OTD in early British television: 16 April 1939
John Wyver writes: Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was born 136 years ago today. To mark his 50th birthday on Sunday 16 April 1939, when Charlie was working on the script for The Great Dictator (1940), Alexandra Palace screened an afternoon programme of extracts from his early comedies. Largely because of the industry refusing to license any extracts to the new medium, this was the only substantial recognition of cinema history by the pre-war television service.
Selecting from the archive of the British Film Institute, which had been founded earlier in the decade, the Institute’s technical director H.D. Waley chose scenes from the Keystone comedy Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), and three Essanay films, all made in 1915, The Tramp (above), The Bank and The Champion. Miss May Langston, who had been playing for the movies since 1905, provided piano improvisations and, pleasingly, the prints were shown at the correct speed of 16 frames per second.
Here’s the feature-length Tillie’s Punctured Romance in all its comic glory:
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