Product Description

Charles Hawtrey, the skinny one with the granny glasses, was everybody's favourite in the "Carry On" films. Incorporating interviews with the major players, this biography examines Hawtrey's origins as a child star and as a performer in revue and the Will Hay films. it looks at his career on radio and television, and then at the sad, slow decline of a belligerent, alcoholic recluse on the Kent coast.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66858 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review
'A winningly queer little book about a winningly queer little man.' Matthew Sweet, Independent on Sunday; 'A pungent, opinionated and brilliantly intuitive biography of the saddest act in the history of British cinema... Lewis, in this diverting little book, hits on Hawtrey... and distils something alchemical from his sadness: a quintessence of a sort of Englishness.' New Statesman

Evening Standard, November 2001
Roger Lewis’s small but perfectly formed biography. . . like its subject, Lewis’s book may be slim but it packs a surprising amount between its covers.

The Stage, May 2002
(a) brilliant little biography.

Customer Reviews

Misconceived
Oh dear oh dear! How did this hastily assembled collection of notes and off topic ramblings by a hack author make it into a hardback book? A poorly researched and condescending appreciation of an actor with over sixty years of cinema work to his name, who surely deserved a lot better from his first major biography than this slim and poorly written polemic pamphlet. Lewis is a sneering and haughtily superior writer who casts his snickering scorn and disdain on Hawtrey's career and mocks all his major achievements and those of his contemporaries. Will Hay and the Carry Ons, milestones in British comedy as well as Hawtrey's life, are laughingly brushed aside with a kind of offhand snobbish attitude. I honestly believe most people would learn more about Hawtrey from conducting their own research rather than raking over the half baked nonsense and pointless suppositions that Lewis regurgitates endlessly, including a frankly sickening dialogue which reimagines Hawtrey as Peter Pan. Lacking narrative, coherence, a point and attempt at an engaging style, this is a unilluminating and patronising tome that insults both the memory of a great comic actor and the intelligence of his fans. Avoid at all costs unless you are a masochistic Carry On completist. This book treats the reader and its subject with utter scorn.

Very very poorly written ego trip for the author
A missed opportunity. This book is more about the author than about the life and career of Charles Hawtrey.
If you want to find out more about the eccentric life of the mysterious Hawtrey you will be fed a few scraps of information tucked within what Lewis thinks of the Carry On's, what Lewis thinks of Kenneth Williams, what Lewis thinks of Kenneth Connor, diversions into far less interesting subjects and ridiculous Peter Pan analogies.
It reads more like a pretentious student thesis rather than an informative biog and the amount of research is minimal.
For instance, one of Hawtrey's last TV appearances was in the series Supergran and this is just mentioned in a footnote and Lewis had never hard of the programme, named the wrong actress who played her and didn't even bother to get a copy of the show to watch. Considering how reclusive and obstinate Hawtrey was in the 80's it would be interesing to hear how this appearance came about and what he was like to work with during the filming of it.
Lewis didn't bother finding out.
In fact, he shouldn't have bothered at all really.

A very disappointing book indeed
I tried to like this book -- I really did. I've been a fan of Hawtrey for 30 years and I really wanted to find out about the man behind the twitchy, sadly under-used, Carry-On "Oh Hello" character, and about his previous career on stage and film. So, I tried to like this book -- I really did.

I couldn't like it one bit.

Why? Because on almost every page we get the opinions and suppositions of the author written large, and proper biography of his subject written small. This is a terrible shame, and a terrible waste of ink, paper and publishing. I am interested in Charles Hawtrey, NOT his biographer's outlook on the world, and his opinions on British comedy.

It was actually terrible timing, because I happened to read this shabby book immediately after reading Graham McCann's SUPERB biography of Frankie Howerd, which is a model of good, authoritative biography of a 20th Century British comedian. McCann worships Howerd, which of course has coloured his biography, but you don't care because McCann has invested a huge amount of care and reserach in his book, and it really shows. Roger Lewis, on the other hand, in his slim, thin, unsatisfying biography of Charles Hawtrey, has not. (To make matters worse, in "Hawtrey", Roger Lewis makes references to Frankie Howerd that go no deeper than Frankie's catchphrases -- indicating, at least to me, that Mr Lewis really has no clue at all about character and talent, except perhaps an exaggerated view of his own).

Mr Lewis is often lacking in taste. For example, in the last chapter which describes Hawtrey's final days in hospital, when his doctors had suggested the only hope for his survival was amputation of both legs, Mr Lewis writes, referring to Hawtrey's chronic alcoholism: "Hawtrey had been legless often enough in his life not to want to go the whole hog...". One can only read such leaden, tasteless prose and gasp, wondering how on earth the Editor at Faber & Faber let this pass.

Well, these are too many words already. In short, I disliked this book with an intensity that made my toes curl, and I can't recommend it to anyone. Yes, there were some "facts" about Hawtrey, but who can say whether they're reliable or not. There's an appendix of some film appearances, and some reprinted letters, which are of interest. If you want photographs, you'll be sorely disappointed -- in my version the few photos are printed in newsprint style of poor quality.

Charles Hawtrey deserves better than this miserable little book and I hope there's someone out there to do a proper job.