A month of television OTDs: December
John Wyver writes: Welcome to a new index of the earliest group of my daily posts about an aspect of British television before the Second World War. Listed below are the posts that ran from late November through December. As with my January index, I have brought together the links to each one, along with a short description, arranged in chronological order of the programmes, events and publications that they discuss.
As before, my aim is to continue with these posts through to the publication in early 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: British Television between the Wars. This cultural history of the medium before 1939 is linked to the Centenary of John Logie Baird’s first public presentation of “true television” in January 1926.
• OTD in early British television: 15 December 1928: a milestone date in the history of early television in Britain, since this is the day saw the transmission of the first television drama in Britain, a version of John Maddison Morton’s Box and Cox (header image).
• OTD in early British television: 19 December 1928: The Baird Concert Party, one of the earliest documented trasnmissions from the new studio of the Baird Television Development Corporation at 133 Long Acre in London’s Covent Garden.
• OTD in early British television: 28 November 1931: the National Programme of the BBC’s Sound service broadcast a light music recital given by the Gershom Parkington Quintet and tenor Trevor Watkins, part of which was also broadcast by the Baird company’s 30-line television service.
• OTD in early British television: 30 November 1932: the 30-line Television service, which for the three months past had been operated by the BBC, presented an ambitious Scotland-themed variety show, with Helen McKay, Scottish opera singer William Heughan, and violin solos from Ernest MacPherson.
• OTD in early British television: 5 December 1933: the first of two appearances by the then 28-year-old Agnes de Mille, the great American dancer and Broadway choreographer.
• OTD in early British television: 12 December 1936: a spectacular demonstration on the terrace just outside the studio, with the Territorial Army for the Battalion 61st (11th London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade, R.A., and the 36th Middlesex Anti-Aircraft, R.E., put through their paces.
• OTD in early British television: 14 December 1936: no television broadcasts from Alexandra Palace on Monday 14 December 1936, and only an apologetic mid-evening sound announcement, because a fierce gale had damaged the transmission mast and taken the service off-air.
• OTD in early British television: 17 December 1936: an edition of one of the first television series, London Characters, with John Snuggs, ‘the troubadour’, who demonstrated paper tearing with his partner accordionist, Van Hornibrook.
• OTD in early British television: 21 December 1936: AP’s early presentation of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, beamed back to the West End theatre where the production was running.
• OTD in early British television: 22 December 1936: the first televised Royal Institution lecture for children, with Yarrow Research Professor to the Royal Society G.I. Taylor talking about the stabilisation of ships.
• OTD in early British television: 30 December 1936: The Pattern of 1936, a state-of-the-economy talk given by Professor John Hilton.
• OTD in early British television: 26 November 1937: today’s evening schedule is one of those pre-war transmissions that I especially wish was preserved, including a short discussion between Dr Julian Huxley, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, and modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin.
• OTD in early British television: 29 November 1937: Scenes from [Shakespeare’s] Cymbeline was a presentation of minimally restaged elements of André van Gyseghem‘s production at London’s Embassy Theatre.
• OTD in early British television: 3 December 1937: four members of The Irish Players came to Alexandra Palace at short notice to play Lady Gregory‘s one-act drama The Rising of the Moon.
• OTD in early British television: 4 December 1937: mime and mask artist H.D.C. Pepler, working with producer Stephen Thomas, with whom he regularly collaborated, presented a masque based on Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• OTD in early British television: 6 December 1937: The afternoon of 6 December 1937 saw the first presentation from Alexandra Palace of what became the most popular production among pre-war dramas. Once in a Lifetime by Moss Hart and George Kaufman.
• OTD in early British television: 7 December 1937: On this day, Tuesday 7 December 1937, Harry Rutherford squeezed himself into a corner of the crowded Studio A at Alexandra Palace, or so I believe, and made preliminary sketches for his painting ‘Starlight’, the most vivid and alluring image of pre-war television (above).
• OTD in early British television: 8 December 1937: a Christmas-themed ballroom dancing demonstration by Alex Moore and Pat Kilpatrick.
• OTD in early British television: 10 December 1937: the broadcast of Scenes from Macbeth, a brief transfer from the Old Vic of part of Michel Saint-Denis’ production with Laurence Olivier and Judith Anderson.
• OTD in early British television: 11 December 1937: an ambitious half-hour broadcast of act 3 of Verdi’s Aida given by the Matania Operatic Society.
• OTD in early British television: 13 December 1937: the most ambitious television ballet to date, act 2 of, as it was billed, Le lac des cygnes, or Swan Lake to the rest of us. The troupe was the Vic-Wells Ballet Company, from which chrysalis the Royal Ballet would emerge post-war.
• OTD in early British television: 16 December 1937: Reconstructing the Past featured Margot Eates of the Institute of Archaeology, assisted by Delia Parker and Ione Gedye, demonstrating the reconstruction of prehistoric fragments of pottery from Maiden Castle in Dorset (above).
• OTD in early British television: 2 December 1938: Love From a Stranger, Frank Vosper’s play adapted from an Agatha Christie short story, starred Edna Best and Henry Oscar.
• OTD in early British television: 9 December 1938: Presents for the Children no 1, with the well-regarded painter Edward Halliday, who recommended a number of prints that were appropriate for the room that the middle-classes still called the nursery, including Tristram Hiller’s 1936 slightly surreal (and glorious) poster ‘Tourists Prefer Shell’.
• OTD in early British television: 18 December 1938: a clutch of major drama productions over the Christmas period included Gordon Daviot’s Richard of Bordeaux.
• OTD in early British television: 20 December 1938: an unscheduled 11-minute OB took the viewer to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for a preview of the following day’s broadcast of ‘King of Pantomime’ Tom Arnold’s spectacular Babes in the Wood.
• OTD in early British television: 23 December 1938: Polite Wine Drinking, with Marcel Boulestin mansplaining wine to Nesta Sawyer in 1937, and The Director of Television in the Witness Box, with Gerald Cock on the spot, a year later.
• OTD in early British television: 24 December 1938: pre-war Christmas Eve television, from 1931 to 1938, when the enormously popular late Victorian farce of college high jinks and cross-dressing Charley’s Aunt was given.
• OTD in early British television: 29 December 1938: a round-up of television’s progress by Grace Wyndham Goldie for The Listener.
• OTD in early British television: 31 December 1938: live OB from Grosvenor House featuring the New Year’s Eve party.
Leave a Reply