Girish Mahajan (Editor)

1937 in British television

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit

This is a list of events related to British television in 1937.

Contents

Events

  • 6 February – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
  • 12 May – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time, to televise the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. A fragment of this broadcast is one of the earliest surviving examples of British television – filmed off-screen at home by an engineer with an 8 mm cine camera. A short section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and this latter programme survives in the BBC's archives.
  • 14 May – The BBC Television Service broadcasts a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play on television. Among the cast is Greer Garson. Peggy Ashcroft appeared in a 1939 telecast of the entire play.
  • 18 June – Broadcast of the Agatha Christie play Wasp's Nest, the only instance of Christie adapting one of her works for television, a medium she later came to dislike.
  • 21 June – Wimbledon Championships (tennis) first shown on the BBC Television Service.
  • 11 November – The BBC Television Service broadcasts an adaptation of the World War I-set play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, starring Reginald Tate as Stanhope. Shown in commemoration of Armistice Day, it is the first time that a whole evening's programming has been given over to a single play.
  • 31 December – 2,121 television sets have been sold in England.

    • Debuts

  • 17 April – The Disorderly Room (1937–1939)
  • 24 April – For the Children (1937–1939, 1946–1950)

    • 1930s

  • Picture Page (1936–1939, 1946–1952).

    • Births

  • 1 January – Anne Aubrey, actor
  • 9 January – Michael Nicholson, journalist (died 2016)
  • 30 January – Vanessa Redgrave, actress
  • 25 February – Tom Courtenay, actor
  • 11 April – Jill Gascoigne, actress and novelist
  • 12 May – Susan Hampshire, actress
  • 19 May – Pat Roach, actor and wrestler (died 2004)
  • 5 August – Carla Lane, television comedy writer (died 2016)
  • 6 August – Barbara Windsor, actress
  • 18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer (died 1996)
  • 2 September – Derek Fowlds, actor
  • 14 November – Alan J. W. Bell, director and producer
  • 17 November – Peter Cook, comedian and writer (died 1995)
  • 29 November – Ingrid Pitt, actress (died 2010)
  • 20 December – Charles Denton, director
  • 29 December – Barbara Steele, actress

    • References

    1937 in British television Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA