Displaying items by tag: Dora Bryan

OPERATION BULLSHINE

UK, 1959, 84 minutes, Colour.

Donald Sinden, Barbara Murray, Carole Leslie, Ronald Shiner, Naunton Wayne, Dora Bryan, John Cairney, Fabia Drake, Joan Rice, Daniel Massey, Barbara Hicks..

Directed by Gilbert Gunn.

Watching this British comedy in the late 1950s, emerging in the same time as the Carry on series, including Carry on Sergeant in a similar vein, it is surprising to see how sexist this film is. Most of the man are ogling and drooling over the women. There are implications that women shouldn’t be involved in Army training manoeuvres. And there are all kinds of sex-farce complications about marriage and affairs.

One notices that many bloggers refer to the film as “witless”, as regards its themes and as regards the type of farce comedy on display. (The theme song throughout the film is Girls in Arms. Girls at Sea was released the year before, both films directed by Gilbert Gunn.

There are some surprises in the cast, especially Donald Sinden, a popular leading man of the 1950s as well as comedian, Naunton Wayne, best known for his comedy routines with Basil Dearden, especially 20 years earlier in The Lady Vanishes. There were comedians of the time like Ronald Shiner who appeared in both films as did Fabia Drake and Daniel Massey, Massey at the beginning of his career. The main member of the cast who gets into the spirit of things and gets away with a lot of the comedy as well as vigorous dancing is Dora Bryan.

While the film be seen as indicative of British comedy of the 1950s – and its themes developing during the 1960s with greater permissiveness, it does not offer a great deal of entertainment value.

CARRY ON SERGEANT

UK, 1958, 84 minutes, Black-and-white.

William Hartnell, Shirley Eaton, Bob Monkhouse, Eric Barker, Dora Bryan, Bill Owen, Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Terrence Longden, Norman Rossington, Hattie Jacques, Terry Scott, Ed Devereaux.

Directed by Gerald Thomas.

The first of the Carry on films which were to continue into the 60s and 70s, all of them directed by Gerald Thomas. This film was typical enough of the comedy of the 1950s, a focus on the military, a group of national service for 10 weeks training, a motley and comical group, as well as a focus on the sergeant who wants to win an award for the best company, his corporal assistant and the commanding officer. Very much focus on the male characters.

However, Shirley Eaton, some years before Goldfinger, is the just married wife of one of the recruits, Bob Monkhouse, and Dora Bryan does her usual comic thing as a rather flighty cook.

In many ways, this is a straightforward British comedy, a basis for the future Carry on films, but very different from the jokey, sometimes a leering style of the subsequent films. (Comparison can be made with Operation Bullshine of 1959, the army, much more in the vein of the later Carry on films.)

Which means that this film is enjoyable for audiences of British comedy of the 1950s.

Interestingly, in view of the later Carry on films, the first list of cast seen in the opening credits highlights stars who were not regulars in most of the Carry on films (William Hartnell as the sergeant having top billing, Eric Barker, in some of the films, as the commander and the later top-rated billing of Bob Monkhouse). Then, the next list has the regulars who are there right from the beginning, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, then Hattie Jacques and even a glimpse at the beginning of Terry Scott, conversing with Ed Devereaux.

Kenneth Connor is an extreme hypochondriac, Hattie Jacques the doctor, Charles Hawtrey as usual, but enjoyable to see Kenneth Williams as an intellectual soldier, helping others, but his usual speaking style.

No Sid James until the third Carry on film. No Joan Sims, but she appeared in the next one.

For fans of the Carry on series, instructive and perhaps surprisingly enjoyable, especially with its reticence, reminding us how the series began.

UP THE FRONT

UK, 1972, 89 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, Bill Fraser, William Mervyn, Linda Gray, Jonathan Cecil, Dora Bryan, Stanley Holloway, Bob Hoskins, Peter Bull, Vernon Dobtcheff..

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Frankie Howerd had a long career in comedy, especially in television and films. During the 1960s and early 1970s he appeared in The Chastity Belt and, especially, the comedy television series Up Pompeii. He also appeared in several Carry on films.

Frankie Howerd characteristically broke the fourth wall, looking at the audience, looking straight to camera, confiding all his thoughts and feelings, his jokes, his mischief, and the touch of the affected disapproval at times to the audience.

This film, playing with the Pompeii title, is set in World War I, Up the Front, starting in an aristocratic mansion, Frankie Howerd is Lurk, a servant, hypnotised during a show, then volunteering for the war – and all kinds of adventures and misadventures in France at the front.

Once again, a considerable number of British character actors are there in support. But, Frankie Howerd is an acquired taste, popular in his time, but not so lasting. Which means that this is a film for his fans and for those studying the style of popular British film comedy in the 1960s and 1970s.