1937 in British television
This is a list of events related to British television in 1937.
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Events
January
- 19 January – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from its London station, the first play written for television.[1]
February
- 6 February – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
March
- No events.
April
- No events.
May
- 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 is 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 are Greer Garson and Peggy Ashcroft, who appears in a 1939 telecast of the entire play.
June
- 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.[2]
July
- No events.
August
- No events.
September
- 16 September – Football is televised for the first time. It is a specially-arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury.[3]
October
- No events.
November
- 11 November (Armistice Day) – BBC Television devotes the evening to a broadcast of Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff (1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918), the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play and the first time that a whole evening's programming has been given over to a single play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, Stanhope, a role he has performed extensively in the theatre.[4][5]
December
- 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)
Continuing television shows
1920s
- BBC Wimbledon (1927–1939, 1946–2019, 2021–2024).
1930s
- Picture Page (1936–1939, 1946–1952).
Births
- 1 January – Anne Aubrey, actress
- 9 January – Michael Nicholson, journalist (died 2016)
- 30 January – Vanessa Redgrave, actress
- 25 February – Tom Courtenay, actor
- 9 April – Valerie Singleton, presenter
- 11 April – Jill Gascoine, actress and novelist (died 2020)
- 12 May – Susan Hampshire, actress
- 19 May – Pat Roach, actor and wrestler (died 2004)
- 5 August – Carla Lane, comedy writer (died 2016)
- 6 August – Barbara Windsor, actress (died 2020)[6]
- 18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer (died 1996)
- 20 August – Jim Bowen, comedian and host (died 2018)[7]
- 2 September – Derek Fowlds, actor (died 2020)
- 5 September – Dick Clement, comedy scriptwriter
- 16 September – Bella Emberg, born Sybil Dyke, comedy actress (died 2018)[8]
- 9 October – Brian Blessed, actor
- 14 November – Alan J. W. Bell, director and producer
- 17 November – Peter Cook, comedian and writer (died 1995)
- 27 November – Rodney Bewes, actor (died 2017)
- 29 November – Ingrid Pitt, actress (died 2010)
- 20 December – Charles Denton, producer
- 29 December – Barbara Steele, actress
References
- Fisher, David (30 December 2011). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
- "Wimbledon and the BBC 1927–2017". History of the BBC. BBC. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
- "Happened on this day – 16 September". BBC Sport. 16 September 2002. Retrieved 22 August 2006.
- "Televised Drama; Journey's End". The Times. London. 12 November 1937. p. 14.
- Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
- "Obituary: Dame Barbara Windsor". BBC News. 11 December 2020. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
- "Jim Bowen obituary". The Scotsman. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
- "Bella Emberg: Actress who became a comedy hero thanks to Blunder Woman". The Independent. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
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