Carry on Nurse

The most successful British film of its original year, 1959, and an equally successful release in the United States, "Carry On Nurse" began as a play by Patrick Cargill and Jack Searle. Part of the appeal of this infectious comedy I assert lies in the complexity of the interwoven story-lines which have been invented for it. Little wonder exists why it spawned so many imitations and a "Carry On" series that has lasted decades since this, the first of the line. The film concerns very anti-Establishment attitudes by the male patients in a British hospital. Then there are the separate stories of the gentlemen trapped under Matron's tyrannical thumb, each with his own visitor or visitors, hopes, complaints, problems, history, purpose and timetable. Finally, there are the nurses, ranging in experience from the inept newcomers to the poised and competent senior staff members. A charming, and sometimes surprising, camaraderie or male bonding develops among the male patients, and the interactions with the nurses range from pursuit to bickering, with the nurses themselves interacting professionally with one another and also personally as human beings. The main storyline is hard to pin down, but never hard-to-follow. A reporter with appendicitis is wooing a pretty nurse, a rising boxer has broken his hand during a successful bout, a man with a large family worries about them, a confirmed bachelor finds himself attracting a lovely young girl, and a cantankerous Colonel irritates Matron and the entire staff; etc., etc. The flavor of the film is very realistic, which allows touches of bawdy humor, wry commentary and dialogue byplay to develop out of the regimen that is stifling patients, burdening nurses and making Matron grimly happy. The ward has rogues, a dilettante who listens to music and conducts wearing 'headphones', malcontents and grumblers, the friendly and the bored. The film was directed by Gerald Thomas from an adaptation of the original play done by Norman Hudis and Jack Beale. Cinematography was done by Reginald H. Wyer with art direction by Alex Vichinsky, both contributing to a realistic style that becomes more than style alone. Joan Ellacott was in charge of costumes and original music was supplied by Bruce Mongomery. The entire cast were well-chosen for their parts. Terence Longdon as the reporter pursues Shirley Eaton, Kenneth Connor is the boxer, Charles Hawtrey, Bill Owen, Norman Rossington play other patients; Hattie Jacques makes a wonderful Matron, Leslie Phillips the rogue, Joan Sims a ditsy young nurse, Susan Stephen a delightfully down-to-earth staff member. Wlfird Hyde-White is properly irritating as the fussy Colonel, with Susan Shaw, Irene Handly, Jill Ireland, Michael Medwin and Rosalind Knight taking other featured roles. The comedic highlight of the film is a surrealistic revolt by some of the patients high on 'laughing gas'. But all turns out well; and this deservedly popular film, whose humor ranges from classic dialogue subtlety to lavatory levels remains in the mind as a classic of its sort--whatever it is--long after Matron has completed her rounds and discovered her nurses' revenge on the obnoxious Colonel which closes the frequently-hilarious proceedings.

In Haven Hospital an entire ward is made up of men, ranging from the snooty Oliver Reckitt, the distracted Hinton, the gambling Colonel to the injured boxer Bernie Bishop. With nothing but men around young female nurses things could easily get out of hand but luckily the nurses are ruled by the Sister who in turn lives in fear of Matron, who rules the hospital with an iron fist. However when discipline is so strict, it is only a matter of time before the patients start to act out and rebel.

This is one of the earliest Carry On films in the long running series and it stands out from Constable and Sergeant because it has a much more ensemble feel to it and more of a rambling narrative that works better than the "serious story surrounded by sketches" stuff that the others had tries at doing. In this regard it does seem to keep up a constant tone and is amusing even if it rarely made me actually laugh out loud. This is the problem with a lot of the earlier films in the series – they lack the wit and cheeky humour of the films made in the heyday of the series and thus feel quite stiff and perhaps almost dull at times. There are enough amusing moments here to make it worth seeing but two or three good laughs in 90 minutes is not really enough I'm afraid.

The cast are the same from the first film with a few additions and yet still lacking some of the names that are synonymous with the series (Sid James in particular). Connor is OK in a simple role; Eaton is pretty to look at even if she has few laughs to her name; Hawtrey seems to be in his own film but is fun regardless; Phillips does his usual stuff but familiarity has not bred contempt in me and I enjoyed him; Hyde-White is good value and has the famous final scene to himself while Joan Sims runs around a lot in the way she did in the early days. Owen is OK but the film is stolen by a typical but funny turn from Williams and the very famous Matron character as played by Jacques, who suits the larger than life domineering character well.

Overall this is not a great film and it has not dated well at all. It is amusing but yet rarely that funny – a problem when it seems to be trying to be wacky and outrageous at each step. Time has not treated it well and it is the structured but cheeky Carry On films that have lasted the best. Fans of the series may like it and the cast certainly make it worth a look but this is nothing that special and were it not part of this famous series I doubt it would be seen that often by many viewers.

The next time you're in your hospital bed and two nurses walk in with a long-stemmed daffodil, do not under any circumstance roll over on your stomach.

Carry On Nurse was the second in the Carry On stream of British comedies that began with Carry On Sergeant and lasted for nearly 20 years. You'll either love 'em or you'll hate 'em. You'll love Carry On Nurse, or at least feel a warm, gentle glow of nostalgia break out over you like a rash, if naughty humor based on bedpans, buxom nurses, buttock massages and bunions make you smile. We're in a hospital ward where the male patients are ruled by Matron and where almost every nurse is a knock-out. Naturally, they innocently cause acute adjustment problems for the men who are away from wives and girlfriends. The Carry On gang is represented here by Kenneth Connor as an anxious but well-meaning boxer; Kenneth Williams, all intellectual condescension; Terence Longdon, the good-looking observer; Charles Hawtrey, who made mincing about an art form; Hattie Jacques as the iron-willed Matron; and a number of others, including a solo appearance by Wilfred Hyde-White as a demanding patient who winds up in the best joke of the movie. It involves that daffodil. Among the nurses is Shirley Eaton, guaranteed to disturb any man's dreams.

The story, such as it is, is even slighter than Carry On Sergeant. Carry On Nurse is really a series of episodic vignettes and jokes, leading up to Hawtrey swishing about in a nurse's uniform, Williams brandishing knives and preparing to remove a bunion while reading how to do it, Connor administering the anesthetic which turns out to be laughing gas, and poor Lesley Phillips, who just wanted his bunion fixed so he could get on with a bit of snogging he'd arranged for the next day. The whole thing's a funny set up.

By the gross-out standards of today's movie humor, Carry On Nurse is about as raunchy as Pollyanna. It's vulgar, silly and a lot of fun. Just like the use that daffodil is put to.

The Carry On formula was a straightforward one: take any familiar stuffy Brit institution with its blustering authority figures and inflexible bureaucracy and reduce it to chaos with a little strategically applied low class maliciousness. The resulting mayhem and farcical runnings about inevitably turn pompous prigs into quivering jellies, to the roaring amusement of Brit audiences who lived their lives under the heel of such petty authorities and loved to watch them taken down.

Carry on Nurse, with its casual snipes at the Public Health, zany ward carryings on after hours by bored neglected patients fed up with their authoritarian Matron (Hattie Jacques, in her first of more than a dozen appearances as this familiar type) and fighting back in a series of anarchic stunts, shows the Carry On formula in ready-made form and is an excellent starting point for new viewers.

The second in the popular series is one of the best, but also the first in a quartet of medical lampoons from this stable – the others being CARRY ON DOCTOR (1968), CARRY ON AGAIN, DOCTOR (1969) and CARRY ON MATRON (1972); I’ve watched the latter but not the other two, though I should be able to get to them fairly soon...

Anyway, coming very early in the series, CARRY ON NURSE – which manages to make the most of its single setting – isn’t as crude or as slapdash as a good many of the later entries regrettably proved to be: in fact, it’s pretty much in the vein of classic British comedy of the time (such as the satirical films by the Boultings). The cast brings together several practiced performers in the field: Kenneth Connor (his “Cor, Blimey” attitude as a boxer with a broken hand is somewhat reminiscent of Norman Wisdom), Kenneth Williams (having a less central role than would be the case later but in quite good form as a bookworm nuclear scientist who’s also something of a misanthrope), Charles Hawtrey (playing a radio fanatic, where his prissy antics are already a bit over-the-top), Joan Sims (as an accident-prone nurse), Hattie Jacques (as the fearsome Matron – which became her trademark role), Wilfrid Hyde-White (as an old man whose military record allows him privileged service at the hospital but hasn’t rescinded his gambling mania!), Leslie Philips (as a fun-loving sort who in a drunken binge with his fellow patients decides to have them perform his delayed operation themselves – the latter scene is the film’s hilarious highlight where, predictably, laughing gas is let loose at the most inopportune moment).

The nominal leads here are actually Terence Longdon as a recovering reporter and gorgeous Shirley Eaton as the idealized nurse, who provide the obligatory romantic interest; Jill Ireland (the future Mrs. Charles Bronson) has one of her earliest roles as the girl who finally ensnares Williams, while both Michael Medwin and Norman Rossington appear briefly – as, respectively, Connor’s manager (a self-proclaimed showman) and a punch-drunk remnant of the boxing profession. Other gags revolve around a snob patient who’s continually embarrassed by his commoner wife, another who’s occasionally compelled to run riot in the corridors, and an impossibly solemn-looking student nurse. Apart from throwing Longdon and Eaton in each other’s arms, the denouement sees the release of several of the ‘star’ patients from the hospital – and culminates with the long-suffering nurses’ revenge on the fastidious Hyde-White, by fitting a daffodil in his rectum instead of a thermometer just as the Matron is making her rounds!