WTVA at BFI Southbank
In the new year a season at BFI Southbank is showcasing the weird and wonderful history of the Scala Cinema, and as part of this programmer (and our friend) Dick Fiddy has organised an afternoon on Saturday 13 January dedicated to the memory of the screenings organised there by Wider Television Access (WTVA). The programme features two classic ITC episodes, The Saint: Teresa (1963), with Roger Moore and Lana Morris, directed by Roy Ward Baker, and The Avengers: A Touch of Brimstone (1965, above), with Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Peter Wyngarde and Carole Cleveland, directed by James Hill.
A group of those who felt that television history at the time was ill-served, WTVA is a key part of the pre-history of Illuminations, since it was in this context that the two current partners, John Wyver and Linda Zuck, first met. The success of the WTVA screenings that we, along with colleagues and other cultists, programmed led directly to our early Channel 4 commission, Six into One: The Prisoner File, and then later to The A-Z of TV, 1,001 Nights of TV and of course the series of TV Heaven. As we aim to breathe a little life back into this blog, we will try to fill in something of this history and our memories of the Scala showings. Be seeing you!
Isn’t it CAROL Cleveland?
Yes, you’re absolutely right, so apologies and thanks. I’m going to plead that I took the spelling from the BFI Southbank website, which (still) adds the “e” in its listing.