Carry
On Emmannuelle Trivia
- Nobody's know why there is an extra 'n' in the title,
but I suppose it stops any confusion over copyrights.
- After Ranks association with the series for so long,
and the problems Rogers had with the last few, he got independent backing for
Emmannuelle from Hemdale, and formed a new production company called aptly
Thirtieth Films.
- Emmanuelle flopped completely at the box office.
More fruity that previous Carry Ons, but not saucy enough for the people who
would watch the original, it fell between a rock and a hard place.
- Kenneth Williams was very unhappy about the script and
continually refused to do it. After numerous rewrites he still wasn't
happy, and only did it out of friendship for the film makers. He got
£6000 to take the role, his highest fee ever.
- With the Rank Organisation disinterested in
continuing with the Carry Ons and EMI happy to reach closure after its
involvement in the That’s Carry On compilation, producer Peter Rogers and
director Gerald Thomas found themselves without a budget and a distributing
company. Cleves Investments stepped in to finance the new film although the
amount had risen to just under £350,000 – almost £100,000 in excess of the
budget for Carry On England. Cleves, who had an option to have first refusal
on financing the next five Carry Ons, found Hemdale Films happy to
distribute Carry On Emmannuelle. The additional ‘N’ in the title bemused
critics: “misspelt as well as misconceived” was Derek Malcolm’s succinct
comment.
- The screenplay was written by Lance Peters who had
also secured the use of the title for an ‘X’ rated Arrow Books novel. The
original script was considerably toned down by Peter Rogers “to make it
suitable for a Carry On” and both Willy Rushton and Vince Powell were
drafted in to write additional, uncredited, sequences for inclusion. Despite
continual coaxing from the publishers Peter Rogers steadfastly refused
permission for the Carry On poster artwork or stills from the film to be
used on the cover because “it would give the impression that you are
publishing the book of the film which you are not.”
- In celebration of this milestone Carry On film,
Gerald Thomas reinvented his production company as Thirtieth Films for Carry
On Emmannuelle. Although legal this decision initially caused unease in
investors as the ‘new’ company had no track record in film production. An
agreement that this Carry On would reverse the recent policy of casting
several non-Carry On actors, reassured the industry, however. Still, at one
stage, it looked likely that Peter Rogers would move production to Bray
Studios, a studio used for Hemdale’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles, because
it was 20% cheaper than Pinewood. In the end, Peter secured free use of a
Pinewood sound stage at a saving of almost £12,000.
- Urban myth dictates that Barbara Windsor walked off
the set in disgust at the ‘pornographic’ quality of the film. In truth,
Barbara was never on the set although she was, originally, scheduled to be
in the film. Having agreed to be billed as “with odd appearances by Barbara
Windsor” she was to have played four different characters in four days of
filming: the female fantasy figures in the Peter Butterworth, Kenneth Connor
and Jack Douglas kitchen-table flashback sequences, as well as a nurse at
the end of the film. In the end, the final day of the even more restrictedly
rigid filming schedule clashed with a long-planned holiday and Barbara
dropped out of the project all together.
- The final day of filming was, ironically, one of the
earliest scenes in the film: Jack Douglas on location in Wembley as he
welcomes his ‘mistress’ back home. It was never intended as a close to the
series and, indeed, several projects were already vying for Peter Rogers’s
schedule including Carry On Again Nurse and Carry On Down Under. In 1980
Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques had confirmed willingness to star in the
antipodean film but the financial backer disappeared and the film was put on
hold. Once Hattie died in the October of that year, the series seemed
doomed. Despite the relentless talk of the proposed ‘31st film’ over the
years it wasn’t until 1992 that Jim Dale sailed into view as Christopher
Columbus!
