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Louise Burton starred in 1976’s Carry On England and 1978’s Carry On Emmanuelle, but while the risqué comedies have been criticized for their depiction of women, the actress maintains she never felt sexualized on screen or on set.
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The Carry On Girls by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross celebrates 50 years of the women who starred in the iconic franchise.
I am beyond proud to have been one of the Carry On Girls, they were films that made people laugh and I never felt that we were represented as sexual objects for being part of them.
It’s a very different era now, isn’t it? All the things that appeared on television then did not even go beyond the first word, much less entire series of films were made about them. But it was harmless fun, there was nothing terrible about them.
It was just fun and we used to spend the whole week laughing and laughing. I think it was fantastic and I think it’s a shame that that kind of humor, which is completely harmless, has disappeared.
If you look at current dramas, some of the sex scenes today are incredible, bordering on pornography, but it’s totally acceptable.
We weren’t doing anything that graphic, but if it’s in a drama, is that okay? You think about things nowadays. I think they are much more sexual, more explicit. Personally I prefer humor, heavy humor without the actual graphic scenes.
Is someone depicted as obscene because they do a sexual scene? Of course not. It’s part of life and it was part of life then. You would never have been able to get away with what you do now, and in the same way you could never get away with what we did then.
It’s very strange, it’s backwards. It seems that the visual is allowed but the 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, at the time they were truly iconic and for me. It was really exciting to even dream about going to Pinewood, let alone going to a casting.
When I got there, Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers told us, ‘Look, initially we’re just looking for certain guys, we’re literally going to look for who we think would be good for the movie in terms of height, size, 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 would look at us and say ‘they would look great with that person, and they look good with that one,’ and then I heard Melvin Hayes’ name mentioned. Melvin is a very small guy and, funnily enough, he taught at my drama school, and I think they 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 by Pinewood Studios and there was this young nobody from Brighton, from a very ordinary working class family. He was just mind-blowing, exciting and mind-blowing.
The first day I went straight to putting on makeup and met the other girls. The first morning I was very nervous, excited and terrified. What if they don’t like me? What if they decide to send me back home again? What would I say to my mom and dad? What would I say to all my friends? What excuse would I give if they didn’t like me once they got me on set? Silly things like that would cross your mind.
Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers were true gentlemen, very kind and caring. Coming from Brighton I never had anywhere to stay, every night I stayed in a different place. They were really worried about me, I was the youngest on set and they used to ask: ‘But where are you staying tonight? You’ll be fine, how will you get to the station and how will you get back in the morning? They were genuinely concerned, but they were absolute gentlemen.
In the end I filmed 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 really with the group of girls.
When we filmed the scene where the girls were naked from the waist up you couldn’t see anything. At that time, you could be topless on most beaches, so the kids, the actors, had seen it all before. They were not at all interested in us being topless. Seriously, it was nothing.
It’s not what people thought, it wasn’t: all the men, all the people backstage and all the cameras, all standing there with their tongues hanging out. They’re too concerned about lighting and wondering, “Did that person get in line fast enough?” and ‘what was that background noise? Was it a bird flying? Is that going to ruin the sound?
And it was so black and white that it wasn’t sexual at all. It just wasn’t sexual. I think all the girls were late and not dressed, it’s funny. What’s so terrible about that?
I didn’t think anything about it, I have to be honest, I didn’t think anything about doing it. And of course at that time you had all the girls on The Sun every week, and it was just part of everyday life.
My next film was Carry On Emmanuelle playing a girl in the zoo, she was a lovely character, Jack Lyons was a lovely guy and he was full of nonsense.
He finds me at the zoo and I’m sucking on a popsicle, which has apparently become iconic. I turn the palette over and on the other side it says panties, and Jack’s character comes over and says ‘do you feel like going for a walk?’ We end up in an empty cage, and it’s a gorilla’s cage. I mean, really, it’s ridiculous.
Read more: Jim Dale: Carry On cast were a resentful ‘clique’
It’s total nonsense, but polo became iconic. She apparently had plans to make other films, but they were never made again, which was a shame.
I’m delighted to have been one of the people involved in Carry On and humor of that kind. I don’t think it’s right to say that we were objectified or empowered by them, I don’t think one should feel empowered. I simply saw it as a job to make people laugh, to entertain them.
It was nothing more than that, you were in an iconic movie with iconic people who made everyone laugh. That made me happy and I used to leave every day laughing and looking forward to coming back the next morning. I think most people get so much pleasure from watching movies that it’s just pride, that’s what I feel: pride. Nothing but pride in having been in it.
Louise told her story to roxy simons
The Carry On Girls by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross will be released on November 23, 2023.
