OTD in early British television: 29 August 1936
John Wyver writes: Saturday 29 August 1936 was the fourth day of test transmissions from Alexandra Palace arranged especially for reception at the Radiolympia trade fair in west London. The opening of the BBC’s ‘high definition’ service was over two months away, but for ten days AP put out a short schedule of variety and feature film extracts. Transmissions alternated daily between those via the Baird 240-line system and those from Marconi-EMI’s 405-line set-up.
The more reliable Marconi-EMI cameras were used on this first Saturday of Radiolympia, and after tuning signals in the late morning, the broadcast started at midday. A shot of Alexandra Park from a balcony was accompanied by commentary by producer Cecil Lewis. Leslie Mitchell took over announcing duties five minutres later, cueing up extracts from the Gaumont British feature First a Girl starring Jessie Matthews and then from Paul Rotha’s documentary about writers, Cover to Cover.
Following an edition of Gaumont British News, a half-hour variety bill featured the close harmony group The Three Admirals, comedy performing horse ‘Pogo’, singer Helen McKay (above), Creole dancers and singers Carole Chilton and Maceo Thomas, and a big finale with the BBC Television Orchestra with Ms McKay again, this time singing ‘Here’s Looking at You’.
The video shows a reconstruction of the scene, pieced together from various newsreel sources, at the Youtube channel ‘And next on Thames’, where it is accompanied by this note:
The broadcast was captured on newsreel at the time [almost certainly filmed on Monday 31 August]. Most clips of “Here’s Looking At You” show a much shorter version of the song. Newsreel outtakes found online suggested a longer version of the song.
Through editing and synchronisation, an extended version has been stitched together, to reveal an additional verse and different angles, including Elizabeth Cowell watching the performance from off-stage. The film quality is cleaner in places, showing greater detail, including Helen McKay’s make-up and outfit. It’s likely, but not certain, that all the clips were shot at the same time.
A further half-hour of feature film extracts followed, including As You Like It and Rembrandt, and then a (carefully planned) ‘impromptu’ item in which television productions manager Donald Munro introduced senior members of the AP staff. Closedown followed at 1.45, meaning that the transmission had lasted for less than two hours. Nor was there any possibility in those early days of supplementing this with anything as proaic as a test card. The screens of the televisions at Radiolympia remained blank.
The BBC director of engineering Noel Ashbridge could summon only muted enthusiasm when reporting to his colleagues after the fair closed. ‘On the whole,’ he recounted, ‘one can say that the general reaction was that the demonstrations were a very remarkable technical achievement but it was not certain that the pictures had permanent programme value.’
Both he and Gerald Cock despaired at the Radiolympia viewing conditions, which had standing visitors being moved on before they could properly engage with anything. More positive reactions came from those who saw the broadcasts at AP and in other London locations, including the Baird offices in central London, at the Science Museum and in a Victoria Station waiting-room.
[OTD post no. 255; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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