Carry On Doctor *** (1967, Frankie Howerd, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Sidney James, Barbara Windsor) – Classic Movie Review 1884

Frankie Howerd stars in Carry On Doctor in 1967 with almost all the regular Carry On team, the 15th in the series, the second to have a medical theme. They gather in style for this successful attempt to recapture the laughs and high spirits of the previous Carry On hospital episode, Carry On Nurse, in 1959. Even if it’s not the best Carry On film ever, it is still a firm favourite because of the cast and the situations.

It’s a hard and busy life at the hospital. While the overbearing Matron (Hattie Jacques) romances the supercilious Dr Tinkle (Kenneth Williams), bedridden layabout Charlie Roper (Sidney James) smokes under the bedclothes, Nurse Sandra May (Barbara Windsor) pops out of her nurse’s uniform, and the popular Dr Jim Kilmore (Jim Dale) is sacked after being discovered in a compromising position on the roof of the nurses’ home.

Howerd raises a lot of laughs in the first of his only two appearances in the series as a crazy charlatan faith healer called Francis Bigger (‘What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.’) who is convinced that mind over matter is more effective than medical treatment.

Jacques returns for the first time since Carry On Cabby four years earlier, while Windsor returns after her debut in Carry On Spying three years earlier. Bernard Bresslaw, Peter Butterworth, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, June Jago, Dilys Laye, Derek Francis, Peter Gilmore, Julian Orchard, Julian Holloway, Peter Jones, Deryck Guyler, Gwendoline Watts, Dandy Nichols, Valerie Van Ost and Alexandra Dane also star. All these plus Sixties singer Anita Harris too (as Nurse Clarke) in her second and final appearance in the series, and Penelope Keith in her (uncredited) film debut as Plain Nurse, after 10 years of TV work.

It was very popular as the third biggest hit at the British box office in 1968 and an immediate sequel was arranged – Carry On Again Doctor in 1969.

The portrait hanging over one of the doors is of James Robertson Justice with the name ‘Dr James R. Justice, Founder’. He starred as Sir Lancelot Spratt in the rival Doctor films, produced by Carry On producer Peter Rogers’s wife Betty E Box. Rogers gave Box a percentage of the film’s receipts for the use of the Doctor title.

James‘s part was written so he could spend most of his time in bed as he had recently suffered a heart attack. There’s a reference to the daffodil thermometer scene in Carry On Nurse. When a nurse approaches Francis Bigger with a daffodil, he says: ‘Oh no you don’t! I saw that film!’ As usual it was almost all filmed at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, but Maidenhead Town Hall in Berkshire stands in for the exterior shots of the hospital, and the Masonic Hall in Uxbridge and Westbourne Street in London WC2 also appear.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1884

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