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Louise Burton starred in Carry On England in 1976 and Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978, but although the mockumentaries have been criticized for their portrayal of women the actress insists she has never felt sexualized on screen or on set.
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Gemma Ross and Robert Ross’ The Carry On Girls celebrates 50 years of the women who starred in the iconic franchise.
I’m extremely proud to be one of the Carry On girls, they were films that made people laugh and I never felt like we were sex objects by being a part of it.
It’s such a different era now, isn’t it? All the things that were on TV back then they wouldn’t even get the first word, let alone make a whole series of films. But it was harmless fun, there was nothing terrible in them.
It was just funny and we used to spend the whole week laughing and laughing. I think it was great and I think it’s a shame that that kind of humor, which is completely harmless, has all but disappeared.
If you look at the dramas now – some of the sex scenes today are incredible, they are on the verge of porn, but it is completely acceptable.
We weren’t doing anything close to graphic, but if it’s in a play is it okay? You think about things today. I think they are much sexier, more obvious. I personally would rather have the comedy, the marked comedy without the graphic scenes themselves.
Is someone portrayed as obscene because they make a sexual scene? Of course not. It is part of life and it was part of life then. You couldn’t get away with what you do now, and likewise now you would never get away with what we did then.
It is the most strange, it has turned around. It seems that the video is approved but the story is not.
My time on the Carry On films started with Carry On England as Private Evans, I was either 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 to me as well. it was exciting to even dream about going to Pinewood, let alone go on a casting.
When I got there, Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers said to us ‘look, first we’re just looking for certain types, we’re literally going to see who we feel would be good for the film height wise , size-wise, hair color etc.’ and they were all lined up with us – but it wasn’t like a cattle train, I can’t explain. The ones that were rejected, they didn’t feel like they weren’t good enough.
They were looking at us and saying ‘they looked really good with that one, and they look good with that one’, and then I heard the name Melvin Hayes mentioned. Melvin is a very small man, and he was quite funny teaching at my drama school, and they wanted me, I believe, to do a little bit with him first. So I was one of the Carry On girls, that’s how it all started.
I was 17 or 18, driving in through Pinewood Studios, and here was this young guy from Brighton from an ordinary working class family. It was just mind-blowing, exciting and mind-blowing.
The first day I went straight to make-up, meeting the other girls. The first morning I was so nervous, excited, and scared. What if they don’t like me? What if they decide to send me back home again? What would I say to my mother and father? What would I tell all my friends? What excuse would I give if they didn’t like me when they put me on the set? Silly things like that would be going through your head.
Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers were gentlemen, very kind and caring. Because I came from Brighton I had nowhere to stay, every night I was staying somewhere different. They were really worried about me, I was the youngest person on the set and they used to ask ‘But where are you staying tonight? Will you be all right and how will you get to the station and back in the morning?’ They were really worried, but absolute gentlemen.
I ended up filming 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 nude from the waist up you couldn’t see anything. At the time, most beaches you could lie topless so the guys, the actors, had seen it all before. They weren’t at all interested in us being topless. Seriously, it was nothing.
It’s not what people thought, they weren’t — all the men, the people backstage and all the cameras — all standing there with their tongues out. They worry too much about the lighting, and ‘did that person get in line fast enough?’ and ‘what was that noise in the background? Is that a bird flying over? Will that ruin the sound?’
And it was so black and white, it wasn’t sexual at all. It wasn’t sexual. I think all the girls were running late and not dressed, it’s funny. What’s so terrible about that?
I didn’t think about it, I have to be honest, I didn’t think about doing it. And, of course, at the time you had all the girls in 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, Jack Lyons was just a lovely character, a lovely man and full of nonsense.
He meets me at the zoo and I’m sucking a lollipop, which apparently has become iconic. I turn the lollipop around and the other side says percussion, and Jack’s character comes up and says ‘do you feel like going for a walk?’ We end up in an empty cage, and it’s a gorilla cage. I mean, really, it’s ridiculous.
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It’s complete nonsense, but the lolly became iconic. Apparently I was meant to do other films, but they didn’t do any more, which was a shame.
I’m glad I was one of those Carry On people, with that kind of sense of humour. I don’t think it’s right to say that we had objectivity or power from them, I don’t feel that one has power. I saw it as a job to make people laugh, to entertain people.
It was nothing more than that, you were in an iconic film with iconic people making everyone laugh. So that made me happy, and I used to come out every day smiling and looking forward to going back the next morning. I think the majority of people, they get so much pleasure from watching the movies that it’s just pride, that’s what I think: Pride. Nothing more than pride.
Louise told her story to Roxy Simons
The Carry On Girls starring Gemma Ross and Robert Ross will be released on November 23, 2023.
