In the autumn of 2020 one of those really special moments happened. I was made aware of an upcoming auction with a very special lot.
I knew that the Carry On films were rebranded around 2003 and that this coincided with the new DVD releases, packed with special features, by Carlton Home Entertainment/Granada Ventures for the Carry On films that they had the rights to (the rights to the others being owned by Studio Canal and the rights of the aforementioned, as of 2020, are now owed by ITV).
The ‘new’ Carry On logo was born out of that rebrand. A logo now synonymous the world over with the brand.
Fans and collectors, like myself, may have spotted that in fact the caricatures used within the logo appeared, at first glance, to have been extracted from previous Carry On film posters, created by the the wonderful poster artists such as Renato Fratini & Arnaldo Putzu. Their unique and bold style were perfect for the seaside postcard & saucy style of the films as they created eye popping, colourful posters that have since become highly sought after in their own right (and are great investments!).
In 2017 they proved to be the perfect springboard for my own creativity when I used some of the caricatures to create a limited edition set of postcards, to raise money for charity, depicting my vision of what the posters from the unmade and ‘lost’ Carry On films may have looked like. Although the images may have been ‘borrowed’ I couldn’t but help wonder how they had managed to extract the images from the original posters as many were overlaid with other artwork and imagery. I simply assumed that they had used the wealth of software now available to reconstruct the images from the original posters into complete faces and then they had remastered them in high definition.
Well, I was wrong!
Only when you actually look at the rebrand logo and study it a little bit closer does something jump out at you. There is an imposter! Before I ‘carry on’ have a look for yourself (logo at top of page)…you got it yet?
Call myself a fan and serious collector! Okay, give up?...
Take a look at the sixth caricature (from left). This is the only one that does not actually feature on any of the original posters or artwork (go on, have a look at the posters). It had to be created in 2003 to fit in with the rest of the caricatures, mimicking their style and colour pallet. Yes, Jim Dale is the imposter! (sorry Jim!). I was never quite sure why dear Peter Butterworth was never featured in the line up of the logo, after all he had appeared in more of the Carry On films than Jim and Barbara. Instead Jim was selected to join the line up and his likeness had to be drawn and designed to fit in with the others and to complete the set for the new logo that Granada Ventures commissioned in 2003. Well, in actual fact that isn’t strictly true, there's more…
I will let the cat out of the bag; they are ALL imposters! This is because in order to create the new brand logo they needed to ensure that they were all formatted, coloured and styled in the same way. In order to achieve that the artist had to redraw all the others too using the original poster images as templates. Confused?
I will let Stuart Hogg, formerly of Granada Ventures and the lovely gent who commissioned all of these drawings, explain:
“Whilst working as Studio Manager at Carlton Home Entertainment / Granada Ventures (part of ITV) I was tasked with rebranding the Carry On franchise for a major re-release of the range across VHS and DVD, with some National Press Advertising and covermounts and editorial in the Sun and Daily Mail.
As we didn’t have any original artwork, and because we also needed a decent portrait of Jim Dale, I commissioned an artist to draw the portraits of the 8 main characters so they all matched, based on the style of Renato Fratini.
The 8 Characters were Bernard Bresslaw, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Jim Dale, Barbara Windsor and Charles Hawtrey.
The logo has now been adopted as the recognised brand for Carry On worldwide.
I don’t remember who did the illustrations and have no way of finding out, it would have been one of the marker pen visualisers that we regularly used.
Jim Dale was doing a lot of the interviews and extras (for the DVDs) and he really needed to be part of the branding. He didn’t really feature that prominently on many of the posters and we only had access to rubbish 35mm slides of the posters so I took the decision to get all the main characters redrawn copying that lovely classic Renato Fratini style and try to get the best version of Jim Dale in that style.
I did all the design, artwork and branding across the entire range of VHS, DVDs, Packaging, Advertising, Press ads, Newspaper covermounts etc.
ITV only own 18 of the titles, that’s why there is only 18 in the box. ITV owned the biggest Film and TV rights portfolio in Europe at the time.
I still get a kick out of seeing 'my' logo everywhere”.
Stuart Hogg, November 2020.
So, there we have it folks, straight from the horses mouth! It also explains away the mystery as to why Jim's caricature was included instead of Peter Butterworth for example. It is a wonderful story and I am just so pleased that after a very nerve-wracking auction and a protracted process with the auction house I finally acquired the original artwork as pictured. Having spoken with Stuart a few times since the auction It is quite remarkable that these were simply sat gathering dust in a drawer for 17 years! As I said on the group’s Facebook post recently, there are treasures out there just waiting to be discovered! My advice, ask questions, reach out to people, persevere, research and, above all, get undisputable provenance.
Presented here for the first time in the public domain are the original caricature artworks that were used to create the Carry On logo we now all know and recognise, aren’t they sublime!
If by any slim chance the artist is out there and reads this section then do get in touch with me, I would love to hear from you.
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