1937 in television

The year 1937 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events during 1937.

Events

• January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from its London station, the first play written for television.^[1]
• February 6 – The BBC Television service discontinues the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
• March 9 Experimental broadcasting from Shabolovka Ulitsa television center, in Moscow (USSR).
• May – Gilbert Seldes becomes the first television critic, with his Atlantic Monthly magazine article, the "Errors of Television".
• May 12 – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time, to televise the coronation of George VI. 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 brief section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II, and this latter programme survives in the BBC's archives.
• May 14 – The BBC broadcasts a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play televised. Among the cast are Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
• May 15 – RCA demonstrates projection television, with images enlarged to 8 by 10 feet, at the Institute of Radio Engineers convention.
• June 21 – Wimbledon Championships (tennis) first televised by the BBC.
• July 10 – High definition television with 455 lines is first shown in France at the International Exposition, Paris.
• September – High definition television broadcasts are sent from a new 30 kW (peak power) transmitter below the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
• November 9 – Bell Telephone Laboratories transmits television signal of 800 kHz bandwidth on a coaxial cable laid between New York and Philadelphia.
• November 11 (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. Reginald Tate plays the lead, Stanhope, a rôle he has performed extensively in the theatre.^[2][3]
• December 31 – By this time, 2,121 television sets have been sold in England.
• CBS announces their efforts to develop television broadcasts.

Debuts

• April 17 – The Disorderly Room (UK) premieres on the BBC Television Service (1937 & 1939).
• April 24 – For The Children (UK), the BBC's first programme for children, debuts (1937–1939; 1946–1950).
• April 30 – Sports Review (UK), the first regular sports programme, debuts on the BBC (1937–1939).

Television shows

Births

• February 1 – Garrett Morris, actor, comedian, Saturday Night Live
• April 22 – Jack Nicholson, actor
• June 1 – Morgan Freeman, actor
• June 2 – Sally Kellerman, actress
• July 12 – Bill Cosby, actor, comedian
• August 8 – Dustin Hoffman, actor
• November 21 – Ingrid Pitt, actress
• December 21 – Jane Fonda, actress
• December 29 – Barbara Steele, actress

References