A contract with British International Pictures brought D'Arcy to England, where he appeared in several films, the first being Champagne (1928), later described by its director, Alfred Hitchcock, as "probably the lowest ebb in my output". D'Arcy made far better films in France, including two classics: Rene Clair's A nous la liberte (1931) and Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse heroique (1935).Less than classic was D'Arcy's first Hollywood film, Stolen Holiday (1937), but that same year he appeared in Ronald Colman's definitive Prisoner of Zenda and The Awful Truth. The mischief in his eyes and the slightly quizzical tricks he played with his expres-sive voice seemed to qualify him for less trustworthy types. Although he invariably play-ed Gallic parts, D'Arcy was actually Egyptian. He originally intended to be a lawyer, but abandoned his legal studies when offered a role in The Garden of Allah (1927), a silent directed by Rex Ingram at his own studio in Nice. Somehow he was a little too elegant, his smile a little too charming for Hollywood's idea of a hero. D'Arcy was tall and well built, with striking brown eyes, but was never leading man material. D'Arcy's first scene was pivotal to the plot; when he brought Irene home, his worldly French accent and gigolo moustache made the story that they'd been out all night because the car had broken down on the way back from his music students' junior prom rather difficult for her husband, played by Cary Grant, to swallow.

Alex D'Arcy, a film actor for more than six decades, is best remembered as Armand Duvalle - not Marguerite Gautier's young lover in Dumas's Camille, but Irene Dunne's singing teacher in Leo McCarey's sparkle screwball comedy The Awful Truth (1937). In 1993, on the service's 50th anniversary, he helped form the RAF Mountain Rescue Association.Frank CardJohn (Jack) Baines, mountain rescuer and mountaineer: born Preston 1938; BEM 1979; married 1963 Patricia Macpherson (three daughters); died Bangor 13 May 1996.. Later he became a dynamic partner in the mountaineering publisher The Ernest Press, which in two successive years won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.Jack Baines had a good NCO's twin virtues of insistence on the highest standards and support for his team. Posted initially to Germany by the RAF, he practised with the German Alpine Club in a local quarry.