Carry On Nurse

Carry On Nurse is the second Carry On film, released in 1959. Of the regular team, it featured Joan Sims, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jacques. Other cast members included Leslie Phillips, June Whitfield, Joan Hickson, Bill Owen, Shirley Eaton, Terence Longdon and Wilfrid Hyde-White.

Plot outline:

The patients in a hospital are fed up with the treatment they receive from the nurses and staff and so after getting drunk, decide to have a rebellion, perform their own operation to remove a bunion.

The film shows its theatrical roots by being almost entirely studio-bound. The principal cast almost all play character types they would later become known for. The hospital staff are portrayed as competent and conscientious but occasionally mischievous, hence the scene where nurses stick a daffodil in Wilfrid Hyde-White's bottom.

This film marked a progression from the first Carry On film, the previous year's Carry On Sergeant, principally because of its hospital setting, which gave wider scope for lavatory humour and innuendo than the army training camp setting of the first film. The setting of the film in the hospital proved very successful and was returned to by the Carry On team in Carry On Doctor, Carry On Again Doctor and Carry On Matron.

Trivia

• This was the first film in the series to feature Carry On leading lady Joan Sims, who went on to star in the most Carry On productions (film/stage/television) of all the regular team.
• The film was based on a play Ring For Catty by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale. Norman Hudis adapted this into a script. The play was filmed again in 1962 as Twice Round the Daffodils - again directed by Gerald Thomas and featuring Kenneth Williams and Joan Sims!
• Carry On Nurse was the top grossing film of 1959
• A future Miss Marple, Joan Hickson, played a no-nonsense sister and Reggie Perrin's Doc Morrissey John Horsley (actor) appears as an anaesthetist
• This is the first occasion on which Hattie Jacques plays her familiar Carry On role of 'Matron', even though she played a similar part in the previous year's Carry On Sergeant.
• Charles Hawtrey dresses up (convincingly) as a nurse in his first appearance in the Carry on films. This is contrasted with unconvincing cross-dressing in later Carry on films.
• Bill Owen who made his second Carry On appearance here is better known for his long-running role as "Compo" in the BBC television series Last of the Summer Wine.
• Making their Carry On debuts were actors Leslie Phillips and June Whitfield, who would play the King and Queen of Spain thirty-four years later in the last Carry On film Carry On Columbus.
• Michael Medwin (who played Ginger) was one of the stars of Television's The Army Game and was also one of the Three Live Wires. He would become a star again later in life as Don Satchley in Shoestring, and Mr Langley in Colin's Sandwich.
• The film was a considerable success at the box office,both in the UK and surprisingly the US,where it was reported it played at some cinemas for three years.

Filming Dates

3 November 1958 - 12 December 1958

External links

• Carry On Films at The Whippit Inn Detailed information on the Carry On film series.
• Carry On Nurse at IMDb