 Fondly remembered above all as one of the most durable members of the 'Carry On' team, Joan Sims was also a RADA-trained theatre actress. Her performing debut was on the Laindon railway platform, where her father was stationmaster and she would entertain waiting travellers; her London stage debut was in 1952 and she had a success as Athene Seyler's no-nonsense maid in Breath of Spring (1958). In films from 1953, she caught cinemagoers' amused attention as the austere nurse 'Rigor Mortis' in Doctor in the House (d. Ralph Thomas, 1954), was in a couple more 'Doctor' films (typically plump, sexually predatory and alarming to Dirk Bogarde), and was an invariably welcome Rank supporting regular in the likes of Upstairs and Downstairs (d. Ralph Thomas, 1959). Her 'Carry On' roles included suspicious wives of many kinds, most famously perhaps as a nagging Calpurnia in Carry On Cleo (d. Gerald Thomas, 1964) and as Lady Joan Ruff-Diamond, constantly on the qui vive for the pecadillos of husband Sidney James in Carry On Up the Khyber (d. Gerald Thomas, 1968), and, for contrast, a glamorous (well, more or less) Belle Armitage in Carry On Cowboy (d. Gerald Thomas, 1965). In her last years, from 1994, she had a continuing role in TV's As Time Goes By, as Geoffrey Palmer's lively stepmother; and there were rich character studies too: in Waters of the Moon (BBC, 1983), as a cheerful vulgarian in a genteel private hotel; surprisingly affecting, as one of a lesbian pair with Paola Dionosotti in A Murder Is Announced (BBC. 1985); and finally in The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (d. Gillies Mackinnon, 2000). When she died, it was sad to read of a lonely life, lived largely alone in a rented flat. Bibliography
Autobiography, High Spirits, 2000. Brian McFarlane, Encylopedia of British Film
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