OTD reprises? 4 December 1937
John Wyver writes: I have now been contributing ‘On this day in early British television’ posts for more than a year now. Which means that in addition to amassing a total of 282 original entries, I am now encountering the days that I wrote for twelve months back. So 4 December has a post from 2024 that details the masque that H.D.C. Pepler and producer Stephen Thomas mounted based on Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This time round I have a new header image, of what I believe to have been the set (above), but the fairly text stands up pretty well:
One of the true eccentricities of performance presented from Alexandra Palace in the later 1930s was the cycle of masques staged by H.D.C. Pepler. On this day, 4 December 1937, mime and mask artist 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.
Working with an original score by Cyril Clarke, and with the poem read by Dennis Arundell, a cast of ten, including Pepler himself, and some in masks that Pepler had made, mimed and danced with rhythmic movements for a half-hour afternoon show.
You can carry on reading here.
Rich as I believe the pre-war television schedules to be, I am far from certain that I can continue to mine them for, as it were, a second daily highlight to be the subject of new posts. So what is to be done?
I could replicate the posts from a year ago, but that seems a bit pointless. Or, and this is perhaps my favoured solution now, I could do a once-a-week post with links and brief descriptions of the contributions from a year back.
I think that’s what I will explore doing, perhaps as a regular offering on Wednesday to complement the Sunday Dozen. In addition, I plan to extend the blog posts into broader cultural topics, as I have done in the past and as I have just started to do again recently, as well as detailing screenings, events, reviews and responses linked to the publication on 8 January of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain.
Meanwhile, do click through to a year back and enjoy the discussion of the masque of the Ancient Mariner.
I tell you something I’ve been wondering that probably isn’t in the book… What would the television equivalent of this be? – https://andywalmsley.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-wireless-foxtrot.html
Can we count ‘Television’ sung by Adele Dixon on the first night of the Alexandra Palace service (which is one of the references for the title of my book); lyrics by James Dyrenforth and music by Kenneth Leslie-Smith:
https://youtu.be/MPJem0pDFCM?si=Mbnv392-yYbpI6u-