Carry on Sergeant (1958)
Directed by Gerald Thomas

Film Review

For what was to be the first entry in one of the most successful and longest running films series of all time, Carry On Sergeant feels like a miracle of understatement.  Lacking the bawdy humour and camp excesses that would become the most characteristic features of the series, and with most of the familiar faces conspicuous by their absence, it is barely recognisable as a Carry On film.  But how many adults resemble the new-born babies they once were?  The transition from this innocuous but charming debut feature to the classic Carry On film (as we now understand the term) would take over five years and ten films.  Sid James would not make his entrance until the fourth film in the series, and Barbara Windsor would not appear until the glorious ninth (Carry On Spying).

This first Carry On film wasn't even an original work, but an adaptation of a play by R.F. Delderfield (the author of such well-known novels as A Horseman Riding By and To Serve Them All My Days).  It was made on a budget of £75,000, which was miniscule even for a low-budget British film at the time.  Yet the film proved to be a phenomenal box office success, the third highest grossing British film of the year.  After this auspicious start, it was perhaps inevitable that the Carry On film would become a mainstay of British cinema, although no one could possibly have foreseen the series' longevity.

Carry On Sergeant was conceived as a one-off, a shameless attempt to cash in on the success of a popular BBC television sitcom called The Army Game (1957-1961).  Two of the stars of this series, William Hartnell and Charles Hawtrey, were drafted in to play similar roles in the film.  At this point in his career, Hartnell was renowned for playing tough authority figures and rogues and so he was a perfect casting choice.  In fact, he effectively reprises the part he had played so successfully in Carol Reed's 1944 film, The Way Ahead.  The actor would later go on to find lasting fame as the original Doctor Who in the mid-1960s.  Meanwhile, Hawtrey would become one of the most familiar and best-loved stars of the Carry On films, appearing in 23 of the original 29 films and the two TV Christmas films, all the time battling the alcoholism and poor self-esteem that would ultimately destroy him.

As well as Hawtrey, Carry On Sergeant introduces two actors who would become stalwarts of the Carry On series, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor.  Williams' star was already in the ascendant, thanks to his recent contributions to the popular BBC radio series Hancock's Half Hour, and Connor finally had his big break after working in film and television for almost a decade.  Several members of the large ensemble cast would appear in a number of the early Carry On films - Bill Owen (now immortalised as Compo in Last of the Summer Wine), Terence Longdon, Eric Barker and Shirley Eaton (better known as the woman who got the all-over gold spray treatment in the classic Bond movie Goldfinger).  Bob Monkhouse would have a long career on television, best known for hosting popular game shows such as The Golden Shot and Celebrity Squares.   If this film lacked anything, it certainly wasn't talent.

In common with all of the early Carry Ons, Carry On Sergeant dispenses with a strong central storyline and instead consists of a series of highly amusing vignettes within a loose narrative framework.  There is little evidence of the cheeky innuendo that would become a trademark of the series in later years; instead, the comedy relies on slapstick and inoffensive wordplay.  In common with much British comedy of the time, there is an obvious anti-authoritarian slant. This is a reflection of the them-and-us class mentality that still prevailed in Britain and also a reaction to the privations that most ordinary folk had endured over the past decade (the British have a long and proud tradition of utterly loathing the ones in charge and blaming them for everything); this would be a recurring theme in the early Carry Ons.

Producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas were taken completely by surprise when Carry On Sergeant proved to be a hit but they wasted no time making a follow-up in the same comic vein.  That film, Carry On Nurse, proved to be an even bigger success and ensured that the Carry On film would become nothing less than a Great British institution.  Who'd have thought that the series would run to 29 films over two decades, and continue to entertain millions more than forty years after it began?  Even the critics, formerly dismissive of the Carry Ons, have revised their assessment of the films and now regard them in a favourable light.  What an amazing carry on!

Film Synopsis

For the past six years, Sergeant Grimshaw has dreamed of turning out a champion platoon at his army training camp.  So far the dream had eluded him, but this time, his last opportunity before he retires, he is certain he will succeed.  Then he sees his latest National Service intake and his heart sinks.  A paranoid hypochondriac.  A clumsy nincompoop.  A hoity-toity skirt chaser.  A rock-and-roller.  An individualistic intellectual.  And a newlywed who is desperate to go off on his honeymoon.   Grimshaw soon regrets betting fifty pounds that he will knock this rabble into shape.  With nothing to lose, he accepts the advice of his corporal to be a more lenient training sergeant than usual.  But even this fails to help matters.  Never in his career has Grimshaw encountered such an undisciplined bunch of incompetent nitwits...