The Tiger [scenes]

Summary: The second drama broadcast from Alexandra Palace after the start of the regular television service, this is a BBC transmission of scenes from The Tiger by Reginald Berkeley, from the production playing at the Embassy Theatre, London.
Theatre play: The Tiger by Reginald Berkeley (1890-1935) [more information]
Play synopsis: The life of the French politician Georges Clemenceau, starting with his life as a young boy in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with the ageing statesman of World War One.
Production history: Staged at the Embassy Theatre, London in the autumn of 1936. The playwright Frank Berkeley had died the previous year.
Date of transmission: Monday 23 November 1936
Time: 3.29pm (33 mins)
Channel: BBC Television
Production company: BBC

Television Presentation by

George More O’Ferrall (1907-1982)

Theatre Producer

Ronald Adam (1896-1979)

Playwright

Reginald Berkeley (1890-1935)

Cast

Origination: Live from studio
Vision original: Monochrome
Later transmissions: Repeated live at 9.31-10.05pm on Monday 23 November 1936.
Extant status: No archival copy is known to exist.
Play tags: First World War, as theme or setting; France, as theme or setting; politics

Title: Adventure in Vision: The First Twenty-Five Years of Television (Book)
Author/creator: John Swift (Author)
Reference: London: John Lehmann, 1950
Linking notes: p. 87

Title: In the beginning: The Tiger (BBC, 1936) (Blog article)
Author/creator: John Wyver (Author)
Reference: http://screenplaystv.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/in-the-beginning-the-tiger-bbc-1936, published 17 September 2011

Title: In The Tiger at the Embassy (Newspaper review)
Author/creator: Walter A. Beckett (Author)
Reference: Catholic Herald, 2 October 1936, online at http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/2nd-october-1936/10/in-the-tiger-at-the-embassy
Notes: Excerpt from the review: ‘Reginald Berkeley’s play is all William Devlin. We begin with a raw gawky boy in 1858, tongue-tied, shy, and only bursting into life under the stress of his father’s unjust arrest by the minions of Napoleon III; we follow the young man through a realistic and determined middle-age, the clarity of his thought and the firmness of his will reducing his friends and opponents to comparative imbecility; we end with an amazing impersonation of Papa Clemenceau in his old age, as known to Englishmen familiar with his photographs in the press.'

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