Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

Hollywood cricket team, with its own specially constructed ground: a number of well known British actors played for him, including David Niven and Boris Karloff. From various accounts of their visit, the team, many of them no doubt regular cinemagoers, seem to have been highly excited by their encounter with the ‘celebs’ of the day. After their memorable few hours in Los Angeles the team left the same evening by the Santa Fé train for Chicago, with the skipper, G.O.B.Allen, staying behind. This journey took them two and a half days. They changed trains in that city and arrived in New York in the early morning. They embarked on the R.M.S.Queen Mary , and travelled across the Atlantic, arriving at Southampton five days later on 26 April. The Queen Mary was the flagship of the Cunard White Star Line, the biggest passenger ship then afloat, and ‘the last word’ in luxurious ocean travel. She had made her maiden voyage to New York in May, 1936, and was now engaged in much publicised competition with the French liner Normandie for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. In spite of his disappointing performance on the cricket field, Bill Copson, from The Blocks in Stonebroom, could at least say he had 42 Australia and New Zealand Players as autograph hunters. Stan Worthington, Charles Barnett and Bill Copson find themselves queueing for the signature of Douglas Fairbanks jr. At Hollywood on the set of The Prisoner of Zenda.