John Wyver writes: The evening of Sunday 5 March 1939, from 9.08pm to 10.54pm, was taken up with a studio restaging of Little Ladyship (above), written by Ian Hay after the Hungarian original by Istvan Bekeffi and Adorjan more
John Wyver writes: The eclecticism and breadth of the drama produced pre-war at Alexandra Palace is indicated by the production on Friday 3 March 1939 of The King of Spain's Daughter by Teresa Deevy. This was a play that more
John Wyver writes: the afternoon of Tuesday 2 March 1937, just four months after the AP service had begun, featured one of television's most innovative pre-war programmes. Fugue for Four Cameras was a strikingly experimental six-minute dance collaboration created by more
John Wyver writes: Today's post is a melancholy little tale of a short, vibrant life in which early television played just a small part. The subject is dancer and acrobat Laurie Devine (above, right), who appeared performing 'various dances' on more
John Wyver writes: the afternoon of Monday 7 February saw the first presentation of The Three Bears, an original short ballet for the screen by choreographer Joy Newton. This was not, as the News Chronicle claimed, 'the first ballet more
John Wyver writes: The evening of Sunday 5 February 1939 was taken up with a 105-minute version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with John Abbott as Prospero and actor, writer and poet Stephen Haggard as Ariel. Playing Caliban was more
John Wyver writes: the whole of the afternoon schedule on Monday 24 January 1938 was occupied by a presentation of act 2 of Richard Wagner's music drama Tristan and Isolde. In the evening this was played again, in perhaps more
John Wyver writes (a little later than usual, given all of the activity prompted by yesterday's post and follow-ups): the afternoon of Friday 20 January saw the fourth performance of one of the new medium's undoubted 'high culture' hits. Billed more
John Wyver writes: the evening of Monday 17 January 1938 saw the first broadcast (with a repeat on the following Friday afternoon) of Royston Morley's hour-long adaptation of John Webster's Jacobean drama, The Duchess of Malfi. The classical more
John Wyver writes: on the evening of Wednesday 16 January 1935, a 40-minute, 30-line broadcast featured singers Maisie Seneshall and Harold Scott, along with prima ballerina Lydia Sokolova with Harold Turner as her junior partner. Both Turner and, to more