OTD in early British television: 21 December 1936
John Wyver writes: On the evening of Monday 21 December 1936 extracts from from the current stage production T.S. Eliot’s religious drama Murder in the Cathedral were played for a third time at Alexandra Palace. Despite having to work within the significant technical constraints of the Baird company technology, producer George More O’Ferrall was felt to have achieved a polished and innovative live broadcast. But it is one reception context that makes this transmission notable, for it was watched on this day by some three hundred luminaries of stage and screen in the auditorium of the West End theatre where the production was currently running.
Eliot’s verse drama about the murder of Thomas Becket had premiered in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral in 1935, before being mounted in London’s tiny Mercury Theatre, a house with a strong reputation for experimental drama and dance, and then transferring to the Duchess Theatre.
In the celebrated staging by E. Martin Browne, Robert Speaight took the role of the archbishop, who is visited first by a group of tempters and then by the knights who murder him. The 40 minutes of television extracts were first screened during the pre-launch test transmissions on 19 October, and on 4 December the production was the third drama to be screened by the new service.
Four nights before Christmas 1936 three 10 inch by 8 inch receivers (one report mentions four) were installed in the auditorium of the Duchess Theatre, and actors, directors, agents and others were invited to experience the wonder of the new medium. With only a trio of tiny screens, and with limited image resolution, it is hard to think that any of them saw anything very much – and indeed the experiment was never repeated.
A correspondent for the Daily Herald penned a detailed account:
Every seat in the stalls was occupied and nearly every member of the audience was able to follow the action perfectly. My own seat was a far from one of the three Marconi receivers as any… although right in front of it.
I was able to recognise clearly the scene of Canterbury Cathedral and to follow the action of the play as the tempters evolved from his own imagination attempted to seduce Thomas a Becket from what he conceived to be his duty.
I was particularly impressed by the perfect synchronisation of sight with sound. I could have known what Thomas a Becket was saying had I been deaf, from the movement of his lips. Once or twice the picture wavered, but only for moments. Shadows were rather heavy, and the lighting was not entirely even, but the showe left no doubt in my mind that television really has arrived.
R.B. Marriott for The Era, a paper with strong links to the theatre world and owned by Isidore Ostrer, who was developing a television service to rival the BBC’s, was less enthusiastic:
The transmission was quite satisfactory, though it hissed and clouded now and again… It is possible that this transmission is a portent; but such a thing is still a very long way from being anything of a substitute for flesh and blood.
In fact, to my mind, the most disconcerting thing about the transmission was its failure to generate a sense of real feeling between player and spectator. It was too remote, cold and calculated, and too generally self-conscious to be able to establish anything of a “personal touch”.
Nonetheless, one other attendee noted that,
Apart from one or two minor defects the reception was quite satisfactory, and in some quarters is looked upon as a portent of things to come when the public are entertained with a mixed fare instead of being limited to films or a stage play alone.
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