OTD in early British television: 14 June 1937
John Wyver writes: Monday 14 June saw two studio performances of the second part of James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan, following on from the previous Tuesday’s opener. The staging was the next recognised television drama landmark after the December 1936 presentation of Murder in the Cathedral, and was hailed as a major step forward for the fledgling art.
Drama producer George More O’Ferrall, who had handled Murder…, was sufficiently confident to attempt a lavish studio presentation, including incidental music by Delius composed for the play’s premiere in 1923 and played here by the BBC Television Orchestra.
Initially produced by Basil Dean in a lavish and hugely successful London staging, eight years after the young poet and author’s death, this elaborate orientalist fantasy is drawn from the Arabian Nights. Typically, Mayura Vincent, Alisonne Keighley and Joan Butterfield, above, are billed simply as ‘dancing girls’.
The [1923 stage] production included incidental music, songs, dances, and choral episodes. It caught the fancy of English audiences at the time, perhaps because of the escape implied in its exotic setting and a post-war vogue for oriental imagery, and its wistful ending of death, by execution, and a hoped for reunion and love in the afterlife, a theme that would have resonated for the survivors of the Great War, remembering those who died in the war.
At AP Peter Bax contributed modest settings and costumes, and the casting is notable for the appearances of Robert Adams as Manzur (second from left below), which appears to be the first television performance by a Black actor, and for the appearance of Indian dancer Mayura Vincent.
For the Daily Telegraph critic, the second part ‘completed the most notable production in any of the television programmes. The play… succeeded in creating much of the romantic but sinister atmosphere. Frank Cellier as Hassan, the confectioner, gave a notable performance, helped by a distinguished cast.’
[OTD post no. 179; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain in January 2026.]
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