And gentlemen in England ..

[mousekeeper]

How was Laurence Olivier able to find a cast of thousands in 1944 for his film Henry V, particularly the Agincourt scenes, when surely every able-bodied man ought to have been fighting the current enemy?

[marwel7]

IMDb has some interesting trivia about this.The battle scenes were apparently filmed in Ireland and the cast of thousands were mostly servicemen including Americans.The Government commisioned the film as a morale booster and so presumably the MoD would have arranged for the participation of the servicemen.