a pilot. He was disqualified for pilot training because his eyesight was below par, and was classified as a navigator trainee. He served the RAF as navigator for three years, during which he performed an assignment as Aircraftman 1st Class in a Wiltshire-based RAF Hospital and was posted to the RAF base in Carberry, Manitoba, Canada, to work as an instructor. Burton's habits of drinking and smoking increased during this period; he was involved in a brief casual affair with actress Eleanor Summerfield. Burton was cast in an uncredited and unnamed role of a bombing officer by BBC Third Programme in a 1946 radio adaptation of In Parenthesis, an epic poem of the First World War by David Jones. Burton was discharged from the RAF on 16 December 1947. Rise through the ranks and film debut (1948–1951) In 1948, Burton moved to London to make contact with H. M. Tennent Ltd., where he again met Beaumont, who put him under a contract of £500 per year (£10 a week). Daphne Rye, the casting director for H. M. Tennent Ltd., offered Burton rooms on the top floor of her house in Pelham Crescent, London as a place for him to stay. Rye cast Burton in a minor role as a young officer, Mr. Hicks, in Castle Anna (1948), a drama set in Ireland. While touring with the cast and crew members of Wynyard Browne's Dark Summer, Burton was called by Emlyn Williams for a screen test for his film, The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949). Burton performed the screen test for the role of Gareth, which Williams wrote especially for him, and was subsequently selected when Williams sent him a telegram that quoted a line from The Corn Is Green — "You have won the scholarship." This led to Burton making his mainstream film debut. Filming took place during the summer and early autumn months of 1948. It was on the sets of this film that Burton was introduced by Williams to Sybil Williams, whom he married on 5 February 1949 at a register office in Kensington. The Last Days of Dolwyn opened to generally positive critical reviews. Burton was praised for his "acting fire, manly bearing and good looks" and film critic Philip French of The Guardian called it an "impressive movie debut". After marrying Sybil, Burton moved into a flat at 6 Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead NW3, where he lived