OTD in early British television: 27 November 1938
John Wyver writes: OTD in early British television, on 27 November 1938, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company made its television debut with its production of The Wooing of Anne Hathaway. The tradition of a major drama production each Sunday evening was already well-established, with a mix of classics and respectable contemporary plays suitable for the Sabbath. Transmission was from 9.05pm to 10.45pm.
Grace Carlton’s biographical tale had premiered at Wyndham’s Theatre in London the previous December, and Birmingham Rep’s production opened on 5 November, three weeks before the television presentation. The company was founded by Barry Jackson in 1913, and had a distinguished record in the presentation of Shakespeare’s own playing, in many ways being an important precursor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In the play Anne understands her husband’s creative genius and encourages him to go to London to become a playwright. ‘You are free to go,’ she tells him, ‘I have said so many a time.’ In the Birmingham Rep production Myrtle Richardson played Anne, and Clement McCallin was Will, as can be seen in this theatre publicity still reproduced in Radio Times:
Herbert M. Prentice had staged the show in Birmingham, and Lanham Titchener was the BBC producer charged with both camera rehearsing and presenting the production on just the day of transmission. Fortuitously, at this point, Sunday broadcasts were confined to the evening, so Titchener and team would have had the studio to themselves for the day. Because the company had come from Birmingham there was no opportunity for a second run during the week.
Shakespeare’s plays had a strong presence in the pre-war schedules, with a long-running series of Scenes from Shakespeare starting on 5 February 1937 with Margaretta Scott as Rosalind in an excerpt from As You Like It. Dallas Bower mounted ambitious and innovative studio productions of Julius Caesar, set in a modern-day European society living with fascism, and The Tempest. Peggy Ashcroft was seen in a theatre OB of Twelfth Night in January 1939.
The header image has absolutely nothing to do with the production, but rather is printmaker George Edward Perine’s mid 19th century fanciful imaging of Shakespeare reading Hamlet to his family, with Anne seated to the right; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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