SCHOOLBOYS ACT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 224, 22 September 1938, Page 22

SCHOOLBOYS ACT.

RUGBY OF THE 70' S. HOLIDAYS SPENT IK FILM PRODUCTION. (Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, August 27,

Over 250 boys of Repton School, Derbyshire, voluntarily sacrificed several days of their summer holidays this week in order to appear in "Goodbye Mr. Chips," a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British production of James Hilton's story of a master at a public school.

Dressed in the costumes of Rugbv footballers of the 1870's—a kind o"f white knickerbocker—the boys careered about their playing fields under a scorching sun, obedient to the endlessly repeated orders of the directors.

The "head," Mr. H. G. M. Clarke, dressed in stove-pipe trousers and fustian waistcoat, and with elaborate red side-whiskers, which were the rage in 1875, had a role as a linesman.

Repton is not a Rugger school, but a Soccer one. The boys had to learn a new game, and the goalposts had to be borrowed. The boys were coached in Rugby* aa it was played in the 70's by several famous international players. On the bank near the school buildings, a crowd of spectators watched and applauded. The women wore picturesque crinolines and little parasols, and were perched on top of old-fashioned coaches. All the women were locally recruited. Among them was the 82-year-old village postmistress, who wore the genuine Victorian clothes handed down to her by her mother.