1939 in television

The year 1939 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in 1939.

Events

• February 23 - the first televised boxing match, the British Lightweight Champion match Eric Boon v Arthur Danaher, is shown live by the BBC and simultaneously in several cinemas.^[1]
• March 4 - The BBC Television Service broadcasts one of the first plays to be written especially for television, Condemned To Be Shot by R. E. J. Brooke. The production is notable for the use of a camera as the first-person perspective of the play's unseen central character.
• March 27 - The BBC broadcasts the entirety of Magyar Melody live from His Majesty's Theatre. The 175-minute broadcast is the first showing of a full-length musical on television.
• April - television demonstrations are held at the World's Fair in New York City and the Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco, California.
• April 30 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, appearing at the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair, becomes the first President of the United States to give a speech that is broadcast on television.
• May 17 - The first baseball game (Princeton vs. Columbia) is broadcast on television, from Baker Field in New York. Bill Stern is the announcer.
• May 19 - The Walt Disney cartoon Donald's Cousin Gus airs on NBC's experimental station W2XBS (later WNBC-TV) in New York. This marked the first film cartoon to be televised in the United States.
• June 1 - The first heavyweight boxing match is televised, Max Baer vs Lou Nova, from Yankee Stadium.
• August 26 - The first Major League Baseball game is telecast, a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, in Brooklyn, New York. Poland broadcasts a feature film for the first time — Barbara Radziwiłłówna (1936) — using the experimental transmitter mounted atop the Prudential office tower.
• August 31 - 18,999 television sets have been sold in England before manufacture stops during World War II.
• September 1 - The anticipated outbreak of World War II brings television broadcasting at the BBC to an end at 12:35 p.m. after the broadcast of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Premier, various sound and vision test signals, and announcements by presenter Fay Cavendish. It was feared that the VHF waves of television would act as a perfect homing signal for guiding enemy bombers to central London: in any case, the engineers of the television service would be needed for the war effort, particularly for RADAR. The BBC would resume its broadcasting, with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon, after the war in 1946.
• September 30 - The first televised college football game, Fordham vs Waynesburg College, at Randall's Island, New York.
• October 22 - The first National Football League game is televised. The Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Philadelphia Eagles at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

Television shows

Ending this year

• August 20 - The Disorderly Room (UK) (1937 & 1939).
• Sports Review (UK) (1937–1939).

Births

• January 17 - Maury Povich, talk show host
• February 6 - Mike Farrell, actor
• April 11 - Louise Lasser, actress
• April 23 - David Birney, actor
• April 23 - Lee Majors, actor
• April 27 - Judy Carne, comedian
• May 1 - Max Robinson, journalist (d. 1988)
• May 25 - Dixie Carter, actress (d. 2010)
• June 1 - Cleavon Little, actor (d. 1992)
• June 9 - Dick Vitale, sportscaster
• August 29 - Joel Schumacher, film director
• September 1 - Lily Tomlin, comedian
• September 18 - Fred Willard, comedian
• September 29 - Larry Linville, actor (d. 2000)
• October 27 - John Cleese, comedian
• November 20 - Dick Smothers, comedian
• December 27 - John Amos, actor

References

1. ^ 1939 television at thevalvepage.com, URL accessed 19 April 2011