SID JAMES was famous for playing some of the most lecherous roles on screen – but behind the scenes he was the perfect gent, according to the Carry On girls he starred opposite.
Valerie Leon, who appeared in seven of the saucy comedies including a TV Christmas special and went on to be a Bond girl, recalls that the inappropriate behaviour rife in the 1960s entertainment industry was notably absent from the Carry On sets.
She said: “Sid was a true gentleman and not at all like his lecherous Carry On persona.
"In the 1960s, along with many young actresses, I often had to endure unwanted attention which nowadays would be deemed sexual harassment.
“But on the Carry On set I never saw any such behaviour — in fact Sid was very quick to step in and intervene when a visiting executive once tried it on with one of the girls.”
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Valerie, now 80, is speaking out to mark the 50th anniversary of the film Carry On Girls, with a foreword in a new book, The Carry On Girls — which salutes the hard-working, glamorous and no-nonsense female stars of a fun-filled era in British cinema.
While the franchise was best known for cheeky innuendo and skimpy outfits, the book reveals that the culture on set was remarkably respectful to women.
Director Gerald Thomas even personally stepped in to make sure that none of the female stars were put into compromising positions when it came to sex scenes.
In an anecdote recounted in the book, Carry On legend Kenneth Williams recalled: “When you see a love scene in a Carry On film or a bloke getting in a lather over some girl’s boobs, the chances are that in reality, on the set there’s no girl there at all.
"Once Gerald has got all the shots he wants of the girl, he sends her home. Then he takes her place.
“So the reaction shots you see on the screen of a bloke getting going are done opposite Gerald.
“He sits there and prompts you. ‘Come on’, he says, ‘you’re throbbing with it. She’s getting them out! You can’t believe your eyes!’ Of course, you respond to this like mad.”
Perhaps it’s little wonder that some of the sexiest stars of their day, from Barbara Windsor to Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques, returned again and again to Carry On.
Valerie was 24 when she landed her first Carry On role in 1968, as a harem girl in Carry On Up The Khyber.
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Although she admits she did “little more than proffer fruit and try to look exotic”, she was instantly hooked.
Six months later she returned for Carry On Camping — which saw the writer Talbot Rothwell face attempted censorship for some of the film’s more suggestive lines.
She recalled: “I struggled to keep a straight face while showing Charles Hawtrey how to put his pole up — his tent pole, I hasten to add.
“We had tremendous trouble with the censor over that risqué line.”
But her personal favourite was starring in Carry On Up The Jungle, “dressed in a fur bikini à la Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC.”
She added: “I played the aptly named Leda, head of an intrepid all-female tribe called the Lubi Dubbis.
“We inhabited the village of Aphrodisia and were manhunters of a different variety.”
Her final appearance was in Carry On Girls in 1973, playing Bernard Bresslaw’s uptight girlfriend Patricia Potter, who later blossoms into a beauty contestant and shares a catwalk with Barbara Windsor and Margaret Nolan.
Valerie said: “The severe-looking glasses I wore as plain Patricia were in fact my own, which I had used when working at Harrods before I invested in contact lenses.”
She added: “I will never forget how warm and welcoming Barbara Windsor was to me. She took me under her wing and really was the epitome of the joyous, earthy, funny Cockney sparrow — a true professional who could sing, dance, make you laugh and make you cry.”
Other Carry On girls quoted in the book include Jacki Piper, who starred opposite Terry Scott in Carry On Up The Jungle.
She recalled that during a scene when they both had to use a rope swing — Jacki with a hook on her bikini, Terry with one on his loincloth — the rope pulled so tight it left them both with rope burns.
There was also an amusing conclusion to her bedroom scene with a gorilla, played by Reuben Martin, when years later she was working with Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker at the BBC.
She recalled: “While queuing for lunch, a man came running up to me and said, ‘Are you Jacki Piper? My father went to bed with you!’
“It was Reuben Martin’s son. This amused the two Ronnies greatly.
“It’s just my luck though — my only bedroom scene on screen is with a gorilla!”
And Louise Burton, 68, who starred in Carry On England aged just 20, said she was not in the least bit put off by her contract, which required her to appear nude from the waist up.
She said: “I didn’t mind — I was ready for anything. I was just so thrilled to be appearing in a Carry On film.”
- This is an edited extract from The Carry On Girls, by Gemma Ross and Robert Ross (£25, The History Press) published on November 23.
