I MENTIONED earlier how the Bermudian-born stage, screen and television actor Earl Cameron, now in his 90th year, became a household name in Britain, with more than 30 films, television specials and radio performances on the BBC to his credit.

Cameron arrived in London at age 22, following the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. At the time he was working aboard a British merchant navy ship plying between New York and South America.

The British Navy diverted the ship to the UK for war purposes. Cameron, without a passport, as was the case of many Bermudians travelling to the US, was unable to get back home to Bermuda. And the only job he could secure was as a dishwasher in a hotel.

Unaccustomed to the harsh British winter weather, Cameron caught pneumonia and ended up in hospital. Upon his release, he travelled to Liverpool hoping to work his way back to Bermuda, but no captain, not even aboard the liner Monarch of Bermuda which was being converted in the UK for service as a troopship, would sign him on without a passport.

In desperation he got a job aboard a ship that took him all the way to Calcutta, India. Earl later described the ship with its Egyptian captain as terrible; and the journey, with him having to stoke coal all the way on the high seas to India, as 'hellish.'

Bermudians of the present generation may not even be able to imagine what a coal-burning ship was like. He managed to get himself repatriated back to London as a passenger, and without compunction, sought out his old job as a 'pearl diver' or kitchen porter.

THAT'S what put him in position for his break into the theatre. Because of his distinctive, mid-Atlantic, Bermudian accent, Earl, acting on a tip- off, was lucky enough to get a speaking part in a stage play when the regular actor failed to show up for work.

The play was Chin Chin Chow, which became the longest-running West End musical at the time of its, closing in 1946. Cameron had made his mark, getting roles in other big West End productions such as Petrified Forest, Anna Lucasta and The Respectable Prostitute.

Then followed the lead role in Deep Are the Roots. By the 1950s Earl Cameron was an established screen star. His breakthrough into the movies came in 1952 with his performance in Pool of London as Johnny, a 'coloured' merchant seaman engaged in a platonic romance with a white woman. That was unheard of in British filmography up to that time.

Cameron gained rave reviews in London and New York. The movie was shown in theatres all over the world, except in his native Bermuda.

That was a time when racial discrimination was peaking in Bermuda and the 1959 Theatre Boycott, that ended officially sanctioned discrimination in public against black people and Jews, was yet to take place.

During the next decade even more spectacular films featured Cameron, including The Heart of the Matter in 1953; Simba in 1955; Sapphire in 1959; Killers of Kilimanjaro in 1959.

Ten years after Pool of London, Flame In the Streets featured Cameron, based on the 1959 Notting Hill riots.

The movie highlighted domestic difficulties that developed in a working-class family when their daughter fell in love with a Jamaican seaman, Bermuda's Cameron.

To be continued