This decade starts with a high. Tom has a good part playing the Sergeant Major in the Tiffany-Gainsborough film version of Journey’s End. The R C Sherriff stage play about World War I which opened on January 21^st 1929 in the Savoy in London, took the country by storm. The action is all set in the one location – mainly in a dugout close to the front lines, and in the trenches outside. 

Journey’s End has been thoroughly researched so we will limit ourselves to snippets from the documents we possess. They are the Souvenir program which was sold for 25c at each showing; the Tiffany 24-page post-show publicity magazine; and the British publicity brochure produced in April 1930. 

It was the first talking picture without an actress.

Except for the German prisoner (played by Warner Klinger) all the cast are British.

Except for the star Colin Clive, all the main actors had World War I service. One cast member held the Victoria Cross (Fred Coppins).

All the time on the set, even when not filming, the cast could only refer to each other by their film name.

Colin Clive was given special permission to leave the stage show in London. He arrived in New York on Thanksgiving Day and was back in London on January 13^th – as per contract.

We have eight still photos of the film; seven in the dugout and one in a machine gun trench.

   JOURNEY'S END - the prisoner pleading                                  JOURNEY'S END - trench scene

On the 2^nd April 1930 Tom Whiteley appears in the US 1930 census. He is living in a Hotel Melrose block of single room apartments.

The address is:

He gives his age as 40 and his occupation as Actor Moving Pictures. The year of Immigration appears to be 1910. Could this be true? As he was only 16 at the time, it is unlikely. But you never know with Tom.

After Journey’s End, he writes scenarios for Won by a Neck in 1930, and Pleasure in 1931.

Copyright © Ken Kirkman 2009-2010