1939 in British television
This is a list of British television related events from 1939.
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Events
January
- No events.
February
- No events.
March
- 4 March – The BBC Television Service broadcasts one of the first plays to be written especially for television, Condemned To Be Shot by R. E. J. Brooke. The production is notable for the use of a camera as the first-person perspective of the play's unseen central character.
- 27 March – The BBC Television Service broadcasts the entirety of Magyar Melody live from His Majesty's Theatre. The 175-minute broadcast is the first showing of a full-length musical on television.
- unknown date – The Shaw play The Man of Destiny was shown on BBC Television.
April
- No events.
May
- No events.
June
- No events.
July
- 8 July – The BBC Television has no more coverage of Wimbledon until 1946.
August
- 31 August – 18,999 television sets are sold in Britain before manufacture stops during the Second World War.
September
- 1 September – The anticipated outbreak of war brings television broadcasting at the BBC Television Service to an end at 12:35 p.m. after the broadcast of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Premiere and various sound and vision test signals. It is feared that the VHF waves of television would act as a perfect homing signal for guiding enemy bombers to central London: in any case, the engineers of the television service would be needed for the war effort, particularly for RADAR. The BBC Television Service would resume its broadcasting, with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon, after the war in 1946.
There are no further events in British television in 1939 following the suspension of television broadcasting for the duration of the Second World War. This was done amid fears the signals would help German bombers. Television broadcasting resumed in 1946.
October to December
- No television is broadcast throughout these months.
Date unknown
- Future presenter, actor, comedian, singer, dancer and screenwriter Bruce Forsyth made his first on-screen appearance at the age of eleven years old on the BBC talent show Come and be televised.[1]
Debuts
- BBC Cricket (1939, 1946–1999, 2021–2024)
Television shows ending before the war
1920s
- BBC Wimbledon (1927–1939, 1946–2019, 2021–2024)
1930s
- Picture Page (1936–1939, 1946–1952)
- The Disorderly Room (1937–1939)
- For the Children (1937–1939, 1946–1950)
- Telecrime (1938–1939, 1946)
- BBC Cricket (1939, 1946–1999, 2021–2024)
Births
- 10 February – Peter Purves, actor and television presenter
- 9 March – John Howard Davies, child actor and comedy director (died 2011)
- 7 April – David Frost, satirist, writer, journalist and television presenter (died 2013)[2]
- 16 April – Donald MacCormick, Scottish-born broadcast journalist and television presenter (died 2009)
- 2 May – Peter Dean, actor (EastEnders)
- 24 June – Annette Andre, Australian actress
- 16 August – Trevor McDonald, Trinidadian-born newsreader and journalist
- 17 August – Anthony Valentine, actor (died 2015)
- 30 August – John Peel, disc jockey and radio and television presenter (died 2004)
- 26 September – Ricky Tomlinson, actor
- 28 September – Rudolph Walker, Trinidadian actor
- 7 October – Clive James, Australian-born writer, television presenter, talk show host and critic (died 2019)
- 27 October – John Cleese, comic actor
- 31 October – Tom O'Connor, actor and comedian
- 8 November
- Liz Dawn, actress (Coronation Street) (died 2017)
- Meg Wynn Owen, actress (Upstairs, Downstairs)
- 18 November – John Pitman, reporter (died 2018)[3]
References
- "We look back at some of Bruce Forsyth's most memorable shows". Metro. 2017-08-18. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
- "Obituary: Sir David Frost". BBC News. 2 September 2013. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
- Hayward, Anthony (7 March 2018). "John Pitman obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
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