Doctor Who Vs. The Films of William Hartnell, Part 1

Hartnell appeared opposite
David Niven in The Way Ahead

William Henry Hartnell

(born in London in January

1908) was known as Billy

Hartnell when he became a

jobbing actor. He made his

cinema debut in 1929, aged 

21, in The Unwritten Law.

Thus began a thirty-five year
film career that saw Hartnell
appear in many classic British
features.
Hartnell returned to the theatre

when he was invalided out of the

Royal Artillery Corps in 1940. 

Director Carol Reed cast Billy in

 The Way Ahead after watching his performance as Dallow in the stage version of Brighton Rock in 1943, a character he reprised for the film

rendition - now recognised as his most notable big-screen role.

By the fifties, Hartnell had become typecast in tough-guy parts

but was equally adept at comedy, and following a major role in

Rank's BAFTA nominated thriller, the star-studded Hell Drivers

(1957), he starred in the inaugural Carry

On title and Granada's The Army Game. 1963 saw Hartnell's final

film appearances (in This Sporting Life and Tomorrow at Ten),

then he was cast in a new BBC TV series called Doctor Who.
The acclaimed wartime production, The Way Ahead (written by

Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov) was essentially a remake of the

British Army training film, The New Lot, and opened in 1944.

Doublecross, a low-budget espionage drama, released in 1956,

was shown on Talking Pictures TV today - the black-and-white

features starred a total of eleven future Doctor Who cast and crew

connections:

The Way Ahead

• Leslie [Gilbert] Dwyer (Beck) was Vorg in Carnival of Monsters
• Hugh [Archibald Nairn] Burden (Parsons) was Channing in Spearhead from Space
• Jack [Stanley] Watling (Buster) was Professor Edward Travers in The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear and Downtime

Doublecross

• Anton Diffring [born Alfred Pollack] (Krassin) was De Flores in Silver Nemesis
• Kenneth [Charles] Cope (Jeffrey) was Packard in Warriors' Gate
• Colin [Martin] Douglas (Sergeant) was Donald Bruce in The Enemy of the World, and Reuben in Horror of Fang Rock
• Harry Towb (Publican) was Osgood in (episode 1 of) The Seeds of Death, and McDermott in Terror of the Autons
• Jim Tyson (Fisherman) was the Bald Man in The Chase (3)
• Marcus Dods was conductor on The Aztecs too

Hell Drivers

• Terry Sartain (Man) was an Alien Technician in The War Games (3), Warrior in The Mutants (1), UNIT Soldier in The Three Doctors (1), Prison Guard and Draconian in Frontier in Space, Exxilon in Death to the Daleks, Brother in The Masque of Mandragora (3), Gundan in Warriors' Gate (3), and Market Man in Snakedance (1)
• David Harcourt was a camera operator on Dr. Who and the Daleks too