Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2021 January 18

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January 18

Emrys Jones

According to the "Trivia" section of the IMDB article about One of Our Aircraft is Missing, the actor Emrys Jones was an international footballer (association) before the war. I have been unable to find any confirmation of this. Can anyone help? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 19:47, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

IMDb's trivia is user-generated, so not especially reliable. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:26, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict] Searching through List of England international footballers, which actually includes those with 10 or more caps, and the articles linked from it covering those with 1, 2–3 and 4–9, he doesn't appear, though born in Manchester. His name suggests he might have been qualified by ancestry to play for Wales, but the list of all Welsh internationals born outside Wales doesn't include him either. You might care to search some of the other nationalities' lists in Lists of association football players.

A slim possibility is that he played for a British Army, Navy, Marines, or Air Force team against foreign opposition, but his article doesn't indicate any military service. Another is that he played for a professional club which met foreign opposition, but again I can find nothing in cursory searching for biographical material about him that indicates this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.40.9 (talk) 20:33, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

DuncanHill, it was the character Jones was playing who was a footballer, which comes in useful when the shot-down crew decide (somewhat improbably) to enhance their disguise as Dutch civilians by playing a public football match watched by German soldiers: "As the game begins, the crew note that their missing wireless operator, ex-professional footballer Bob Ashley (Emrys Jones), has been brought along to play for the local opposition - he soon scores". In the game sequences, Jones had a body double in the shape of Cliff Bastin of Arsenal and England; it seems unlikely that they would have gone to that trouble had Jones been a competent player. See The British Football Film by Stephen Glynn (p. 98), also British Cinema and the Second World War by Robert Murphy (p. 94). The trivia section on IMDb pages can be edited by anyone with an account, so not what we'd call a Relable Source. Alansplodge (talk) 13:27, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Alansplodge: - the IMDB article said the character was made a footballer because of Jones's footballing prowess. Bastin of course was no stranger to the silver screen, having appeared in The Arsenal Stadium Mystery. The bomber crew go to the match as spectators, not players, to be passed on to the next leg of the escape route. There's a lovely little bit of banter between Eric Portman and Hay Petrie on the virtues of the Yorkshire and Dutch varieties of bloody-mindedness. DuncanHill (talk) 13:44, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh yes, quite right. It's been a long time since I've seen it. Alansplodge (talk) 13:51, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

It was on Talking Pictures TV yesterday, watching it was what prompted the question. DuncanHill (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I found a copy on YouTube and watched it again. What a wonderful scene in the church when the service is interrupted by a German officer while the organist softly plays the national anthem. Alansplodge (talk) 16:45, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Alec Clunes the organist, who, according to our article, gave Peter Ustinov (the priest) his first break. It is a wonderful film. DuncanHill (talk) 18:21, 21 January 2021 (UTC)