Herbert Wilcox was a major British Producer/Director from the 1930s - 1950s. He was most famous for his films starring his wife Anna Neagle.
Herbert's father was a good billiards player and at the end of the last century worked in a billiards saloon in London. Herbert took a keen interest in the game. As a boy he used to stand on a small stool that enabled him to look over the edge of the table and play. He showed some aptitude for the game. His sports master at school on hearing that he played the game asked him how good he was. Herbert said that he had made a hundred break and was told that proficiency at billiards was the sign of a mis-spent youth. Times have certainly changed. Herbert's attention was for a while diverted to cricket but his love of billiards never left him. His parents died and he was left an orphan, his billiards improved and he was playing anyone who would take him on for, "a fiver." He made regular breaks of over 200 and he began to get well known in London. The owner of a hotel in Camberwell Green saw him play and offered him 30 shillings a week plus food and a bedroom to be the resident marker in his billiards room. It was at about this time (1910) that he made his lifetime best of 315 and offers were coming in for him to compete in the junior championship of the world. All over London he played exhibition matches and was receiving as much as five guineas a night. One of his opponents in a game played at East Ham was the great Tom Newman, himself a boy player, and Herbert narrowly missed beating him. He once said he regretted this as it would have been nice to be able to say that he once beat Newman.
Herbert's ambition was to reach the top of the world of billiards and he was encouraged in this by such players as Harry Stevenson, Melbourne Inman, and Tom Reece. However fate took a hand. At one of his exhibitions, a rich young woman asked Herbert to visit her home for a private exhibition. In his words:- "When I arrived at her house she led me into the billiards room. I followed and looked around. There was no billiards table but there was a magnificent bed. What will you have to drink she said. I told her that I did not drink. Well you will tonight was her reply." Herbert later said that after that night he never touched gin again, and, having found other pleasures in life, reckoned that his form was never quite the same again.
A photograph showed Wilcox to be a player very much in the style of his day with a semi-upright stance and starched collar. And so the billiard world's loss was the film world's gain. Herbert Wilcox went on to produce and direct some of the most famous British. films ever. Films such as, "Victoria the Great," (1937), "Sixty Glorious Years," (1938), "Spring in Park Lane," (1948), "Odette," (1950).