'Carry On' movie: Star who helped escape World War II POWs

The Great Escape and The Rocking Horse are two classic British World War II escape films, but what's perhaps less well known is the team that inspired both escapes. one of whom later became a star of Carry On. movie.

Now, 80 years on, Peter Butterworth's recently discovered German prison ID card will go on display as part of an exhibition telling the story of his life as a prisoner of war.

Butterworth served in the Royal Naval Air Service during the war, but was shot down in 1940 and spent the rest of his life as a prisoner of war.

Mr Butterworth, who has appeared in 16 Carry On films, helped hide the sand in the escape tunnel in The Great Escape and was a member of the organizing committee for the tunnel in The Rocking Horse, but he hasn't told the full story yet. It took several decades for this to become clear.

It was his wartime role, co-starring Carry On screenwriter Talbot Rothwell, whose plane was also shot down, that led Butterworth to create the humor that would become famous in Carry On. .

A recently released cache of POW documents from German archives is on display at the National Archives in London, adding new details to the story that is slowly unfolding.

The documents arrived from Germany and were cataloged by a team of volunteers.

For his son, Tyler Butterworth, it was a revelation.

“They keep declassifying things and more stuff seems to be springing up. It's worth noting.”

In Carry On Camp, Peter Butterworth played greedy campground owner Josh Fiddler. He played Brother Belcher, a preacher of sexual desire, in Carry On Up the Khyber and Citizen Bide in Carry On Don't Lose Your Head.

However, in Stalag Luft 3, he was an officer and coder for the military intelligence agency MI9 responsible for organizing an escape from a prisoner of war camp. It remained a mystery even to his own son until long after he died in 1979.

“He was suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He never told my sister or me, but my mother[impressionist Janet Brown]especially “He told me about the events that happened at the beginning of the war.” “In our post-war marriage, he suddenly jumped out of bed at night, threw himself on the floor and started hiding. There were stairs outside. She had to barricade her bedroom door.”

In the escape immortalized in the classic film The Great Escape, Butterworth helped hide dirt from the tunnels of the camp theater. Inmates are encouraged to smoke pipes near where the soil is stored to mask the smell.

He was a member of the organizing committee for the “Rocking Horse Escape,'' which involves digging a tunnel under a vaulting box. When the story was made into a film in 1950, he auditioned for the role but was turned down because he didn't look like a prisoner enough.

Next to him in Stalag Luft 3 was another prisoner, Talbot Rothwell, who would go on to write many of the best Carry On films. He and Rothwell persuaded the camp commandant to allow construction of a theater where the sounds of the performances could drown out the noise of the tunneling.

“It's where[Carry On]humor started, surrounded by watchtowers and guard dogs,” explains Tyler Butterworth.

“They came up with something that made people laugh, and that was what made it funny. He was playing a clumsy character who always gets things wrong. And as a complete flip side of this guy, the code I was completely focused on writing and working with friends who were digging tunnels on the other side of the property. ”

However, all this was never discussed within the family, and it was not until years later that young Butterworth began to understand some of his father's actions.

“My father had all of this going on in his mind throughout his life. My mother told me that when we first bought the house we grew up in, every morning he passionately He was walking around the garden in a dressing gown.'' “Because he could do it, because he couldn't do it there[in the camp]. And these are the kinds of things he brought back. I didn’t know that until then.”

Peter Butterworth was a great comedic actor, as evidenced by the bewildered Belcher brothers in the shell-ripped dining room scene in Carry on Up the Khyber. But given that he escaped from one concentration camp near Frankfurt and helped two of World War II's most famous people escape, perhaps we're interested in him for more than Carry On. should be memorized.

'The Great Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives' will run from February 2nd to July 21st at the National Archives in London.