OTD in early British television: 19 January 1937
John Wyver writes: A mystery. Afternoon transmissions on Tuesday 19 January 1937 included the 8-minute unbilled drama The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas. Produced by George More O’Ferrall, this would appear to be the first original script (that is, not adapted from a stage play) broadcast from Alexandra Palace, but – appropriately perhaps – it’s a mystery. No script seems to exist, and even the writer is fairly obscure. Can anyone help with any further information?
We know that the drama featured two characters and ‘Corpse’, although it’s unclear whether the quotation marks adorning the latter are significant. Fred O’Donovan played dead, while the other pair were Nancy Poultney as Girl and William Roderick as Young man. Then when the drama was repeated on Saturday 27 February, while Nancy Poultney reprised her performance, Wallace Douglas was Young man and Lionel Dixon was ‘Corpse’.
Scenes of the Underground were apparently borrowed from an edition of British Movietonews, and a recording weas used of the jaunty ‘Serenade for a wealthy widow’ by Reginald Forsythe. And that’s the extent of my knowledge.
As for J. Bissell Thomas, they appear to have written a number of fantasy books, seemingly for children, including Dragon Island, The Dragon Green and The Witch in the Clocktower. A rare books site indicates that the “J.” was for Joyce, and BBC Genome confirms that her stories were read from time to time in the Regional Programme’s The Children’s Hour between 1934 and 1937. Apart from that, well… she’s a mystery too.
Incidentally, although The Underground Murder Mystery was the first original drama for television to be produced at Alexandra Palace, it was not, as is sometimes claimed, ‘the first play written for television’. This honour needs to be attached to the The Wrong Door, an original sketch for television scripted by Ruth Maschwitz and played on the 30-line service in mid-November 1930 with actors Joan Dare and John Rorke.
Any and all snippets about The Underground Murder Mystery and/or Joyce Bissell Thomas will be gratefully received.
In response, over on Bluesky, I was delighted to receive the following…
UPDATE
My Bluesky appeal linked to this post prompted Paul Hayes to do some research in the online British Newspaper Archive, where he found an absolutely fascinating clipping from the Gloucester Citizen, 16 January 1937, p.4; the article is bylined ‘From our wireless correspondent’:
WOMAN AS FIRST TELEVISION DRAMATIST HAS WRITTEN A MURDER MYSTERY PLAY
Television’s first dramatist is a young married London woman who saw a television demonstri tion in a shop and, as a result, has written a play for televising.
She is Mrs. Bissell Thomas, of Kensington, and her play The Underground Murder Mystery, is to be given on Thursday.
“After seeing television in a shop, I went home and wrote a short thriller in a technique which I thought would suit television,” Mrs Thomas told me. “Then I popped it into the post-box, quite expecting never to hear of it again.”
The play fulfils the requirements of G. More O’Ferrall, television drama producer, who wants what he calls “thumb-nail thrillers” to occupy a short part of the one-hour television programme. A replica of a London underground station will be built in the television studio.
… and more …
Again, thanks to assiduous research by Paul Rhodes, here is J. Bissell Thomas in The Philadelphia Enquirer, 26 January 1937.
Adam B. on Bluesky notes that:
The Bodleian Library lists Joyce Alice Stephen as a creator of the works by “J Bissell Thomas”, and the two names are connected in Pen Names of Women Writers, 1985 [available from archive.org].
In The Book of Firsts, published in the United States in 1940 (and on archive.org here), in a section that is otherwise well-informed about early British television, it is claimed that the play ‘is set in Tottenham Court Road Underground Station’ (although the duration is mistakenly given as 30 minutes). This location, which does not feature anywhere in BBC publications, was then repeated in numerous later newspaper mentions marking the anniversary of the transmission.
And this French blog post (Google Translate does a decent job, and thanks again to Paul Rhodes) has a lot more about J. Bissell Thomas’s fantasy writing, although it mistakenly says that The Underground Murder Mystery was filmed at Tottenham Court Road tube station, when of course in 1937 all television drama was made in the AP studios:
In addition to musical librettos, she wrote a few novels, this one [The Dragon Green, 1936], witch stories such as The Witch in the Clock Tower in 1946 (initially a musical play in 1935) or Old Broomsticks in 1950, and at least two detective novels, Strangers at my Door in 1945 and The Lady by Candlelight in 1952, and other adventure novels The Amourous Baron .
Image: public domain photograph of Marble Arch tube station, c. 1900; courtesy of Wikipedia.
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