Tale of two cities? 1938

[William Knoll]

is there any truth to the rumour that a bbc producer filmed off air the december 1938 tv transmission of the tale of two cities play but then had to destroy it due to pressure from the Korda Brothers because they held the copyright to record the story?

[Simon Vaughan - Archivist APTS]

The BBC Producer you mention was Cecil Madden (Programme Organiser & Producer). It was Cecil that started the story of a play being fiilmed off the television monitor, then the film having to be burnt as they did not have permission to record it. But this is purely an apocrophal story - it never happened!

You mention "A Tale Of Two Cities", but in Cecil's story the play was "The Scarlet Pimpernel". There is no records, in the Alexandra Palace Television Society Archive of any transmission of "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Scarlet Pimpernel" being produced in 1938.

Cecil's story runs as follows:
"We spent a lot of money doing "The Scarlet Pimpernel". It was a very big production and it lasted three hours. So, as we had no record of anything, we decided to film it off a screen which, as you can imagine, was not perfect quality because, of course, you can see the [scanning] lines. However, we did it and we wated a great deal of celluloid doing it. And we'd no sooner finished than the following morning Alexander Korda rang up and said: "What's all this I hear about my copyright being infringed?" And I said I was sure we had the rights or we wouldn't have done it. He said, "I have all mechanical rights. I hear you have been filming the production and you have it on film. Do you want to be sued?" I said we didn't and that we wanted to be friends. He said, "I'll tell you what you will do. You will take every inch of that film, you will take it out into the open and you will burn it in public. And you will film the burning." So we did. We had to. We had no option."

A lovely story, but sadly, one that never happened.


Simon Vaughan
Archivist
for and on behalf of
Alexandra Palace Television Society
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.apts.org.uk
www.youtube.com/aptsarchive
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Richard Moore]

I'm sure this was featured in a dramatization of the early days of the BBC during the BBC 60 season in the 80's

Does any body remember what that program was?

[Simon Vaughan - Archivist APTS]

I think you are referring to "Fools On The Hill" Richard, the dramatised account of the setting up of the BBC Television Service in 1936, written by Jack Rosenthal, which was transmitted to mark the 60th anniversary in 1986.

[Andrew Doherty]

Dec 4, 2009 12:26:04 GMT Simon Vaughan - Archivist APTS said:

The BBC Producer you mention was Cecil Madden (Programme Organiser & Producer). It was Cecil that started the story of a play being filmed off the television monitor, then the film having to be burnt as they did not have permission to record it. But this is purely an apocrophal story - it never happened!

You mention "A Tale Of Two Cities", but in Cecil's story the play was "The Scarlet Pimpernel". There is no records, in the Alexandra Palace Television Society Archive of any transmission of "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Scarlet Pimpernel" being produced in 1938.

Cecil's story runs as follows:
"We spent a lot of money doing "The Scarlet Pimpernel". It was a very big production and it lasted three hours. So, as we had no record of anything, we decided to film it off a screen which, as you can imagine, was not perfect quality because, of course, you can see the [scanning] lines. However, we did it and we wated a great deal of celluloid doing it. And we'd no sooner finished than the following morning Alexander Korda rang up and said: "What's all this I hear about my copyright being infringed?" And I said I was sure we had the rights or we wouldn't have done it. He said, "I have all mechanical rights. I hear you have been filming the production and you have it on film. Do you want to be sued?" I said we didn't and that we wanted to be friends. He said, "I'll tell you what you will do. You will take every inch of that film, you will take it out into the open and you will burn it in public. And you will film the burning." So we did. We had to. We had no option."

A lovely story, but sadly, one that never happened.


Simon Vaughan
Archivist
for and on behalf of
Alexandra Palace Television Society
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.apts.org.uk
www.youtube.com/aptsarchive
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are you certain this is only a story?

It is exactly the kind of situation I would expect if an organization such as the BBC had filmed a drama and a film company (MGM?) that held the right to make the story had found out about it. There may well be no known evidence if they carried out this act. It is interesting that the BBC were very timid in post war years when it came to making pre-filmed productions or had them made by independent companies, e.g. 'Fabian of the Yard' and 'The Third Man' series. Moreover, their willingness not to keep many dramas even when recorded, over and above the two year ruling for keeping such programmes, makes me feel there was some basis to this story.

If the story had no basis in truth, why would Cecil Madden make it up?

Yours,

[davemachin]

Like all these stories that are so long ago, it is hard to get the truth. It sounds plausible to me that the BBC were told to get rid of any film copy made of the programme if someone else who considered he had copyright had got wind of it. But I can't imagine anyone being as obsessive as to insist on filming the burning of it. Probably the myth has expanded by chinese whispers. On the other hand, why would Cecil make that all up? Doesn't make sense.

Dave

[Simon Vaughan - Archivist APTS]

A few years ago I had the opportunity to question a number of pre-war Alexandra Palace personnel about Cecil's claim that "The Scarlet Pimpernel" had been filmed directly from the studio monitor. This group included several camermen, studio staff and engineers. None of them could recall any occasion where a play was filmed under these conditions. And as one of them pointed out "it would have been a momentous occasion and would have taken a great deal of setting up. Everyone working at AP would have been aware of such an undertaking."

We have a large collection of Cecil Madden's pre-war & immediate post-war scrap books in the APTS Archive collection, along with many of his personal papers. None of these mention the filming of a play, either in the studio or direct from a television monitor.

Cecil, by his own admission, states in his autobiography (published 2007), that "Before the war only "fades" were possible between one camera and another. After the war it was possible to cut in action. No recordings had been possible till now but in November 1947 a method of filming off the TV tube was devised. It was crude but it was a beginning." He later goes on to state, that around 1948, we [BBC Television Service] did a very fine production of "The Scarlet Pimpernel". He then states the same story of Korda phoning the next day to complain about infringement of copyright. He then goes on to state that Korda insisted "you will take your negative and your positive out into the open air in front of Television Centre and you will burn them, and you will film them being burned so that i will know that you have done it." Firstly, Cecil has gone from pre-war in his earlier story to post-war in his autobiography. Also Television Centre was far from operational in 1948 (construction didn't start until 1951 and then only on the scenery block).

Through the APTS I am in constant contact with many of the engineers and studio personnel that started their careers with the Television Service in the immediate post-war era and none of them recall such an incident, either at Alexandra Palace or Television Centre, although by the time TVC was opened recording the vision signal was well established.

There are three points to consider: If Cecil is correct in the that "The Scarlet Pimpernel" was produced at AP, then obviously there would be a P-s-B on record at the BBC Written Archive Centre, entries would have been included in the Radio Times - non of which have ever been found! Secondly, if it had been produced at TVC it would have been much later than the date Cecil gives in his autobiography [1948] when recording was a matter-of-fact occurance. And thirdly, upon his return to television in 1946, he only took to the control gallery once, before becoming desk-bound to a variety of admin jobs. He never produced a television programme again.

Cecil was a lovely, dear, man, but has he got older his eyesight began to fail (in fact his eyesight was beginning to go during the latter part of the 1960s), by the time of his death he was virtually blind. Also, he would write and re-write the details of his career in television, with more and more emblishments. We have various written copies of Cecil's career, all written at different times, and by him. Each one is slightly different as he added or subtracted various events, names or locations.

His scrapbooks are a valuable insight into the pre-war era of BBC Television, but even these have succumbed to his re-writes! He has added annotations to photographs, changing the date from pre-war to post-war (even when the date on the photograph, stamped on the reverse, is clearly pre-war). He has also added additional comments to previous entries, and in some cases, added several additional comments, with different coloured pens, and with a change of handwriting, indicating they were written at different times. The latter ones are clearly written when his eyesight was extremely poor.

I'm not saying Cecil lied about the filming of the play, but I would offer that was not "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and got mistaken with another production. We have photographs in the APTS Archive, taken by Desmond Campbell, Senior Lighting Engineer, showing filming taking place in the studio of crown scenes during a production of "Cyrano de Bergerac". Although this play was transmitted live, and the first to use two studios simultaneously, it was not filmed. But all pre-war staff that I have been able to talk to remember this as a major production, using all possible production techniques and available space.

Only a few pre-war productions used filmed inserts (Cartier was the major user of such inserts in his big drama epics during the post-war era), and as such perhaps Cecil was getting confused with filmed inserts for something like "Cyrano".

A check with the BBC Written Archives would confirm if any such controversy surrounded "Cyrano", but as they were only filmed inserts, the play could still proceed, only with a change to the use of the crown scenes, perhaps they used a crowd in the studio rather than filmed inserts, thus getting round any possible infringement of copyright, and keeping Alexander Korda happy!

[Gary Critcher]

Very, very interesting stuff!

[Deleted]

Thanks for all the details, Simon. If such a production was broadcast, there would definitely be a record of it at BBC Written Archives (although these won't necessarily say if it was recorded). As Andrew says, I could imagine something beauracratic of this kind happening that left the BBC very wary for a long time afterwards. Maybe though, it was with a different production and the details were getting mixed up? Sounds like the likeliest scenario to me.