Norman Hudis and the Carry On team
TALK about British comedy and there is a name that stands head and shoulders above the competition. The Carry On series ran for 30 years – from the gentle post-War approach of Carry On Sergeant to the ironic alternative comedy of Carry On Columbus.
The films are celebrated in a new exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image on London’s South Bank.*
And for East Enders, the films have a special resonance – Bernard Bresslaw and Barbara Windsor are just two locals who went on to star in the series, and they have been celebrated in East End History in the past. But the Cockney connection goes far deeper – for the man who penned those first few Carry Ons was a Tower Hamlets boy.
Norman Hudis was born in Stepney in 1923. He always had a sharp mind and a gift for words and, on leaving school, he landed a job as a local newspaper reporter, working on the Hampstead and Highgate Express.
War came, and Norman served with the RAF in the Middle East, turning his hand to writing for Air Force News. And like so many of the entertainers who came to dominate British comedy in the ’50s – such as Tony Hancock, Eric Sykes and the Goons – he sharpened his comedy pen writing for the concert parties and camp concerts organised as a tonic for the troops.
It was tougher in Civvy Street however. Back in London after the War, Norman decided to throw in journalism and try his hand as a playwright. He was certainly prolific, but not successful. However one of his works, Here is the News, got good reviews.
These caught the eye of the producers at Pinewood. At the time, south-east England had a thriving film industry, at Pinewood, Ealing and Shepperton, and the money men were always on the lookout for young talent to turn out the features needed to fill Britain’s bustling cinemas.
It was production line stuff – many of the films were destined to be ‘B’ features to the big American movies. But after two years at Shepperton, and with not one film produced, Norman was fed up, and decided to go freelance.
His years of apprenticeship paid off, and he was soon churning out successful scripts. The quality was sometimes iffy, not surprising as at one point Norman was working on three scripts at once!
Fortune took a lucky turn when he bumped into Peter Rogers in 1957. Rogers was already an established producer on the UK film scene, he went on to make more than 100 movies, and he was working on a biopic of the rock and roll singer Tommy Steele. Norman was offered the job of scripting Rock Around the World.
The film was a hit, and Norman was immediately drafted in to pen a swift follow-up, after all, no-one knew how long the singing ex-seaman’s chart career would last! But The Duke Wore Jeans was another success for the pair, this time with director Gerald Thomas on board.
Rogers and Thomas were working together on a production of RF Delderfield’s novel The Bull Boys, and called in the reliable Hudis to rewrite the book for the screen. Dumping the original title as too flat, they selected one of the final lines from the film as a name. And “Carry on Sergeant” was a massive hit.
Norman went on to pen five more Carry Ons. Carry On Nurse was the top-grossing UK film of 1959. Teacher, Constable, Regardless and Cruising followed, one a year, each charting the battles of a crew of bunglers who come through against all the odds.
But by 1962, the team felt the formula was wearing thin. Hudis was replaced by Talbot Rothwell, who took the films in a bawdier and more farcical direction.
The Stepney writer took off for pastures newer and more lucrative. Throughout the ’60s he worked on TV and film in California, eventually moving there full time in the seventies. Episodes of CHiPs, The Wild Wild West, Marcus Welby MD, The Man From Uncle and Buck Rogers are just a few to have flowed from his typewriter.
But of all his writing, the Carry Ons remain closest to his heart. Back in London recently for the 40 Years of Carry On celebrations, he remarked that it was his core of irreverent, risque East End humour that made those comedies. Best of all, 40 years on, people are still laughing!