Card of the Day - 2021-11-10

Gallaher Sporting Personalities
Gallaher Ltd [tobacco : UK] "Sporting Personalities" (1936) 44/48 - G075-680 : G12-99

Again this was simply picked for being a man with a movember moustache, but I did like his smile, and think the Tatler got it right. 

He turned out to be Thomas Kirkby "Tom" Walls, not just “a stage and screen star, producer, hunting and racing man”, but to have been “winner of the Derby in 1932” with a horse called April the Fifth who appears on John Player "Derby and Grand National Winners" 25/50. He also worked in a locomotive works, was a jockey, formed part of a seaside Pierrot troupe, was manager of the Shaftesbury Theatre from 1922 and was the assembler of the Aldwych Farces in the 1920s, may of which were remade as films in the following decade.

And sixteen cards of him are listed at the Trading Card Database/TomWalls 

Our set is first listed in our original Gallaher Reference Book (RB.4, issued in 1944) as : 

1936. 48. SPORTING PERSONALITIES (titled series). Size 2 1/2" x 1 7/16". Numbered 1-48. Fronts printed in full colour by offset-litho, black frame lines, white margins and subjects titled. Backs printed in sage green with descriptions and "Issued by Gallaher Ltd. Virginia House, London & Belfast" in block letters. Printed by E. S. & A. Robinson Ltd., Bristol.

There are no card codes in that volume. 

In our World Tobacco Issues Indexes, the description is shortened to simply : 

SPORTING PERSONALITIES. Sm. Nd. (48)