Carry On Teacher ** (1959, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims) – Classic Film Review 1214

Director Gerald Thomas’s 1959 film is the third Carry On movie, whose high spirits are a bit held back by having an old-fashioned, all-too-conventional story. Still no doubt rooted in the 50s, the film has a plot-led, traditional St Trinian’s-style agenda, rather than being liberated into the free-wheeling, extended series of sketches and gags that the films happily later turned into.

But very welcome faces Ted Ray and Leslie Phillips join the regulars (Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims) and together they turn Norman Hudis’s fair script into a funny film.

In the story, out-of-control pupils at Maudlin Street School play tricks on the school inspectors to sabotage their headmaster Ted Ray’s promotion. He has applied for a new job but the kids like him and want to keep him, so they plot to blacken his record.

Ted Ray was supposed to be the main star of the entire series, but eventually there was a contractual dispute so it was his only Carry On role, and Sid James replaced him as the star turn. Phillips and Sims make their second appearances in the series here, after debuting in the previous episode, Carry On Nurse.

A young Richard O’Sullivan and a young Larry Dann in the first of his four Carry On appearances turn up as pupils. Rosalind Knight, Cyril Chamberlain, Robin Stevens, Carol White, Francesca Annis, George Howell, Diana Beevers, Jacqueline Lewis, Roy Hines and Diane Langton also appear.

The interiors were filmed at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, and the exteriors at Drayton Green Primary School, Ealing.

Charles Hawtrey’s mother often visited the set. While smoking a cigarette, she accidentally dropped lit ash into her handbag. Joan Sims yelled: ‘Charlie, Charlie, your mother’s bag is on fire!’ Hawtrey poured his cup of tea into the bag, snapped it shut and carried on chatting

Richard O’Sullivan (born 1944) quit showbiz in the mid-nineties, but occasionally did commercials and voiceovers. Sadly he suffered a stroke in 2003 and is now living in a retirement home for actors. Starting as a child actor in 1953, he played Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII in Cleopatra (1963).

A song on Morrissey’s first album Late Night Maudlin Street is named after the school in this film.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1214

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/