Carry On at Your Convenience ** (1971, Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Bernard Bresslaw, Kenneth Cope) – Classic Movie Review 1,912

The Carry On team carries on round the comedy bend and celebrates their 1971 22nd movie Carry On at Your Convenience at a suitable location, W C Boggs’s lavatory factory. Sidney James stars as Sid Plummer, Kenneth Williams plays W C Boggs. Kenneth Cope co-stars.

Flushed with their Sixties toilet humour success, the Carry On team carries on round the comedy bend and celebrates their 1971 22nd movie Carry On at Your Convenience at a suitable location, W C Boggs’s lavatory factory, where there is industrial strife and the foreman’s budgie predicts horse race winners. Are the the Carry On team plumbing the comedy depths or are they flushed with success?

Sidney James stars as site foreman Sid Plummer, Kenneth Williams plays traditionalist factory owner W C Boggs, Hattie Jacques is Sid’s long-suffering wife Beattie Plummer.

Joan Sims (as Sid’s lascivious co-worker Chloë Moore), Charles Hawtrey (as floral-shirt-wearing product designer Charles Coote), Bernard Bresslaw (as dim union stooge Bernie Hulke) and the usual Carry On cast help to make Talbot Rothwell’s moderate screenplay entirely bearable, chewing over its ancient gags and groan-worthy innuendoes (the club is called The Whippet Inn) in some style. A bawdy and boozy day trip to Brighton is a highlight.

Kenneth Cope co-stars in the first of his two starring Carry On appearances (after an uncredited role in Carry On Jack (1963) as Vic Spanner, the bolshie union representative who puts a Spanner in the works by calling a strike at any provocation.

Richard O’Callaghan (as W C’s son Lewis Boggs), Patsy Rowlands (as W C’s adoring secretary Miss Hortense Withering), Jacki Piper (as Sid’s daughter, factory canteen worker Myrtle Plummer), Bill Maynard (as Chloe’s travelling salesman husband Fred), Davy Kaye (as Sid’s bookie Benny), Renée Houston (as Vic’s mother), Leon Greene, Marianne Stone, Margaret Nolan, Geoffrey Hughes and Harry Towb also appear to considerable advantage.

This comedy of embarrassment certainly has its embarrassing moments among the many laughs. The movie has rough edges and lacks charm, but the lovely performers compensate, with a tasty cast of regulars in Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques and Bernard Bresslaw.

Carry On producer Peter Rogers was in for a shock. Its budget was £218,805 but it was the first box office failure of the series and did not return its production costs until 1976 after international and TV sales. It is speculated that this was due to portraying trade union activists as idle buffoons, supposedly alienating the series’ working-class audience. It might also have been due to Sid James’s usual girl-chasing character being changed to the kind of put-upon family man he played in the TV sitcom Bless This House. Sid’s persona was quickly reinstated in subsequent Carry Ons.

It was shot from 22 March to 7 May 1971. Interiors were shot at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire. Exteriors were shot at Brighton Palace Pier, Clarges Hotel Brighton, Pinewood Green, Pinewood Estate. The Red Lion, Shreding Green, Buckinghamshire, Kings Head, Albourne, West Sussex, Cricketers Inn, Royal Naval Arms, The Seagull, The Trout Inn, The Man In Space, Odeon Cinema, Uxbridge, Middlesex, Heatherden Hall, and Black Park Country Park, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire.

It runs 86 minutes.

It was released by the Rank Organisation on 10 December 1971.

It is followed by Carry On Matron (1972).

The 31 Carry On films are Sergeant, Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless, Cruising, Cabby, Jack, Spying, Cleo, Cowboy, Screaming!, Don’t Lose Your Head, Follow That Camel, Doctor, Up the Khyber, Camping, Again Doctor, Up the Jungle, Loving, Henry, At Your Convenience, Matron, Abroad, Girls, Dick, Behind, England, That’s Carry On!, Emmannuelle, Columbus.

The cast are Sid James as Sid Plummer, Kenneth Williams as W C Boggs, Charles Hawtrey as Charles Coote, Hattie Jacques as Beattie Plummer, Joan Sims as Chloe Moore, Bernard Bresslaw as Bernie Hulke, Kenneth Cope as Vic Spanner, Jacki Piper as Myrtle Plummer, Richard O’Callaghan as Lewis Boggs, Patsy Rowlands as Hortense Withering, Davy Kaye as Benny, Bill Maynard as Fred Moore, Renée Houston as Agatha Spanner, Marianne Stone as Maud, Margaret Nolan as Popsy, Geoffrey Hughes as Willie, Hugh Futcher as Ernie, Simon Cain as Barman, Amelia Bayntun as Mrs Spragg, Leon Greene as Chef, Harry Towb as film doctor, Shirley Stelfox as Bunny waitress, Peter Burton as hotel manager, Julian Holloway as Roger, and Anouska Hempel as new canteen girl.

Carry On at Your Convenience is directed by Gerald Thomas, runs 86 minutes, is distributed by the Rank Organisation, is written by Talbot Rothwell, is produced by Peter Rogers, is shot by Ernest Steward, and is scored by by Eric Rogers.

Kenneth Cope (14 April 1931 – 11 September 2024).

Kenneth Cope appears uncredited in Carry On Jack (1963) as Sailor, but later had leading roles in Carry On at Your Convenience as Vic Spanner and in Carry On Matron (1972) as Cyril Carter.

The obnoxious shop steward Vic Spanner is central to both the main trade union/ industrial problems storyline in Carry On at Your Convenience and to the romantic sub-plot as the rival. But in Carry On Matron (1972) Cope has the sympathetic role of Cyril Carter, a thief’s son forced to impersonate a female nurse in his father’s bid to rob a maternity hospital.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,912

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/

Joan Sims plays Chloë Moore.

Bernard Bresslaw as Bernie Hulke.

Margaret Nolan is well remembered as Dink in Goldfinger.

Patsy Rowlands plays Hortence Withering.