It’s Not Cricket: A Star “Is Bowled”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 44, 21 January 1949, Page 3

It’s Not Cricket: A Star “Is Bowled”

After a busy day’s work on “It’s Not Cricket,” Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne’s current comedy for Gainsborough, Alan Wheatley rubbed liis head for the umpteenth time and protested: “This is too much. I always seem to get this sort of treatment.” In his last four

films, Alan, who was born at Tolworth, Surrey, has been pushed through stairway bannisters, knocked out with a revolver butt, fallen off a scenic railway into the sea, thrown out an express train, and now, in “It’s Not Cricket,” as Mr Felix, an underground Nazi sports shop proprietor, his dumb assistant puts some Indian clubs and bowling wood on a shelf in such a way that they fall on Alan’s head. The clubs and bowls were made of rubber and papier mache, but even so,.they could be painful when dropped from a height. Alan Wheatley’s worst moment? When the director was laughing so much he couldn’t say “Cut”—and the technicians went on dropping bowls on Alan’s head, one at a time. Strikes Water For his role in “Yellow Sky”, Gregory Peck digs a well and strikes water. It’s all very well for Peck, but 20th Century Fox workers could .tell another version. They sank a well several hundred feet at a location site on the desert near Lone Pine, California, where “Yellow Sky” is being filmed and got no water. They moved a mile away, and tried again without luck. They gave up. The studio finally piped water five miles from the town of Lone Pine.

When Margaret O’Brien completes her role as Beth in the Technicolour production of “Little Women.” she’ll start work in “The Secret Garden.” Twelve-year-old Dean Stockwell will be leading “man.”