OTD in early British television: 24 December 1938
John Wyver writes: 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.
The transmission pattern meant that there were no further 30-line Christmas Eve offerings. The first Alexandra Palace Christmas Eve was in 1936, when the only notable offering was Old Time Music Hall Christmas Party, chaired by Bert Terrell, a yodeller often billed elsewhere as ‘the Dutch comedian’.
Among the featured artists were the veterans Charlie Lee, Ada Cerito, Harry Bedford (who had made his first stage appearance at the age of 7 in 1880), Lottie Lennox and Tom Leamore. The image is a framegrab from BBC Television Demonstration Film.
The line-up for Christmas Eve in 1938 also seems unremarkable, with a concert by Art Gregory and his Band, compèred by Jack Payne, as the main attraction. You can see the band in action in this Pathé clip, but be aware that it features an offensive caricature of a Japanese person by the singer.
At least the afternoon of 1938’s Christmas Eve, the last before the war, gave viewers a drama. Charley’s Aunt was an enormously popular late Victorian farce of college high jinks and cross-dressing. Written by Brandon Thomas and first performed in Bury St Edmunds in 1892.
Producer Desmond Davis booked Australian actor John Wood to reprise his Lord Fancourt Babberley, which he had given in one of the numerous revivals of the comedy, in 1934 at the Gaiety Theatre, London and then on tour (the poster is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Wood performed, although none of the other cast played at AP). Again, we seem to have no reviews of the television production.
As with so many people who passed through the studios at AP, John Wood had a rich life, which is recounted in fascinating detail by Nick Murphy at the website Forgotten Australian Actors.
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