1937 in British television

Overview of the events of 1937 in British television

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

Events

19 January – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from its London station, the first play written for television.^[1]

6 February – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.

14 April – An exhibition snooker match between Horace Lindrum and Willie Smith is shown on the BBC. This is the first time that snooker is shown on television.^[2]

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.

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.^[3]

16 September – Football is televised for the first time. It is a specially-arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury.^[4]

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.^[5]^[6]

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)
26 April – Gareth Gwenlan, Welsh-born television comedy producer and executive (died 2016)
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)^[7]
18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer (died 1996)
20 August – Jim Bowen, comedian and host (died 2018)^[8]
2 September – Derek Fowlds, actor (died 2020)
5 September – Dick Clement, comedy scriptwriter
16 September – Bella Emberg, born Sybil Dyke, comedy actress (died 2018)^[9]
14 November – Alan J. W. Bell, director and producer (died 2023)
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
Brian Cooke, scriptwriter

^ Fisher, David (30 December 2011). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
^ "Television". The Observer. 11 April 1937. p. 13.
^ "Wimbledon and the BBC 1927–2017". History of the BBC. BBC. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
^ "Happened on this day – 16 September". BBC Sport. 16 September 2002. Retrieved 22 August 2006.
^ "Televised Drama; Journey's End". The Times. London. 12 November 1937. p. 14.
^ Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
^ "Obituary: Dame Barbara Windsor". BBC News. 11 December 2020. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
^ "Jim Bowen obituary". The Scotsman. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
^ "Bella Emberg: Actress who became a comedy hero thanks to Blunder Woman". The Independent. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 10 October 2018.