OTDs in early British television: Xmas reprise 4
John Wyver writes: the fourth reprise selection, presented in chronological order, for my blog posts over the past month highlighting some of the research for my forthcoming book about British television between the war, Magic Rays of Light. The first is here, the second here, and yesterday’s is here; normal service will be reszumed tomorrow.
• OTD in early British television: 27 November 1938: 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.
• OTD in early British television: 2 December 1938: ‘First let me say that… Love From a Stranger was, beyond all possible doubt, a winner on the television screen. This play is, as you know, a flesh-creeping affair.’ That’s Grace Wyndham Goldie writing on George More O’Ferrall’s presentation (above) of Frank Vosper’s play adapted from an Agatha Christie short story, first shown on this day, Friday 2 December 1938. The 70-minute drama starring Edna Best and Henry Oscar was played from 9.10pm.
• OTD in early British television: 9 December 1938: The Christmas quotient of programming was ramped up on the evening of Friday 9 December 1938 with a 10-minute broadcast, Presents for the Children no 1, presented by the well-regarded painter Edward Halliday. The artist recommended a number of prints that were appropriate for the room that the middle-classes still called the nursery, including Tristram Hiller’s 1936 slightly surreal (and glorious) poster ‘Tourists Prefer Shell’.
• OTD in early British television: 18 December 1938: There was a sense of increasing confidence at Alexandra Palace at the end of 1938, with sales of receivers finally picking up and programmes becoming both more ambitious and more polished. This was reflected in announcements for a clutch of major drama productions over the Christmas period, including Noel Coward’s Hay Fever on Christmas night, an Edgar Wallace thriller, The Ringer, a re-run of Once in a Lifetime, and on the evening of Sunday 18 December, Gordon Daviot’s Richard of Bordeaux.
• OTD in early British television: 20 December 1938: The evening line-up from Alexandra Palace on Tuesday 20 December 1938 featured a News Map talk about Poland, a concert by Eric Wild and his Band, and what was billed as Tactile Bee, in which blindfolded celebs of the day, including John Betjeman and Secrets of Life filmmaker Mary Field, identified objects by touch. Just before 10.30pm an unscheduled 11-minute outside broadcast took the viewer to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for a preview of the following day’s broadcast of ‘King of Pantomime’ Tom Arnold’s spectacular Babes in the Wood.
• OTD in early British television: 23 December 1938: spoiled for the eve of Christmas Eve choice today, this is a double-header, celebrating Polite Wine Drinking (above) on this day in 1937, and then The Director of Television in the Witness Box, shown on Friday 23 December 1938. The former was a component of Alexandra Palace’s aspirational lifestyle propgramming that also featured bridge, ballroom dancing and tennis lessons. The format was simplicity itself: sat at a dinner table chef Marcel Boulestin mansplained wine in an off-the-cuff manner to Nesta Sawyer.
• OTD in early British television: 24 December 1938: for whatever reason, pre-war television on Christmas Eve was largely unremarkable, although the Baird Company’s 30-line broadcast on 24 December 1931 appears to have been the first to be described in the billings as ‘A Christmas programme’. Frustratingly, the January 1932 issue of Television (the masthead of which is above) contains no mention of the transmission, and so we have no sense of the mixed bill delivered by Nat Lewis as Joey the Clown, pantomime cartoons drawn by Rupert Harvey (who would become a regular contributor), and Eve Fulton and Varna Glendstrom as Columbine and Harlequin.
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