OTD in early British television: 1 January 1939
John Wyver writes: In keeping with the aspirational tenor of Alexandra Palace’s lifestyle programming for its professional middle-class viewers, each winter there was at least one studio broadcast for those looking forward to, or dreaming about, a ski-ing holiday across the channel. In 1939 New Year’s Day offered up Snow and Ice, while a year earlier, on 30 December 1937, the schedules were graced by the unfortunately titled Ski Heil (above).
The tradition of a programme that combined how-to with where-to and what-to-wear began with Winter Sports on 2 January 1937. It was assembled by racing driver H.E. Plaister and G.R. Kenward-Eggar, a pair who had hosted fashion shows for the 30-line service and, at least for the present, were continuing to do the same from AP.
Suitable costumes were presented in a mannequin display, and Lt-Commander John Shirley R.N. demonstrated ski-ing exercises and gave hints for beginners. In just 8 minutes, this transmission devised by Cecil Lewis also included excerpts from the film The Ski Champion’s Sunday at Aroza, produced by Swiss Federal Railways.
Ski Heil (and even, or rather especially, in late 1937 this must have been a terrible title) was another broadcast pulled together Plaister and Kenward-Eggar. The 20-minute programme included a short talk about ski-ing by Albert Tall of St Moritz and a demonstration of various turns. Jill Lee modelled the clothes, and confidently so, as can be seen from her pose before a very crudely sketched Alpine backdrop in the header image.
Snow and Ice was therefore a kind of third edition (and the third title), and it was preceded in December by an outside broadcast from the ski show Winter Cavalcade at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre. An elaborate slope of artificial snow was the centre-piece of the exhibition, and the live broadcast featured downhill racing and ski-jumping. The BBC Handbook 1940 included a somewhat fuzzy image of this eccentric transmission.
A Daily Telegraph preview highlighted the technical challenge for a broadcast like this:
Previous experience of televising snow scenes which, of course, have a preponderance of brilliant white, have shown that it is exceedingly difficult to give a good picture. It is quite probably that the only dark parks will be the blue trousers of the competitors and the fringe of the crowd of onlookers. Experiments are now being made to increase the definition, and viewers may be given a picture of excellent quality provided a certain amount of contrast is sacrificed.
Back in the studio, Snow and Ice was hosted by army officer and British Olympic ski-er Peter Boumphrey and the Television service’s new face for fashion, Bettie Cameron Smail. Throughout 1939 Cameron Smail presented the occasional series Vanity Fair, which was clearly focussed on cost conscious middle-class viewers, rather than the aspiring aristos of earlier shows.
She is also billed as having devised the half-hour Snow and Ice, which promised tips on ‘where to go, what to do, and what to wear’. The format appears to have included dramatised sequences, with a cast of characters including ‘the Boy’ (Boumphrey, of course), ‘the travel agent’ and ‘the yodeller’ as well as ‘the two girls’, one of whom was played by 18-year-old Dinah Sheridan, already a regular actor at AP. The other was Beryl Measor, who would become known for her roles in plays by Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan.
Eventually, television would separate out holiday advice (‘where to go’), instruction (what to do’) and fashion (‘what to wear’) into separate strands of programmes, but in these early days, as AP was still inventing the programme forms of the future, the three elements remained woven densely together.
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