OTD in early British television: 13 August 1939
John Wyver writes: The evening schedule of Sunday 13 August 1939, with the war little more than a fortnight away, was taken up with a production of James Bridie’s fantasy Tobias the Angel. Frank Napier’s production for the Regent’s Park Open Air theatre was transplanted by George More O’Ferrall to the AP studio, with Leslie French as Tobias and Robert Eddison as the Archangel Gabriel.
The plot of Bridie’s 1930 comedy, according to Concord Theatricals, is as follows:
Tobias is the son of Tobit, a blind old Jewish beggar who lives in a hovel in Nineveh with his wife Anna. The disguised archangel Raphael, who has been hospitably received by Tobit, volunteers to accompany Tobias on a journey to Media.
They stop in Ecbatana at the home of Sarah, whom Tobias marries despite a warning that seven previous bridegrooms were murdered by the demon Asmoday (Asmodeus). After driving off this menace, Raphael escorts the couple to Nineveh, where he cures Tobit’s blindness. Raphael then reveals himself as the mighty Archangel and disappears.
The play was rare in being given in two productions by pre-war television. The first, in May 1938, was presented by producer Moultrie Kelsall. Writing for the Observer about the latter staging, ‘E.H.R.’ interestingly recalled the earlier one:
That altogether delightful James Bridie play Tobias and the Angel made another appearance on our home screens on Sunday evening. About a year ago we were shown a special television version. Last week we were shown the major portion of a production from the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park…
Both the former and present presentations were good, but memory suggests the special television version as being more complete and building the situations in better accord with the author’s intentions…
Probably a production built up solely for television must be better than one taken from a present theatre run and condensed by the simple process of leaving out some of the scenes.
Image: Tobias and the Angel Raphael, 1542, by Girolamo Savoldo.
[OTD post no. 239; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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