As the slightly plump and cheerful star of 24 "Carry On" British film comedies, Joan Sims made the transformation from man-hungry sexpot to nagging, dragon-like wife. One of half-a-dozen regulars over 20 years in the series of bawdy romps, which relied for their humour on innuendo and double entendre, she became a screen institution.She went from the buxom, no-nonsense gym mistress in Carry On Teacher (1959) to the vase-throwing wife in Carry On Screaming (1966) and the nosey-parker mother-in-law in Carry On Behind (1975). Whether flighty or haughty, Sims brought to her performance a sexual frisson that was a gift to the films' producer, Peter Rogers, although the actress was always dogged by her own insecurities.
For instance, as Lady Evelyn Bagley in Carry On Up the Jungle (1969), she was seen showering naked in a jungle encampment while being ogled by Kenneth Williams – and a gorilla. However, in her autobiography, High Spirits (2000), Sims revealed: "Try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to do that nude shot. As usual, I was feeling overweight and it just didn't feel right." In the end, a double was used.
Sims lived alone for most of her life (she never married) and enjoyed the camaraderie of the Carry On team. "We would work together twice a year and it was always a very happy time," she said. "There were pranks and jokes, but it was hard work. Of course, they were all the same – variations on a theme and the familiar tired jokes. It was saucy postcard humour, but never got beyond family entertainment."
Born in Laindon, Essex, in 1930, the daughter of a railway stationmaster, Joan Sims had a lonely childhood and developed a love of acting while giving the signalman and passengers impromptu imitations of Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable and other film stars on the platform. However, this often landed her in trouble at school. "I was always being ticked off for making the class laugh, usually by mimicking the teacher," she explained.
After appearing in local amateur dramatics productions, she was finally accepted by Rada after four attempts and, on graduating in 1950, was signed up by a young theatrical agent, Peter Eade, who also represented Kenneth Williams and Ronnie Barker. Sims made her first professional stage appearance with the repertory theatre at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1950 and progressed to music hall at the Players' Theatre, London, then revues, most notably in the West End in Intimacy at Eight (New Lindsey Theatre, 1952), More Intimacy at Eight (New Lindsey Theatre, 1953) and Intimacy at 8.30 (Criterion, 1954). Her routine as a girl putting sex appeal into station loudspeaker announcements not only had echoes of her childhood, but brought Sims to the attention of film producers.
She made her screen début alongside George Cole in Will Any Gentleman . . . ? (1953) and was soon acting in film farces such as The Belles of St Trinian's (1954), in which she played a teacher. She also became a regular in the "Doctor" series, taking saucy roles in Doctor in the House (1954), Doctor at Sea (1955), Doctor in Love (1960), Doctor in Clover (1965) and Doctor in Trouble (1970).
However, it was the long-running Carry On pictures that made Sims such an enduring screen actress. She missed the first, Carry On Sergeant, in 1958, but joined the team as a nurse the following year for Carry on Nurse and went on to play characters as diverse as a policewoman, an empress, a saloon owner, a café proprietress, an explorer, a factory worker, a publican, an ATS private and a housekeeper.
She quickly showed a flair for satirising lower-suburban pretentiousness. Playing a receptionist in Carry On Regardless (1961), she is asked by a pompous wine-tasting organiser: "Are you a lover of the grape?" Sims responds: "Actually, no, I never know what to do with the pips."
Later, as Lady Ruff-Diamond, the scheming wife of Sid James's viceroy in Carry On Up the Khyber (1968), even the sound of cannon pounding and mayhem all around fails to make her leave the elegantly laid-out dinner table, where she continues to get progressively merrier. "Oh, dear, I seem to have got a little plastered," she intones.
In contrast, Sims mastered an air of regality as both Marie of Normandy, Henry VIII's fictitious extra wife, in Carry On Henry (1970) and Lady Evelyn Bagley in Carry On Up the Jungle (1969), although the aristocratic lady on safari cannot suppress her sexual appetite and makes advances to Professor Tinkle (Frankie Howerd).
After the original team's final film, Carry On Emmannuelle (1978), Sims adjusted to life as a jobbing actress but revelled in television roles such as the roly-poly Mrs Bloomsbury-Barton in Worzel Gummidge (1979-81), a murderess in the true-life drama series Ladykillers (1979), Betsy Prig in Martin Chuzzlewit (1994), Mrs Miggs in Just William (1995), Mrs Umney in The Canterville Ghost (1996) and the pianist, Betty, in an all-girl wartime swing band in The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000).
However, she remained at her most reliable in television comedies. Sims had made her television début in 1952, providing voices in the children's puppet series Vegetable Village. She acted the frequently unemployed Daisy Burke in the first series of the ITV sitcom Our House (1960), alongside her fellow Carry On stars Hattie Jacques and Charles Hawtrey, and Miss Pratt in Lord Tramp (1977).
Sims enjoyed co-starring roles in two BBC sitcoms of the 1990s, first as the housekeeper and cook Mrs Wembley in On the Up (1990-92), featuring Dennis Waterman as a self-made millionaire and Judy Buxton as his socially superior wife. Then, in As Time Goes By (1994-2000), the series featuring Geoffrey Palmer and Judi Dench as a divorcee and a widow who rekindle the flames of an earlier romance, she was the country-and-western-loving Madge. As well as appearing in more than 70 films, Sims – the last surviving member of the regular Carry On team – made guest appearances in dozens of television programmes over the years.
At the turn of the 1980s, she faced up to a drink problem and went into rehabilitation. She admitted that she was happiest when working. "Once I am out there in front of a camera, I've got all the confidence in the world," she said, "but switch that camera off and I sink back into my timid self."
This obituary appeared on the Independent Digital web site on June 29, 2001.