The world of British television off and on the screen, as it was sixty years ago.

Alms and the Man

In Hastings, the Director General of the ITA, Sir Robert Fraser, was speaking at a conference of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers according to The Observer. Sir Robert said that he hoped that by September next year the ITA would have in service for commercial television, Croydon on a higher power than present, a midland station at Lichfield, a Lancashire station, and that they would be just putting into service a Yorkshire station. These four transmitters would reach around 30 million people (Croydon: 12 million, Lichfield: 6 million, Lancashire,: 7 million and Yorkshire: 5 million) or 60% of the population.

Maurice Richardson writes in same paper that “there’s nothing like a good play on your screen, if only you can find one.” The BBC pairing of Shaw’s Dark Lady of the Sonnets and The Merry Wives of Windsor “both enchanted” particularly “after so many items from the Repertory of Rot”.

Declaring that “eternal vigilance by the viewer is always rewarded in time”, Richardson cites T. S. Eliot’s appearance on Nationwide “to talk, with characteristic parentheses, most excellent sense about advertising”.

Also gaining approval was Orson Welles “quiet, human-hearted” discourse on old age and the way he “interviewed four exceedingly vivacious widows in a Hackney almshouse and some Chelsea Pensioners.” More particularly that, “he got a lot of personality out of them without infringing their dignity.”

Even Godfrey Winn who “needs either to learn relaxation or gain assurance if he is to become an all-round television personality” gets Richardson’s thumbs pointing upwards for his role in As Others See Us as did “a radio reporter on the ITA” who “sat stockstill and was beautifully shaved by a razor held in the right foot of an armless man.”

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