John Wyver writes: From 11.12pm on Friday 21 April 1933 viewers fortunate enough to own a 30-line television receiver could watch the half-hour Looking In, billed as ‘the first television revue’. Written by John Watt with music composed by Harry S. Pepper (that’s them above, with their set for the revue for Radiolympia in 1933), this featured ‘celebrated Première Danseuse’ Iris Kirkwhite, singer Anona Winn, and comedians Veronica Brady, Horace Perceval and Reginald Purdell, plus six of the Paramount Astoria Girls along with a band of four. All marshalled into a 40-minute broadcast by producer Eustace Robb.
Unlike most other 30-line transmissions, the occasion attracted a good deal of press comment, being regarded by the Daily Telegraph ‘rather a highly interesting experiment than as an entertainment’. And as Daily Herald critic wrote, there was ‘no room on the screen to show more than two, or at the most three, of the four [sic] dancers at once, and only two-thirds of a sketch.’ Despite this, the writer recognised, ‘Television moves on, slowly but surely.’
Even more remarkably, an amateur recording exists of four minutes of this broadcast, which as its restorer Donald McLean argued ‘easily challenges [the] myth of poor quality programmes and an amateurish service.‘
‘Spectator’ in the monthly journal Television provided a informatively detailed account of the broadcast:
John Watt and Harry Pepper, well-known combination author and composer of [radio] broadcast shows put up the sparkling programme that listeners have learned in seven short years to link with the name of Watt. Long may he be spared. Production was in the hands of Eustace Robb, whose experience in Studio BB made it possible to present this ambitious effort.
The Astoria Girls in Studio BB; Eustace Robb can be glimpsed in the background
Six Paramount Astoria girls were picked for the show from a team of twelve, trained by Mrs Rodney Hudson. They all wanted to come along, and selection was difficult. Colouring was the decisive factor: blondes do not show well in an extended picture [that is, a long-shot] before the white screen and brunettes were chosen.
John Watt had an idea to show them doing physical drill in white swimming suits, but Robb ruled this out, said more contrast was essential in the colour scheme, so we saw the girls in black in their opening number. Their umbrella dance was effective, too…
It was a clever notion of John Watt’s to introduce his cast in turns, breaking through a paper loop. First Anona Winn, no Watt show is complete without her; how that girl can sing. Then Horace Perceval, musical comedy lead, and his repeat chorus was the excuse for a skirt dance by two of the girls. Solo steps followed by blithe Iris Kirkwhite, originator of toe-tap dancing, and we came to Veronia Brady, comedienne of the Connie Ediss type, that I rejoice to see and hear…
Altogether a well-balanced programme that was all too short.
Television also carried a report by a viewer:
These programmes are spoiling us for the ordinary broadcast vaudeville. We hope that the day is not far off when all our vaudeville will be televised. To consistent ‘lookers,’ sound without sight lacks kick.
One other witness was a News Chronicle journalist, who was present in Studio BB during the transmission:
I glanced at Anona Winn as she burst through a hoop and then ‘looked in’ on the television screen. Yes, there she was, just as I could see her out of the corner of my eye. I left the studio feeling that here was a mystery which my great-great-grandfather would have described as reeking of witchcraft.
Looking again at Looking In
In his important book Restoring Baird’s Image (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2000) Donald McLean recounts the remarkable story of being alerted to a home recorded aluminium audio disc on which a television signal had been recorded, so its label said, in 1933. Don has done more than anyone to track down and patiently and expertly restore, using software image processing, the few fragments of 30-line television that we have.
As he wrote,
After processing, the quality of the four-minute silent video recording was adequate to recognise what was happening. The dancing girls were fascinating subjects. They were wearing dark one-pieve bathing suit outfits and were bareheaded.
The tale of how he identified this recording as a part of Looking In from April 1933 is also laid out in Don’s rich The Dawn of TV website, where along with a detailed technical description and a fragment of the Astoria Girls dancing, he also notes the other shots of individuals who can be glimpsed in the recording.
In Restoring Baird’s Image (which also reproduces a number of screenshots), he speculated:
It would seem that an enthusiastic amateur saw that there was a television special being broadcast and set up his recording equipmewnt to ‘have a go’ at capturing it. Judging from the state of the disc and ignoring the effects of ageing, he would have had difficulty seeing much more than the odd glimpse of the girls doing their dance routine…
This video recording gives us our first-ever look at exactly what people were watching on television in the early 1930s.
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