In Morrissey’s “Autobiography”, he discusses phoning the great English comedian Charles Hawtrey in an attempt to get Hawtrey to appear in a video, stumbling over his words to the man and finally having the phone put down on him.
Morrissey doesn’t blame Hawtrey and neither do I. Helen Bach has made the point to me that I love “Autobiography” because his cultural references are the same as mine and that is certainly true of Hawtrey, the member of the “Carry On” movie series starring the likes Of Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Joan Simmons, Barbra Windsor, and others, which from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s were the franchise players to beat. Hawtrey was hysterical, playing the same role whether it was Ceaser’s father in law or an Indian chief.
Hawtrey was a member in standing of the troop: a frail, wispy, in retrospect obviously gay man with a twinkle in his eye and drop dead comic timing. In those days if the closeted, and apparently promiscuous, Hawtrey had admitted his homosexuality he would have been jailed.
Add to that Hawtrey’s alcoholism, it is hardly a surprise he ended his time here alone and drunk back in 1988.
But what we are left with is a revered comic genius, just about all the “Carry Ons” are right carry ons, they’ve have survived and prospered (though not in the States!), slapstick, puns, big boobed women, and gags for 80 minutes a movie.; all of them are good, some of them are great. “Carry On Spying”, an early one, where Kenneth William manages to get every secret agent killed and that’s just for starts, might be a good place to start. “Carry On Cabbie” is pretty great as well. “Carry On Screaming” (If you know the series I’ll just admit to preferring the black and white ones). Oh yeah and maybe the greatest of them “Carry On Cleo”.
Hawtrey spent 50 years in the business,, music (he was known as “The Angel Voiced Choirboy” as a teen phenom), movies in the 1920s – 1968, television, radio -you name it. It is a pleasure to have a reason to write about the brilliant, unhappy man.
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