JOAN Sims, 71, was one of the last of the team that made the famous, or infamous, series of Carry On films - but there was much more to her than that.
Her career spanned film, television, and stagework and, in her early days, she shared a pantomime bill with Stanley Baxter at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.
One of her last roles, last year, was as an old trouper in a BBC drama, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, with Judi Dench and Leslie Caron.
She played an old trouper and she proved to be something of a trouper in real life. While filming at Hastings she suffered a fractured spine but carried on working despite agonising pain.
She completed 11 days of shooting before allowing herself to be persuaded to see a doctor.
''I was convinced I had pleurisy,'' she said at the time. ''Then they took X-rays and said 'well, actually, you've fractured your spine'.''
Over the past six years she had coped with a fractured rib, the fractured spine, an attack of Bell's palsy, and a hip replacement. She also sorted out her problems with drink and clinical depression. In the 1980s she spent some time in a psychiatric hospital which she described as a hellhole.
''You were strip-searched when you went in and met all these odd-bods. Mark you, it was wonderful for character studies.''
Despite such travails she chose the title High Spirits
for her autobiography. She appeared in 24 of the 30 Carry On films and described the cast as a surrogate family.
These films, she said, were her training ground '' because there was no way you could afford to be sensitive as a woman. You would have been crucified''.
Sims was an only child who grew up in Laindon, near
Basildon, where her father
was the stationmaster.
She recalled a lonely childhood, living in isolation from the neighbourhood children and suffering a sense of rejection from a hyprercitical and undemonstrative mother.
She never married, claiming that she had never heard anybody say the actual words ''will you marry me?'' - not even someone ''tight as a tick at a party''.
Her Carry On co-star Kenneth Williams did, apparently broach the subject once, even promising to give her a child.
Her view was that it was Kenneth, like many gay people, who was desperate for a child. ''I was quite embarrassed and it was never mentioned again.''
Despite the bawdiness of the Carry On films, Sims confessed recently that she was embarrassed by some of the modern material being shown on television.
''I don't know whether things have to be quite as explicit
as they are nowadays. The Carry On films were much more innocent.''
She said her spate of physical injuries had turned her into a couch potato, watching endless hours of television in her small rented flat in Kensington.
''It makes me sick to see naked people, those naked shows.'' she said. ''It makes me absolutely despair of what children are watching.''
Joan Sims, actress; born May 9, 1930, died June
27, 2001.
Robert Ross
