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The First British Television Play

"The Man With the Flower in his Mouth"

Contents: [ The First Television Play ¦ The Content ¦ The Cast of 1967 ¦ Video Extracts ¦ Remake - Further Information ¦ Some Facts about Bill Elliott ¦ Original Captions]

The First British Television Play - 1930

Luigi Pirandello's "The Man with the Flower in his Mouth" was transmitted from the Baird studios in 133 Long Acre, London, on 14th July 1930. For the first play in Baird's modest studio, Val Gielgud (of that Gielgud family!), the productions director, chose one with only three on-screen characters:

The Man (i.e. with the Flower etc..), Earle Grey
The Woman (his wife) Gladys Young and
the Customer (who missed his train). Lionel Millard

In 1967, an edited version of the play was remade entirely in 30-lines and recorded onto a stereo tape recorder. One track held the 30-line video signal (with the innovation over 1930 of having 'real' sync pulses), the other track held the audio. Bill Elliott, at that time with Granada TV in Manchester, used his own modified Televisors acting as camera and monitor. However, the most exciting feature of this re-make is that it was authentically re-produced and presented by the original producer, Lance Sieveking, supported by the original art-work (by C R Nevinson) and music recording.

The Content

Re-played from a thirty-year old reel-to-reel tape, the detail that can be seen on the first two captions on 30-lines is impressive. (The second one says "by Luigi Pirandello")

The captions are accompanied by the strains of the original music from the very 78rpm disc that Sieveking used in 1930. (35 seconds)

Once the 'credits' music fades out, we hear the voice of Lance Sieveking describing the scene.

"An avenue lined with trees.... electric lights gleaming through the foliage...." (49seconds)

And so started the First Television Play...

(left) This is a picture off-screen from the 1967 re-make. When compared with the original art-work (right, from "Television" August 1930), the graphic is mirror-reversed. Although Bill Elliott's camera was authentic mechanical 30-lines, he used a mirror mounted in front of the lens which he tilted to provide panning (ie not authentic!). This would have given mirror-reversal and would imply that the text captions were printed left-right reversed for his camera.

The Cast of 1967 in 30-lines - off-screen shots digitally enhanced

The Woman

The 'Man', the 'Woman' and the 'Customer'
Amateur actors - all unknown but possibly with a link to the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority)

Video Extracts

Two RealMedia versions of "The Man with the Flower in His Mouth"-1967 version are available for download (for IE5, right-mouse-click, "Save Target As..." for storing on your own drive),

an edited version (around 3m30sec) 550kbytes and
the full length extract (8m45sec) 2.2Mbytes
the full length extract in high quality MPEG-1 176x144x12.5fps (8m45sec) 22Mbytes
NOTE: the version on the double CD "Dawn of Television Remembered" has been restored and has had the audio re-mastered

Given the home-brew equipment adaptations and the student actors of 1967, the original 1930 programme is likely to have been much better in programme quality than this remake.

Remake - Further Information

Thanks to Simon Vaughan of the APTS for the following article referring to the 1967 remake of TMWTFIHM. Oddly there is no comment regarding Bill Elliott.

Heard and Seen - in PDF format (145kbytes)

The Journal of The Guild of Television Cameramen, Number 3, Winter 1974, Pages 10 - 11

Some Facts about Bill Elliott

Bill Elliott provided all the 30-line imagery (other than my Phonovision imagery) for the 1985 Granada series "Television". His material appeared in Programmes 1,2 and 13. A fleeting extract from "The Man with the Flower in his Mouth" appeared in Programme 13.
Bill converted one of his precious Televisors into a camera by putting a photomultiplier behind the scanning disc - just where the neon would have gone for display. On the other side of the disc, he had a lens that focused the scene onto the surface of the scanning disc - which acted as an image dissector. He could display the result either on the other Televisor or on his home-brew CRT display.
Bill wrote an article for New Scientist many years ago describing Baird TV and illustrating the article with his picture of William Taynton, the first person ever to be televised back in October 1925.

Original captions

In 'Television' for August 1930, four of the original captions were reproduced in an article "The Fourteenth of July, 1930" written by Lance Sieveking. They have been scanned, cleaned up and are reproduced below.

Click on the above images for high resolution scans (To download, right-click on desired image and then choose 'Save Target As..') These scans are provided for educational purposes only.

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Last updated by Don McLean on 01 January 2007