John Wyver writes: Just before 10pm on Wednesday 6 April 1938, a 10-minute broadcast from Alexandra Palace presented Surya Sena and Nelun Devi (above) performing Sinhalese folk songs. The transmission was organised by producer and musicologist Philip Bate, who we have met here before.
Surya Sena and his wife Nelun Devi were important pioneers in the revival of Sri Lankan folk music, and the programme is a further indication of how remarkably eclectic was the mix of musicians featured on early television.
(Before posting a little more about these two musicians, I should say I am holiday in France this week – which is why this post is a day late, and why for the rest of the week I am going to feature reprises of my six favourites from the 120 OTD posts to date.)
John Wyver writes: Although we have next-to-know moving image records of pre-war television programmes, almost all of which were transmitted live, we do have elements of the transmissions in the form of the twice-weekly newsreels and the documentary films that were broadcast from Alexandra Palace.
Given the extent and significance of documentary filmmaking in the 1930s, by the GPO Film Unit, Strand Films and other groups, it is perhaps surprising that relatively few independently produced films were licenced for showing by the BBC.
Among the few that were was the Council for the Preservation of Rural England’s campaigning film made in 1938 and variously titled Rural England, This Blessed Plot and The Case for the Defence. It was screened at 10.17pm on Wednesday 5 April 1939, and courtesy of Pathé can be found online today.
John Wyver writes: Afternoon transmissions on Monday 4 April 1938 were mostly taken up by a 45-minute ‘feature’ about Sir Christopher Wren. This dramatised presentation was scripted by playwright Christine Hahlo, whose only other credit I can find is Poet’s Licence presented in the West End in 1932. William Devlin took the part of the architect, Robert Rendel was John Evelyn, Rex Walters played Charles II, and Samuel Pepys was incarnated by Ivor Barnard.
Producer Eric Crozier had mounted the earlier ‘feature’ Turn Around in September 1937, which combined dramatised studio sequences with a modest amount of location filming on an ocean-going luxury liner. Wren of St Paul’s applied the approach to a historical subject.
John Wyver writes: On 3 April 1933 the BBC’s 30-line producer Eustace Robb, who had been overseeing transmissions since the previous summer, mounted his most expansive musical production to date. Transmitted from the tiny studio BB at Broadcasting House, achieved with just a single ‘scanner’ (effectively the camera), The Troika was designated ‘a Russian gypsy episode with music’.
This was a collaboration with Russian emigré Vladimir Launitz, a former aviator who fought for the ‘White’ forces in the Russian Civil War, and who also found the cast and arranged many of the score’s folk songs. Seven principals put across 18 numbers, before scenery designed by Count George Armfeldt and with dresses by Tatiana. (The latter is almost certainly Tatiana Georgievna Bruni; any further info on either her or the Count would be much appreciated.)
Writing in the monthly Television, and noting that Robb ‘certainly spread himself on this show’, ’Spectator’ saw this presentation as a significant step forward in television production ‘that in microphone “fades” and effects had all the complications of a radio play plus the lighting, focussing, dressing and movement required by television.’
John Wyver writes: Television on the afternoon of Sunday 2nd April was mostly occupied by the 40-minute feature Leviathan, described as ‘a survey of sea-monsters, past and present’. A discussion between Lt-Commander R.T. Gould, author of The Case for the Sea-Serpent, and London zoo curator David Seth-Smith framed dramatised scenes (above, and in full below) bearing witness to tales of beings from the deep.
Apparently Lt-Commander Gould had told Picture Page viewers the previous October that he was a firm believer in the existence of sea monsters, and in this programme producer Stephen Harrison offered him the chance to expound his views more fully. What intrigues me most about the transmission, however, is the writer credited for the dramatised scenes, Reyner Heppenstall.
John Wyver writes: After an hour or so’s coverage of the Boat Race on the morning of Saturday 1 April 1939, that afternoon Alexandra Palace offered the television premiere of Michael Powell’s 1937 feature film The Edge of the World. Made as a passion project with independent finance by Powell, the film was the sole recent British feature to be screened by the pre-war service.
Filmed across four arduous months on and around the Shetland island of Foula, The Edge of the World had achieved only a very limited theatrical release in Britain and its marginal status in relation to the industry at the time meant that it was available for showing on television. As the copy for the BFI DVD release of the 1990 restoration recounts,
The Edge of the World tells the moving story of a remote island and its inhabitants, whose traditions and way of life are threatened by a rapidly industrialising world. To settle an argument over whether the islanders should give up their livelihood and move to the mainland, two childhood friends follow an ancient tradition and climb the island’s highest cliff face. The outcome shatters the island’s peace and splits the two clans apart.
John Wyver writes: At 9.06pm on Thursday 31 March 1938, AP presented The Hogarth Puppet Grostesques, produced and manipulated (along with Ann Hogarth and Kitty Tyzack) by Jan Bussell (above). On the programme were performances of ‘The Puppet Orchestra’, ‘The Green Man’, ‘The Indian Rope Trick’ and ‘The Dream Dancer’, given to recordings of music by Grieg and Tchaikovsky.
Ann Hogarth was trained as a stage manager at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Jan Bussell was an actor and television producer already involved in puppetry when the two met and, looking for new initiatives in puppet theatre, worked together as full-time puppeteers. Their repertoire, for adults and children, mixed different techniques of puppetry in an adventurous range of pieces: literary dramas, children’s tales, poetry and songs, music hall and circus turns.
John Wyver writes: To the South Pole on the evening of Tuesday 30 March 1937 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions in the Antarctic. The half-hour studio programme brought together (as the billing announced) ‘Professor Debenham, Mr Cherry-Gerrard, Mr Wright and Captain Bruce’ along with relics of the ill-fated expedition. Towards the end of the broadcast extracts were shown of Herbert Ponting’s film With Captain Scott to the South Pole.
John Wyver writes: In mid-March 1939, Alexandra Palace rolled out a metaphorical red carpet for the state visit of France’s President and Madame Lebrun. Alongside an outside broadcast of the King and Queen greeting the visitors at Victoria Station, the schedules featured L’Avare, Lady Gregory’s version of Molière’s The Miser; a News Map edition about France; and Les Jeux d’Eau, an elaborate assembly of French music and songs.
The real world schedule of the republic’s representatives also included an evening with the royals at Covent Garden. There the full Vic-Wells Ballet gave a command performance of acts 1 and 3 of a new ‘pared down and low-budget’ production of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Princess (also known as The Sleeping Beauty).
Three days later, on Saturday 25 March, and then again on Wednesday 29 March, acts 1 and 2 of this elaborate staging was given across both studios at AP. Marius Petipa’s original 1890 choreography had been revived by former Maryinsky Theatre ballet master Nicholas Sergueff, and Nadia Benois had designed costumes.
John Wyver writes: 28 March appears to be another unremarkable date in each year of pre-war television, and as a consequence it offers the opportunity to compile another subject index to my 113 original posts to date. The format is similar to my earlier one highlighting posts about early television drama, listing the posts in chronological order of subject, except that the focus of this one is dance from ballet to ballroom.
As before, these daily blog posts are intended to run until the publication at the start of 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain. For fuller indexes of previous posts go here for February posts, here for January ones, and here for ones in December (and the end of November).
