Carry On Cowboy

And now it's back to the Old West in 1965's Carry On Cowboy (Anglo-Amalgamated, UK). Featuring a brief appearance by the Ballet Montparnasse, the film's cancan sequence is one of the best-remembered of the 1960s, due to the overwhelming popularity of the Carry On franchise.

Notorious outlaw Johnny Finger (Sid James), rides into the frontier-town of Stodge City, immediately gunning down three complete strangers and taking over the local saloon. Within a few weeks, Belle's Palace has devolved into a den of iniquity, where a troupe of cancan girls (played by the Ballet Montparnasse) entertains the criminal element.

 

Naturally, the puritanical Judge Burke (Kenneth Williams) is mortified by the sight of pretty young women "showing their underthings" in public ("right up to here") and attempts to close the show down, the ensuing conflict leading to one zany situation after another. 

The Golden Age part 3

The 1970s were a kind of Golden Era for the British television and film industries. While Hammer, Ealing and Amicus rose to prominence, BBC, ITV and Thames cornered the market on comedies, dramas and police procedurals. There was no shortage of risque content either; the Carry On gang were at the height of their game, Benny Hill was elevating farce to the level of an artform and the hottest part of The Sun was Page Three. Virtually every TV series produced after 1969 incorporated gratuitous panty shots, unexpected stripteases, wardrobe "malfunctions" and full-figure lingerie scenes.

 

 

Sid cops an eyeful in Bless This House.

As the decade progressed, the studios' costume departments kept pace with the fashion industry, especially where the actresses' underwear was concerned. Female cast members wore floral bras and briefs during the early seventies, eventually giving way to gauzy French intimates towards the Eighties. It's interesting to note that this obsession with the bare essentials wasn't confined to rom-coms and variety shows; "dolly birds" turned up in productions as disparate as UFO, The Sweeney and The Professionals.

 

From: Carry On Abroad, Carry on Loving and Doctor in Trouble.

 

George Layton  cops an eyeful in Doctor at Large.

 

Click on the "start" arrow to begin. You may need to click more than once..

 

Fast forward to 1.12.

The Golden Age part 2

British comedies of the 60s and 70s often included completely gratuitous lingerie scenes, randomly dropped into the script for no apparent reason at all. Phenomenally popular in Commonwealth nations, they've since became a mainstay in the popular culture. It's no exaggeration to say that an entire generation of young men grew up checking the weekly news guide to see when the latest episode of Dick Emery or The Two Ninnies was coming out.

As mentioned elsewhere, Sid James probably started it all off with the Carry On franchise, of which 1961's "Regardless" is still one of the best known examples.

As suggested by the image posted above, the humor was similar to The Benny Hill Show and the girls just as beautiful. It's interesting to see how lingerie styles changed over the years. For example, in the early 1960s, the girls wore suspenders and stockings:

 

 

...while a few years later, they wore only bra and panties:

 

By the 1970s, fashions had changed completely:

 

 

Then suspender stockings made a brief comeback (for one film) in 1972...

In British comedies, young girls weren't embarrassed to walk around in their lingerie, even if there were men watching. They were completely innocent, and seemed to enjoy modeling their underwear in public. It's unfortunate they don't make movies like this any more.

The Golden Age

Ok, let's get this thing out in the open.

Everyone loves panties. Don't try to deny it; panties are an almost universal passion, one which crosses social and cultural boundaries without exception. You can see them virtually everywhere you look; billboards, magazines, window displays and every known form of electronic media. Which would, of course, include the television and film industries, both of which enjoy a major presence on the web.

Oddly enough, despite the proliferation of cinematic blogsites on the intertubes, there is comparatively little information available on the bra-and-panty genre (if that's the right word). While you can find reams of data relating to petticoats, corsets or even opera gloves in mainstream film, the net seems to have developed a blind spot when it comes to unmentionables.
To demonstrate my point, I ran a Google search for "underwear scenes in film and TV" a few nights ago. I expected to find references to Edison's 'Black Maria' or Vitagraph's 'Mlle Elegantine', but the historical landscape could best be described as an uncharted wasteland. Aside from a few blogs similar to this one, no one seems to have attempted a comprehensive history of lingerie in western cinema.

Most of the sites I consulted listed perennial favorites such as Melanie Griffith in Working Girl or Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels, but very few mentioned the unsung heroines the classic era. A strange oversight indeed, considering that the Celebrated Lingerie Shot has a rich and colorful history stretching back beyond the memory of the present generation - even as far as the long-forgotten era of Monochrome Filmstock.


Contrary to popular belief, gratuitous panty shots didn't begin with Body Double. As most native Brits can tell you, panty-gags were a well-loved staple of 'bawdy' comedy during the 60s and 70s - and that's to say nothing about classic TV shows like Benny Hill, Doctor at Large or The Two Ninnies.

 

Images: Carry On Regardless (1961) and A Stitch in Time (1963).