, Entertainment reporter, BBC News (Warning: this story may contain double entendres).
Rather like the saying that Londoners are never more than six feet from a rat, it sometimes feels like no TV viewer is more than a couple of channel hops away from a Carry On.
Carry On films are 50 years old and showing no sign of retiring from our screens.
Whether it's Kenneth Williams with his hautily-flaring nostrils or Sid James cackling over Barbara Windsor in the shower - love 'em or hate 'em, they are a British institution.
On Sunday, surviving stars and crew of the 31 films along with hundreds of fans will descend on Pinewood Studios to celebrate the innuendo-packed film series that started in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant.
Among the famous invitees are Leslie Phillips, producer Peter Rogers, Valerie Leon, Frank Thornton, Dora Bryan, Anita Harris, Bill Maynard, Shirley Eaton and Fenella Fielding.
Another guest will be Norman Hudis, the screenwriter of the first six films, who is flying in from California to launch his autobiography.
Then and now: Norman Hudis wrote the first six films
Now 85, Hudis wrote Sergeant when he was 34 and then went on to pen Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless and Cruising, the first Carry On in colour.
Sergeant tells the story of a bunch of raw recruits who overcome their ineptitude to help their retiring sergeant win a bet.
"I realised when I started to write the autobiography 49 years later that the root of Sergeant was an incident in Egypt during the war," says Hudis.
"It was the sergeant who took charge of that situation and turned it round in an act of extraordinary daring."
Carry On Nurse, meanwhile, was inspired by stories from Hudis's wife Rita, a former nurse.
"I used to call downstairs to Rita and say 'put on the old nurse's cap and tell me something funny'," laughs Hudis.
In his book, Hudis reveals that he carried on writing Carry Ons after he left the series in the early 60s in the hope that he might be asked back one day, drafting Carry On Under the Pier If Wet and Carry On Shylock Holmes.
He admits that severing his relationship with the Carry Ons was a difficult time.
"I was disappointed, but it was quite clear that I was tired. I'd done six and a couple of other films and a TV series. They didn't like my script for Spying - which I was very unhappy with myself - and that was it.
"But no hard feelings - it was a glorious time."
Hudis only once met Talbot Rothwell, who took on writing duties for the next 20 Carry On films and steered the series in an increasingly bawdy direction.
'SLAP AND TICKLE'
"He was miraculous, he really churned these things out and some of the stuff was classic," says Hudis. Rothwell died in 1981.
Carry On author and historian Robert Ross describes the Carry On films one of the few major success stories of homegown cinema, putting their longevity down to the ensemble cast.
"Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jacques were impeccable players and people warmed to them at an early age," he says.
"The Carry Ons reflected a lot of social change, and that's what's made them so loveable. They are still fundamentally very funny films - they are all about sex and that never goes out of fashion."
So what is the quintessential Carry On film?
For a complete virgin (cue Sid James-style "yak! yak! yak!"), Ross recommends watching Carry On Matron.
"The historical films are probably better made, but in terms of slap and tickle knockabout comedy, I think the medical ones are brilliant."
Despite an unsuccessful attempt to revive the series in 1992 with Carry On Columbus, another Carry On - London - is due to start shooting this year.
Norman Hudis is open-minded about the Carry On brand continuing 50 years on.
"My feeling is that - as Hattie Jacques once said - if it's good-natured and it's funny then it should be made."
And even if he isn't still writing Carry On scripts, Hudis isn't short of jokes.
"The current gag about the 50th anniversary party at Pinewood is that the next reunion might be a seance!"
BBC News Online
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 92-95FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team. He was interviewed by Carolyn Quinn on 'The Today Programme'.
BBC Radio 4 92-95FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on 'The Howard Bentham Show'. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter'.
BBC Hereford and Worcester 97.4 FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on 'The Pat March Show'. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter'.
BBC Radio Kent 96.7 FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on BBC Radio Kent 96.7 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' and what is what like to be a part of the 'Carry On' team.
BBC Radio Kent 96.7 FM
'No Laughing Matter' was reviewed on 'The Liz Mullen Show', the show also gave a copy away in a competition.
Colchester Garrison 107 FM
(Photo: Geneen Crossley with author Norman Hudis).
Geneen Crossley, Hope 90.1 FM (Presenter)
9 May 2009 - Norman Hudis was interviewed on Bristol Community Radio 93.2 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter'. He was interviewed on 'The Mark Le-Leivre Show'.
Bristol Community Radio 93.2 FM
Norman Hudis was interviewed on Leith 98.8 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter' on 'The Graeme Logan Show'.
Leith 98.8 FM
20 December 2008 - Norman Hudis was interviewed on Bristol Community Radio 93.2 FM. Norman answered questions about his book 'No Laughing Matter'. He was interviewed on 'The Mark Le-Leivre Show'.
Bristol Community Radio 93.2 FM