OTD in early British television: 11 March 1938
John Wyver writes: Across the winter of 1937-38, the Television service broadcast Pre-view on Friday afternoons and evenings. Featuring interviews, rehearsals and test sequences from the forthcoming attractions of the following week, the strand was an attempt to encourage more viewing, and of course more sales of sets.
The format of the show, hosted by one of the women announcers, either Elizabeth Cowell or Jasmine Bligh, started out conventionally, but became increasingly eccentric as the series ran on. The 15th edition on 11 March 1938 was built around a comic guessing game in which Jasmine (see above in a generic shot taken from the screen at some point in 1937) and actor Charles Heslop as ‘Mr Viewer’ had to identify programmes in the coming week from visual clues.
So a recital by pianist Moisevitch was suggested by a close-up of a musician’s hands on a keyboard, the variety show On the Sands was conjured up by a shot of a scene attendant using a bucket and spade, and the supernatural drama Words Upon the Window Pane was trailed with, yes, someone writing on a sheet of glass. Strangest of all perhaps was Heslop slapping Jasmine Bligh’s face as a prompt for the comic short made by amateur filmmaker Richard Massingham, Tell Me if it Hurts.
More conventional elements included a scene from Stephen Leacock’s drama A Split in the Cabinet, an extract of a British Movietone newsreel of a rugby game to draw attention to a forthcoming OB from Twickenham, and (in the afternoon only) a live link to the mobile unit at the athletics track of White City, during which producer Philip Dorté spoke with Olympic athletes Harold Abrahams and Bevil Rudd.
In the evening, the line-up was repeated, except that a scene from next week’s play A Scene in the Billet replaced the visit to White City and the rehearsal of A Split in the Cabinet. In its first outing the programme lasted 20 minutes, whereas by the evening it ran for just 14.
There were 19 editions of Pre-view, from 22 October 1937 to 22 April 1938, but the strand did not return the following autumn.
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