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
John Wyver writes: the afternoon of Saturday 14 January at 3.30pm saw the second presentation of what was now, given the timing of the the transmission, somewhat incongruously named Schubert Night. I previously noted the first broadcast on 9 more
John Wyver writes: on the afternoon of Friday 8 January 1937 Dallas Bower produced Burnt Sepia, a half-hour variety line-up billed as, in the racially derogatory language of the day, ‘an all-coloured cabaret’. This was television’s first variety programme featuring more
John Wyver writes: One of the things I love about researching early television is how bare programme listings can lead down the strangest and most unlikely rabbit holes. Take the line-ups for the two Picture Page editions on Tuesday 5 more
John Wyver writes: 'ls the 'straight from the theatre' stuff going to be satisfactory?' That was the question Grace Wyndham Goldie posed following the live broadcast of Twelfth Night from the Phoenix Theatre (above) on the evening of 2 more