John Wyver writes: The evening of Wednesday 10 May 1939, just before a programme of Spanish music by Albeniz and Granados, offered the first programme in a series called Sunday in the Country. This was ‘a walk in the country described by Russell Muirhead, with the aid of photographs, maps and diagrams’. Plus a squirrel, of which a little more a little later.
By early 1939 the television service was looking beyond London and beginning to take an interest in country matters. The monthly outside broadcast Down on the Farm was a substantial rural offering, but otherwise the service was restricted, thanks to opposition from the unions, in not making film programmes.
John Wyver writes: The evening of Tuesday 9 May was marked by an unfortunate incident in the studio at Alexandra Palace. During a 10-minute edition of Speaking Personally, in which R. B. Bennett, former Prime Minister of Canada, was talking about his country and the state visit of the King and Queen, a studio lamp burst somewhat spectacularly.
None of the splinters of glass reached his face, and as the Daily Telegraph detailed he showed remarkable composure:
This was Mr. Bennett’s first experience of being televised and he had been speaking for hardly a minute when the accident ocurred. He was congratulating the B.B.C. on their pioneering work in television at the moment.
The lamp exploded with a violent report, and as it near the microphone it sounded like a thunderclap to viewers. Viewers saw Mr. Bennett start and falter. Looking towards the camera man he said interrogatively, ‘Stop?’
Told to proceed he did so and had soon fully recovered confidence. He continued for some minutes giving a history of Canada, with special reference to the King’s visit. Afterwards, Miss Jasmine Bligh. the announcer came before the microphone and explained the cause of the interruption, with an apology to Mr. Bennett.
John Wyver writes: Thirty months into the high definition service Mary Adams’ Talks programmes were becoming increasingly ambitious, with an increasing number of broadcasts featuring multiple guests. Perhaps the most ambitious was the 50-minute Salute to America on the evening of Monday 8 May, mounted to acknowledge the state visit by the King and Queen to Canada and USA.
Billed as ‘a programme of the contemporary American scene, described in speech and picture’, this assembled an impressive line-up including J.B. Priestley, Stephen Spender and Anglo-American novelist Susan Ertz (above, a youthful Spender, Ertz and travel journalist S.P.B. Mais), along with readings of verse by Walt Whitman and extracts from Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.
Sir Frederick Whyte, director-general of the English-Speaking Union, contributed a spoken portrait of President Roosevelt. And there were film extracts too, with a flight over Grand Canyon and Boulder Dam, and shots of liners in the docks of New York.
John Wyver writes: On Sunday 7 May 1939 the critic ‘E.H.R.’ contributed his usual television review column to The Observer. It was a fairly run-of-the-mill filing, but it gives us occasion to take a brief look at the state of television criticism 30 months on from the start of the high definition service from Alexandra Palace.
Not that the fledgling medium and emerging artform was being treated with consistency and seriousness. Apart, that is, by the peerless Grace Wyndham Goldie in her weekly columns for The Listener, and the somewhat less sophisticated Sunday musings of ‘E.H.R.’.
I have enthused sufficiently in these posts to have given regular readers a sense of my admiration for the rigour and thoughtfulness of Wyndham Goldie. I will not return to her writing here, although I will doubtless do so in future contributions. And I might note that I am hoping to edit a collection of her columns as my next book project.
John Wyver writes: Saturday 6 May 1939 saw an exceptional morning broadcast from midday covering the departure from Waterloo of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, along with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret (both only going as far as Portsmouth), on the state visit to Canada, the United States and Newfoundland. One of the BBC’s mobile control units was at Buckingham Palace for shots from 12.03 to 12.20 of the crowds gathered for the procession setting off. Broadcaster and painter Edward Halliday provided the commentary here.
The second unit was at Waterloo, where at 12.27 coverage of scenes on the platform picked up for another 20 minutes, with Freddie Grisewood commentating. In addition to the royal party, as can be seen above, dignitaries gathered to wave them off included Neville Chamberlain, Viscount Halifax, Sir Samuel Hoare and US ambassador Joseph Kennedy.
And while the group was on the way to the station, television cut back to the studio at Alexandra Palace for 7 minutes, where News Maps host (and radical socialist writer) J.F. Horrabin traced the route with the help of a map and photographs.
Daily Telegraph, 6 May 1938, with a picture (and apologies for the quality of the reproduction) taken in the studio during the previous evening’s Picture Page.
John Wyver writes: Yet more dance from Alexandra Palace, this time on the evening of Thursday 4 May 1939. Which only speaks to how rich and varied was early television’s presentation of the artform. Alongside actors Janine Darcey and Jim Gerald, and Norwegian newspaperman Haakon Overland, the 240th edition of Picture Page featured ‘famous tap dancer’ Paul Draper (above, in a detail from a Carl van Vetchen portrait), who was appearing at the Café de Paris.
Draper was celebrated for combining tap dancing with classical music, and here he performed to a Toccata by Paradisi and Gavotte from the opera Mignon by Ambroise Thomas, alongside more familiar tunes like ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’.
John Wyver writes: More or less six months to the day after the start of the ‘high definition’ television service from Alexandra Palace, on Monday 3 May 1937, members of the Vic-Wells ballet company travelled to the studio to perform, at 3.47pm and 9.47pm, Frederick Ashton‘s one-act ballet Les Patineurs (above).
The company had premiered what would become one of Ashton’s most popular ballets only in February at Sadler’s Wells. A cast of 15 dance a series of divertissements set at a Victorian skating party, conjured up by William Chappell‘s costumes and scenery. The idea had come from the Vic-Wells music director Constant Lambert, who created the score from fragments of two operas by Meyerbeer.
John Wyver writes: Ninety years ago tonight, on Thursday 2 May 1935, Ivor Novello‘s musical Glamorous Night premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The first nighters were enthralled and the box office registered exceptionally healthy sales. The show’s success led to the actor and composer beginning a series of lavish, operetta-style presentations, although this is the only one in which television has a central role.
For all his four 1930s musicals, Novello (above) wrote the book and music, Christopher Hassall wrote the lyrics, and the orchestrations were by Charles Prentice. Glamorous Night starred Novello and Mary Ellis, with a cast including Zena Dare, Olive Gilbert and Elizabeth Welch, and ran from 2 May 1935 to 18 July 1936, at Drury Lane and then the London Coliseum.
John Wyver writes: ‘One of the big television occasions of the year,’ was how Radio Times (above)trailed the live outside broadcast of the musical comedy Me and My Girl from the Victoria Palace on the evening of Monday 1 May 1939. This was the hugely successful ‘Lambeth Walk’ show starring Lupino Lane and Teddie St Denis, with music by Noel Gay, that had already been running for 18 months on stage. The broadcast went down so well that the television service did it all again on 17 July.
Television had first visited a West End theatre in November 1938 for J.B. Priestley’s When We Are Married, and then in March Magyar Melody had been broadcast in full. Having responded to both previous broadcasts, Grace Wyndham Goldie filed a further despatch for The Listener:
I insist upon throwing a few bouquets… – to Mr. Lupino Lane, to the Me and My Girl company; to the television engineers; to Mr. Philip Dorté, who runs the outside broadcasts, and to the beneficent accident of fate which brought the King and Queen to Victoria Palace on the very evening when thousands of viewers were looking in.
