Carry On Nurse
After the success that was Carry On Sergeant, Carry On Nurse had a tough act to follow. It started out, like Carry On Sergeant, as a script, which no one wanted. However once Norman Hudis worked his magic, Carry On Nurse was formed. Norman was having some trouble with ideas for the content of the script. However, he had to be rushed to ‘The Peace Memorial Hospital’, Watford as he had appendicitis. This equipped Norman with first hand experience with life in a hospital, he wrote his script within a week. The character Ted York (played by Terence Longdon) is semi-autobiographical.
The ending gag with the daffodil came from Norman Hudis’ Mother-in-law, Ethel Good. This gag is one of the most well known in the Carry On series and was even resurrected in Carry On Doctor with Frankie Howerd saying: “Oh no you don’t I saw that film!” Also, cinemas made a lot of money making and selling plastic daffodils at the screening of Nurse.
Carry On Nurse was shot over a period of six weeks at Pinewood Studios, during 1958. The budget was a mere £ 77,321. Many of the actors from Carry On Sergeant, appeared in Nurse as well. These included Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Connor, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Terence Longdon, Bill Owen and Shirley Eaton. Joan Sims who of course became one of the Carry On regulars also joined them for the first time. Also Leslie Phillips and June Whitfield went on to make a couple more Carry Ons each as well.
The film, to everyone’s utter astonishment was an even bigger hit than Sergeant! Carry On Nurse was the most successful film in Britain in 1959! In fact it was an even bigger astonishment that the film was a huge hit in the USA as well! One cinema in LA ran the film for over a year!
So, that’s the background to the second Carry On in the series, click the links below to find out more about the film itself, read my review and look at pictures from the film. Why not try the Carry On Nurse puzzle as well while you’re at it?
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