Learning on ScreenSmoky Cell
- Summary
- 1938 BBC Television studio production of Edgar Wallace’s prison drama Smoky Cell.
- Theatre play
- Smoky Cell by Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) [more information]
- Date of transmission
- Friday 28 October 1938
- Time
- 9.10-10.40pm
- Production company
- BBC
Credits
- Producer
- Michael Barry
- Playwright
- Edgar Wallace (1875-1932)
- Cast
Additional details
- Origination
- Live from studio
- Vision original
- Monochrome
- Later transmissions
- Presented again at 3.00pm on Monday 31 October 1938; revived in 1939 when it was presented at 9.00pm on Saturday 24 June and at 3.00pm on Friday 30 June.
- Notes
- The 1938 production would appear to have been first presented as a replacement for a cancelled production of Whistling in the Dark on 28 October 1938. It is not listed in Radio Times for that date but it is in The Times broadcasting listing.
For the 1939 revival John Lothar, Edmund Dalby, Alan Keith, George Pughe, Richard Newton and Michael Nono reprised their roles.
New casts members were Percy Parsons, Cyril Chamberlain, Bryan Herbert, Lawrence Shiel, Richard Cuthbert, Peter Madden, Frank Foster, Barry Phelps and Sam Payne. - Extant status
- No archival copy is known to exist.
- Play tags
- crime; prison; thriller
Print sources
- Title
- Radio Times, 28 October 1938 (Magazine)
- Linking notes
- listing, p. 16
- Title
- Televised Drama: Cyrano de Bergerac (Newspaper review)
- Author/creator
- Anonymous (Reviewer)
- Reference
- The Times, 2 November 1938, p. 12
- Notes
- 'Mr Michael Barry [...] knows exactly how to suggest the atmosphere of crime [...] Shadows were used in an interesting way, ti suggest marauding gangsters, and the whole play was so well knit that no single actor - there were no women - stood out
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