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Variety In Sepia
''Variety in Sepia'' is a television Variety special that was filmed live on 7 October 1947 at the RadiOlympia Theatre, Alexandra Palace, London, and was aired on BBC TV. Historical significance ''Variety in Sepia'' is significant to television history for several reasons: it was an early example of a television special dedicated to Black talent, it was an early example of a live television broadcast and it is one of the earliest surviving telerecordings. A six-minute fragment of the programme is all that exists and is thought to be the earliest surviving recording of a live BBC TV programme (apart from some silent off-air fragments from the 1930s). The fragment features Brooklyn-born singer Adelaide Hall performing two songs: "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)", written by Mack David, Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman, and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby", written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields. The surviving footage of Adelaide Hall may also be the earlie ...
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Variety Show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a Master of Ceremonies, compère (master of ceremonies) or Television presenter, host. The variety format made its way from the Victorian era stage in Britain and America to radio and then television. Variety shows were a staple of English language television from the late 1940s into the 1980s. While still widespread in some parts of the world, such as in the United Kingdom with the ''Royal Variety Performance'', and South Korea with ''Running Man (South Korean TV series), Running Man'', the proliferation of multichannel television and evolving viewer tastes have affected the popularity of variety shows in the United States. Despite this, their influence has still had a major effect on late night television whose la ...
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Evelyn Dove
Evelyn Mary Dove (11 January 1902 – 7 March 1987) was a British singer and actress, who early in her career drew comparisons with Josephine Baker. Of Sierra Leone Creole and English parentage, Dove is recognized as a "trailblazing performer": in 1939, she made history as the first black singer to feature on BBC Radio, building a solid reputation not only through her work in Britain but also internationally, travelling to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, the United States, India and Spain.Howard Rye"Southern Syncopated Orchestra: The Roster" ''Black Music Research Journal'', Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2010. She was featured as a Google Doodle on what would have been her 117th birthday in 2019. Family background Evelyn Mary Dove was born at the Lying-in Hospital, Endell Street, London, the daughter of leading Sierra Leonean barrister Francis (Frans) Dove (1869–1949) and his English first wife Augusta, ''née'' Winchester, from whom he was later divorc ...
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1947 Television Specials
It was the first year of the Cold War, which would last until 1991, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Events January * January–February – Winter of 1946–47 in the United Kingdom: The worst snowfall in the country in the 20th century causes extensive disruption of travel. Given the low ratio of private vehicle ownership at the time, it is mainly remembered in terms of its effects on the railway network. * January 1 - The Canadian Citizenship Act comes into effect. * January 4 – First issue of weekly magazine ''Der Spiegel'' published in Hanover, Germany, edited by Rudolf Augstein. * January 10 – The United Nations adopts a resolution to take control of the free city of Trieste. * January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles; the mysterious case is never solved. * January 16 – Vincent Auriol is inaugurated as president of France. * January 19 – Ferry ...
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1948 Summer Olympics
The 1948 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and also known as London 1948) were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, England, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus caused by the outbreak of World War II, these were the first Summer Olympics held since the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Games in Berlin. The 1940 Summer Olympics, 1940 Olympic Games had been scheduled for Tokyo and then for Helsinki, while the 1944 Summer Olympics, 1944 Olympic Games had been provisionally planned for London. This was the second time London had hosted the Olympic Games, having previously hosted them in 1908 Summer Olympics, 1908, forty years earlier. The Olympics would again return to London 64 years later in 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012, making London the first city to have hosted the games three times, and the only such city until Paris and Los Angeles host their third games in 2024 Summer Olympics, 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympi ...
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It's That Man Again
''It's That Man Again'' (commonly contracted to ''ITMA'') was a BBC radio comedy programme which ran for twelve series from 1939 to 1949. The shows featured Tommy Handley in the central role, a fast-talking figure, around whom the other characters orbited. The programmes were written by Ted Kavanagh and produced by Francis Worsley. Handley died during the twelfth series, the remaining programmes of which were immediately cancelled: ''ITMA'' could not work without him, and no further series were commissioned. ''ITMA'' was a character-driven comedy whose satirical targets included officialdom and the proliferation of minor wartime regulations. Parts of the scripts were rewritten in the hour before the broadcast, to ensure topicality. ''ITMA'' broke away from the conventions of previous radio comedies, and from the humour of the music halls. The shows used sound effects in a novel manner, which, alongside a wide range of voices and accents, created the programme's atmosphere. ...
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as ''Man and Superman'' (1902), ''Pygmalion'' (1913) and '' Saint Joan'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years ...
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Stuart Hall (cultural Theorist)
Stuart Henry McPhail Hall (3 February 1932 – 10 February 2014) was a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. In the 1950s Hall was a founder of the influential ''New Left Review''. At Hoggart's invitation, he joined the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in 1964. Hall took over from Hoggart as acting director of the CCCS in 1968, became its director in 1972, and remained there until 1979. While at the centre, Hall is credited with playing a role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to deal with race and gender, and with helping to incorporate new ideas derived from the work of French theorists such as Michel Foucault. Hall left the centre in 1979 to become a professor of sociology at ...
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Isaac Julien
Sir Isaac Julien (born 21 February 1960Annette Kuhn"Julien, Isaac (1960–)" BFI Screen Online.) is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and distinguished professor of the arts at UC Santa Cruz. Early life Julien was born in the East End of London, one of the five children of his parents, who had migrated to Britain from St Lucia. He graduated in 1985 from Saint Martin's School of Art, where he studied painting and fine art film. He co-founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1983, and was a founding member of Normal Films in 1991. Education In 1980, Julien organised the Sankofa Film and Video Collective with Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, and Robert Crusz in response to the social unrest in Britain. Sankofa was "dedicated to developing an independent black film culture in the areas of production, exhibition and audience". He received a BA in fine-art film from Central Saint Martins School of Art, London (1984), where he worked alongside ...
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British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, distribution, and education. It is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and partially funded under the British Film Institute Act 1949. Purpose It was established in 1933 to encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom. BFI activities Archive The BFI maint ...
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Stephen Bourne (writer)
Stephen Bourne (born 31 October 1957) is a British writer, film and social historian specialising in Black heritage and gay culture. As noted by the BBC among others, Bourne "has discovered many stories that have remained untold for years". In October 2019, Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo voted Bourne for her Black History Month hero on Facebook. She said: "Stephen Bourne is a hero of our history, who has published countless books, always accessible to all, on the hidden stories of our presence on these shores. Let's honour Stephen for quietly shining a light on our history." In 2019, the acclaimed writer Russell T Davies ('' Queer as Folk'', ''It's a Sin'') described Bourne in his foreword to ''Playing Gay in the Golden Age of British Television'' as "one of the soldiers, gatekeepers and champions of our community. I am in awe of his diligence and insight." Early life and education Bourne was born in Camberwell, south-east London, and raised in Peckham. He attended ...
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Winifred Atwell
Una Winifred Atwell (27 February or 27 April 1910 or 1914There is some uncertainty over her date and year of birth. Many sources suggest 27 February 1914, but there is a strong suggestion that her birthday was 27 April. Most sources give her year of birth as 1914, but her gravestone states that she died at the age of 73, suggesting that she was born in 1910. – 28 February 1983) was a Trinidadian pianist who enjoyed great popularity in Britain and Australia from the 1950s with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records."Atwell, Winifred", in David Dabydeen, John Gilmore, Cecily Jones (eds), ''The Oxford Companion to Black British History'', Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 33. She was the first black woman to have a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and is still the only female instrumentalist to do so. Biography Childhood Atwell was born in Tunapuna in Trinidad and Tobago. She and her parents lived in Jubilee Street. Her family owned a ...
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