CRICKETER AND ACTOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1939, Page 9

CRICKETER AND ACTOR

C. AUBREY SMITH.

CAPTAINED ALL ENGLAND

ELEVEN. Next to his love of acting, C. Aubrey Smith’s greatest interest is cricket. In his youth the stalwart veteran was a famous athlete. Those who follow the fortunes of the Hollywood Cricket Club, which he founded and of which he is president and team captain', will tell you he must have been very good indeed. In spite of his seventy-four years he is still a crack player today and leads his team in action each week against clubs which come from as far away as British Columbia. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge Smith was captain of his University team. There he was known as “Round-the-Corner" Smith because of his unique style of bowling. Incidentally, in remembrance of that nick-name his Hollywood estate is called "The Round Corner.” After leaving Cambridge. Smith took up County cricket and captained an all-England eleven which invaded Australia and South Africa. During a cricket tour of South Africa in the winter of 1889-1890, he had the distinction of being reported dead, a victim of typhoid fever. This peculiar story was recorded in the obituary columns of London newspapers and had all the official trimmings short of the actual burial. Reading his own death notices later, while still lightheaded from fever, Smith says they almost convinced him that he was a ghost. “It happened in Johannesburg,” he recalls, “which was then a youngboom city, a typical gold rush affair. The water supply was contaminated and almost all our crowd went down with typhoid. “Typhoid was not enough for me.. I had pneumonia and pleurisy along with it. On a Tuesday my case was given up as hopeless. On Friday the president of the Wanderers Club, of which I was a member, issued a call for the band to play at my funeral, provisionally fixed for Sunday In some way the word got about that I was dead. It was cabled to London and appeared in the newspapers. My own people wel-e notified of my death.” Smith, of course, did not learn about these details until weeks later when he emerged from the fever coma. By. that time the London newspapers containing accounts of his death had reached Johannesburg. After his complete recovery Smith stayed on in Johannesburg for a couple of years working on the booming stock exchange.. C. Aubrey Smith was born in London on July 21, 1863, and was educated at Charterhouse School, entering Cambridge later with the intention of becoming a physician. It was at Cambridge that he got his first taste of theatricals, when he joined the University’s amateur dramatic club. His contract with Herbert Wilcox for "Sixty Glorious Years,” in which he plays the Duke of Wellington, included a clause which gave him time off to see the important cricket matches during the season.