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Louise Burton starred in Carry On England in 1976 and Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978, but although the saucy comedies were criticized for their depiction of women, the actress maintains that it never felt sexually charged on screen or on set.
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Directed by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross, The Carry On Girls celebrates the 50th anniversary of the women who starred in the iconic series.
I’m extremely proud to be one of the Carry On Girls, they were movies that made people laugh and as part of that I never felt like we were being portrayed as sex objects.
It’s a very different era now, isn’t it? He couldn’t even get past the first word of anything that was on television at the time, let alone make a series of movies. But it was harmless fun, there was nothing terrible in them.
It was hilarious and we would spend the whole week laughing and laughing. I thought it was brilliant and it’s a shame that this kind of humor, which was completely harmless in my opinion, is now gone.
If you look at TV series now, some of today’s sex scenes are incredible, close to porn but completely acceptable.
We weren’t doing anything sensational, but if it’s in a drama, is it okay? You are thinking about some things these days. I think these are much more sexual and more explicit. Personally, I prefer just humor, obvious humor, without any real graphic scenes.
Is someone being portrayed as obscene because they did a sexual scene? Of course not. It’s a part of life, and it was a part of life then. Then you could never recover from what you did now, just as you could never recover from what we did then.
It’s weird, it’s reversed. Apparently visual is allowed but narrative is not.
My time in the 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, they were truly iconic at the time and for me to even dream of going to Pinewood let alone joining the cast It was really exciting.
When I got there, Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers said to us, ‘look, we’re just looking for certain types in the beginning, we’re literally going to look at who we think would be good for the movie in terms of height, size. hair colour, etc.’ and they literally lined us all up – but it wasn’t like a cattle train, I can’t explain it. Those who were rejected weren’t made to feel like they weren’t good enough.
They were looking at us and saying ‘they would look great with this person, they would look great with this person’, and then I heard the name Melvin Hayes mentioned. Melvin is such a little guy and funny enough he was teaching at my drama school and I think they initially wanted me to do some work with him. So I became one of the Carry On Girls, that’s how it all started.
I was 17 or 18, driving past Pinewood Studios, and there was no one there, a teenager from an ordinary working-class family from Brighton. It was just mind blowing, exciting and mind blowing.
On the first day, I immediately put on make-up 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 will I tell my mom and dad? What would I tell all my friends? What excuse can I give if they don’t like me when they take me to the set? Stupid things like this go through your mind.
Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers were absolute gentlemen, truly kind and caring. Coming from Brighton I never had anywhere to stay, staying somewhere different every night. They were really worried about me, I was the smallest person on set and they said, ‘But where are you staying tonight?’ they would ask. You’ll be fine, how will you get to the station and how will you get back in the morning?’ They were really worried, but they were total gentlemen.
I ended up shooting a lot of scenes that weren’t shown in the movie, but I did a lot of scenes with Melvin Hayes. All my scenes were actually with a group of girls.
When we shot the scene where the girls were naked from the waist up, you couldn’t see anything. Back then you could go topless on most beaches, so the guys, the players, had seen it all before. They didn’t care at all that we were topless. Seriously, it was nothing.
It wasn’t what people thought, and neither were they; All the men, all the backstage people and all the cameras, they were all standing there with their tongues out. They’re very worried about the lighting and ‘did this person get in line fast enough?’ and ‘What was that background noise? Was it a bird flying over? Will this distort the sound?’
And it was so black and white, it wasn’t sexual at all. It wasn’t just sexual. I guess all the girls were running late and weren’t dressed, that’s funny. What’s so scary about this?
I didn’t think anything of it, I have to be honest, I didn’t think about doing it either. And of course, back then, all the girls at The Sun had it every week and it was just part of everyday life.
My next film was Carry On Emmanuelle, playing a girl at the zoo, such a lovely character, Jack Lyons was a nice guy and full of complete nonsense.
He met me at the zoo and I was apparently sucking on what has become an iconic candy bar. I turn the lollipop over and on the other side it says panties and Jack’s character comes over and says ‘do you want to go for a walk?’ says. Finally we find ourselves in an empty cage and it is a gorilla cage. It’s really ridiculous.
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It’s complete nonsense, but the lollipop has become iconic. Apparently I was planned to do other films but they weren’t made anymore, which was a shame.
I’m so excited to be one of the people involved in Carry On and this kind of humor. I don’t think it’s fair to say we are objectified or empowered by them, I don’t think one should feel empowered. I just saw it as a job to make people laugh and have fun.
It was nothing more than that, you were in an iconic movie with iconic people making everyone laugh. This made me happy and I walked out every day smiling and looking forward to coming back the next morning. I think the majority of people enjoy watching the movies so much that it’s just a pride, that’s what I feel: Pride. There is nothing but pride in this.
Louise told her story Roxy Simons
Written by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross, Carry On Girls will be released on November 23, 2023.