Post by Paul Hayes on Jul 19, 2003 18:27:06 GMT
I'm aware of that quote, mainly because it was copied for me in an e-mail from Simon Vaughan, the Archivist of the Alexandra Palace Television Society, when he was telling me that there was no record of any such production. It goes thus:
Oh, this debate concerning the filming of The Scarlet Pimpernel is a very old one and one that surfaces from time to time on such discussion groups, etc. As with most of these stories they become imbued in folklore and are very difficult to pin-point.
"Fools on the Hill", although a major drama production, did contain some vital flaws and errors. One of our APTS members was Researcher on the production and had major problems with Jack Rosenthall over the use of appropriate language. He wanted make-up girls from Chelsea to swear with four-letter words, etc., which certainly was not done in the 1930s.
There is such a scene as you describe in "Fools on the Hill" and it is certainly attributed to the filming of The Scarlet Pimpernel, but it is very badly explained. Bruce Norman in his book "Here's Looking at You: The Story of British Television 1908 - 1939, deals with this very subject, as he states:
There was only one attempt to film a studio play, as Cecil Madden recalls:
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 lines. However, we did it and we wasted a great deal of celluloid doing it. And we'd no sooner finished that 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.
And up in Wagnerian smoke went the only record of of BBC television pre-war drama. The film of the burning was sent, as proof, to Korda.
However, in Cecil Madden's (as yet) unpublished autobiography, he tells a totally different version of events:
On the subject of dramatic rights we did a very fine production of "The Scarlet Pimpernel". It was three hours long, our biggest effort to date, and we'd spent an awful lot of money, so we decided to film it. We put a film camera in front of the monitor and filmed it all. It wasn't satisfactory, because you could see the lines, but it was something. The following morning I got a phone call from Sir Alexander Korda, who said "I understand you have infringed my rights by making a film of The Scarlet Pimpernel." I assured him that no one was going to use it, it was just for the record, but he swore that his mechanical rights had been infringed and he was ready to sue the BBC. He further said, "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." And we did it.
As you can see there are two vital flaws between these two accounts. The first is supposed to be pre-war. The second account Cecil discusses along with such shows as "The Inventor's Club" and "Cafe Continental" and then discusses the 1948 television production of "No, No Nanette", and this was in the paragraph before. However, he says that Korda instructed them to burn the film in front of Television Centre. This did not come into programme service until 1960, although the scenery department was operational some years before. So, even Cecil moved this event between pre and post-war!
There is no record of The Scarlet Pimpernel produced during the pre-war era, as you can see from the attached spreadsheet.
The earliest Telerecording that still survives was discovered by a friend of mine whilst researching at Windmill Road. This is of Adelaide Hall, performing at RadiOlympia in October 1947 and features her singing two songs. This experimental Telerecording was in preparation for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten the following month.
The only known pre-war telerecordings to exist are 3 1/2 minutes of BBC Television filmed off a monitor screen by RCA engineers in New York in 1938. This was due to excessive sun-spot activity. While the other (short) telerecording was taken by an EMI engineer at home with a cine camera pointed at the screen of his newly acquired television receiver. He filmed part of the 1937 Coronation procession which was covered by the BBC Television Service, only 6 months after its official launch. This film was used by the BBC in a programme transmitted to mark the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Because this programme was telerecorded (as was all the output during Coronation week), the 1937 section was preserved.
Of course, the other section of pre-war film was the one I discovered, but this was filmed in the studio and not from the studio monitor, so therefore cannot be described as a telerecording.
Hope this has gone some way to answering your question Paul. Hope I've not gone into "information overload", but thought it best to give you all that I know on this subject.
Let me know what you think of the above. I would welcome your comments.
Best wishes
Simon
Hope that helps shed some light on the matter for you! :-)
Oh, this debate concerning the filming of The Scarlet Pimpernel is a very old one and one that surfaces from time to time on such discussion groups, etc. As with most of these stories they become imbued in folklore and are very difficult to pin-point.
"Fools on the Hill", although a major drama production, did contain some vital flaws and errors. One of our APTS members was Researcher on the production and had major problems with Jack Rosenthall over the use of appropriate language. He wanted make-up girls from Chelsea to swear with four-letter words, etc., which certainly was not done in the 1930s.
There is such a scene as you describe in "Fools on the Hill" and it is certainly attributed to the filming of The Scarlet Pimpernel, but it is very badly explained. Bruce Norman in his book "Here's Looking at You: The Story of British Television 1908 - 1939, deals with this very subject, as he states:
There was only one attempt to film a studio play, as Cecil Madden recalls:
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 lines. However, we did it and we wasted a great deal of celluloid doing it. And we'd no sooner finished that 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.
And up in Wagnerian smoke went the only record of of BBC television pre-war drama. The film of the burning was sent, as proof, to Korda.
However, in Cecil Madden's (as yet) unpublished autobiography, he tells a totally different version of events:
On the subject of dramatic rights we did a very fine production of "The Scarlet Pimpernel". It was three hours long, our biggest effort to date, and we'd spent an awful lot of money, so we decided to film it. We put a film camera in front of the monitor and filmed it all. It wasn't satisfactory, because you could see the lines, but it was something. The following morning I got a phone call from Sir Alexander Korda, who said "I understand you have infringed my rights by making a film of The Scarlet Pimpernel." I assured him that no one was going to use it, it was just for the record, but he swore that his mechanical rights had been infringed and he was ready to sue the BBC. He further said, "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." And we did it.
As you can see there are two vital flaws between these two accounts. The first is supposed to be pre-war. The second account Cecil discusses along with such shows as "The Inventor's Club" and "Cafe Continental" and then discusses the 1948 television production of "No, No Nanette", and this was in the paragraph before. However, he says that Korda instructed them to burn the film in front of Television Centre. This did not come into programme service until 1960, although the scenery department was operational some years before. So, even Cecil moved this event between pre and post-war!
There is no record of The Scarlet Pimpernel produced during the pre-war era, as you can see from the attached spreadsheet.
The earliest Telerecording that still survives was discovered by a friend of mine whilst researching at Windmill Road. This is of Adelaide Hall, performing at RadiOlympia in October 1947 and features her singing two songs. This experimental Telerecording was in preparation for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten the following month.
The only known pre-war telerecordings to exist are 3 1/2 minutes of BBC Television filmed off a monitor screen by RCA engineers in New York in 1938. This was due to excessive sun-spot activity. While the other (short) telerecording was taken by an EMI engineer at home with a cine camera pointed at the screen of his newly acquired television receiver. He filmed part of the 1937 Coronation procession which was covered by the BBC Television Service, only 6 months after its official launch. This film was used by the BBC in a programme transmitted to mark the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Because this programme was telerecorded (as was all the output during Coronation week), the 1937 section was preserved.
Of course, the other section of pre-war film was the one I discovered, but this was filmed in the studio and not from the studio monitor, so therefore cannot be described as a telerecording.
Hope this has gone some way to answering your question Paul. Hope I've not gone into "information overload", but thought it best to give you all that I know on this subject.
Let me know what you think of the above. I would welcome your comments.
Best wishes
Simon
Hope that helps shed some light on the matter for you! :-)
