1937 in British television

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

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
• 8 March – Justine Lord, actress
• 27 March – Alan Hawkshaw, theme tune composer (died 2021)
• 9 April – Valerie Singleton, presenter
• 11 April – Jill Gascoine, actress and novelist (died 2020)
• 1 May – Una Stubbs, actress (died 2021)
• 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

See also[]

• 1937 in British music
• 1937 in the United Kingdom
• List of British films of 1937

References[]