1939–1945: We Will Be Working Under Difficulties

Dibbs, Martin

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95609-1_4

Martin Dibbs⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ((PSHM))

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Abstract

Dibbs considers the Variety Department’s contribution to the entertainment of the nation in wartime while having to negotiate both the restrictions often imposed quite arbitrarily by the BBC and Ministry of Information and the problems of disruption to the day-to-day operation of Variety caused by its evacuation to Bristol and later, North Wales. He explores how, despite this, Variety made a substantial contribution to raising morale for those at home and for the armed services overseas. He looks at how the BBC seemed to redouble its efforts with policy censorship even though some slight relaxation of standards might reasonably have been expected. He examines how the BBC’s anti-American stance did not prevent it from using American artists and broadcasts during the period of hostilities.

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Notes

1.
Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Vol. III The War of Words 1939–1945 (revised edition), Oxford, 1995, 87.
2.
The BBC television service ended abruptly on 1 September 1939 with the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Gala Première. The service did not resume until 7 June 1946.
3.
BBC Handbook 1955, London, 1954, 159. The BBC Handbook 1940 gives a slightly higher figure for 1939 although there is a slight variation between both sets of licence figures in both Handbooks.
4.
Radio Times 831A, 4 September 1939, 6–7. Radio Times is hereafter abbreviated to RT.
5.
Sandy Macpherson , Sandy Presents, London, 1950, 97–98. Macpherson, a Canadian who had been the resident organist at the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London, before becoming the BBC’s Theatre Organist, had a quiet, friendly, reassuring voice and an accessible repertoire which comprised light classics and the popular tunes of the day. During the war he had a number of his own domestic and overseas request and message programmes including Sandy Presents and Sandy’s Half Hour.
6.
Tom Hickman, What did you do in the War Auntie? The BBC at War 1939–1945, London, 1995, 16.
7.
RT 833, 15 September 1939, 11; RT 834, 22 September 1939, 7 and RT 835, 29 September 1939, 7 respectively.
8.
Antonia White, BBC at War, London, 1941, 4–5.
9.
Howard Thomas, With an Independent Air: Encounters During a Life time in Broadcasting, London, 1977, 54–55.
10.
White, War, 6.
11.
BBC WAC R34/918/2, Variety, 15 November 1939.
12.
Audience figures were expressed in percentage terms with one per cent of the radio audience assumed to represent 330,000 listeners.
13.
J.A. Cole, Lord Haw-Haw and William Joyce, London, 1964, 134; Briggs, III, 144.
14.
Siân Nicholas, BBC Audience Research Reports, Part 1: Listener Research Department, 1937–c.1950, Wakefield, 2006, 8.
15.
Siân Nicholas, ‘The People’s Radio: The BBC and its Audience 1939–1945’ in Hayes et al. (eds), ‘Millions Like Us’? British Culture in the Second World War, Liverpool, 1999, 98.
16.
RT 834, 22 September 1939, 38.
17.
RT 909, 28 February 1941, 6.
18.
RT 1045, 8 October 1943, 4.
19.
M[ass]-O[bservation] File Report 149, Seriousness of Programmes, 28 May 1940. Mass-Observation is hereafter abbreviated to M-O.
20.
For broadcaster Roy Plomley’s account of Radio International’s short life see his Days Seemed Longer: Early Years of a Broadcaster, London, 1980, 165–74.
21.
RT 849, 5 January 1940, 5.
22.
RT 855, 16 February 1940, 3.
23.
The Listener 581, 29 February 1940, 441.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid. 579, 15 February 1940, 308.
26.
BBC WAC R34/882/5, B.E.F. Programme: Sunday Policy, 2 January 1940.
27.
Daily Mirror, 29 December 1939, 16.
28.
M-O File Report 1351, Forces (for The Observer), 15 July 1942.
29.
RT 907, 14 February 1941, 3.
30.
BBC WAC R13/311/6, Variety Department Staff, 1 April, 1940.
31.
Hickman, Auntie, 128–30.
32.
The original BBC Theatre Organ had been destroyed when St George’s Hall, the Variety Department’s abandoned London home, was gutted by incendiary bombs on 24 September 1940. The replacement organ was owned by the previous BBC theatre organist, Reginald Foort, and was moved from Llandudno to the County Theatre Bangor in October 1943. The organ was subsequently installed in the Jubilee Chapel, Hoxton, London in March 1946.
33.
BBC Handbook 1941, London, 1940, 72.
34.
Desert Island Discs, devised and presented by Roy Plomley, and first broadcast on 29 January 1942 on the Forces Programme, continues today. As at August 2018, the programme has had only four presenters in over 70 years. See Roy Plomley, Desert Island Discs, London, 1975; Sean Magee, Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways from one of Radio 4’s Best-Loved Programmes, London, 2012; Mitchell Symons, Desert Island Discs: Flotsam and Jetsam, Fascinating Facts, Figures and Miscellany from one of Radio 4’s Best-Loved Programmes, London, 2012.
35.
See Francis Worsley, ITMA 1939–1948, London, 1948 and Ted Cavanagh, Tommy Handley, London, 1949.
36.
BBC WAC R30/3773/1, 28 September 1942.
37.
White, War, 24.
38.
RT 1026, 28 May 1943, 1.
39.
BBC WAC R30/3771/1, 4 October 1941; see also ibid. 20 October 1941.
40.
BBC WAC R30/3771/2, Roberts to Watts, 18 November 1943.
41.
See Brian Reynolds, Music While You Work: An Era in Broadcasting, Lewes, 2006.
42.
BBC WAC R27/257/1, Music While You Work, 10 July 1940.
43.
Ibid. undated, c. July 1940.
44.
Ibid. Music While You Work, 21 August 1940.
45.
RT 927, 4 July 1941, 3.
46.
BBC WAC R27/257/1, LR/371: Music While You Work, 8 October 1941.
47.
Ibid. Music While You Work: First Report for Period 5 May to 30 November 1941, n.d.
48.
Ibid. Survey of the Fifth Year of the Service, 1 June 1945.
49.
M-O File Report 1249, Use of Music in Factories and the BBC’s Music While You Work, 21 May 1942.
50.
BBC WAC R51/23/1, “Information Please” (“Ask Me Another”), 26 November 1940.
51.
Ibid.
52.
See Howard Thomas, Britain’s Brains Trust, London, 1944, 17.
53.
BBC WAC R51/22, “Any Questions”, 4 March, 1941.
54.
Ibid. 2 May 1941.
55.
For Thomas’s account, see his books ibid. Britain’s Brains Trust, 14–25 and With an Independent Air, 59–60 and 69–93.
56.
BBC WAC R51/23/3, P32/42, The Brains Trust: Note by Controller (Programmes), 19 August 1942.
57.
BBC Handbook 1942, London, 1941, 72.
58.
Briggs, III, 507.
59.
RT 1095, 22 September 1944, 3.
60.
Thomas, Brains, 8–10.
61.
BBC WAC R34/275/1, 2 April, 1940.
62.
Quoted in BBC WAC R19/1824/1, Dance Music Policy, 29 December 1955.
63.
Ibid. Banned Songs, 14 May 1943.
64.
Ibid. Musical Plagiarisms, 16 and 23 January 1942.
65.
BBC WAC R19/941/4, Howgill to Ricketts, 14 July 1944.
66.
Some of these banned songs may be heard on This Record is Not to be Broadcast: 75 Songs Banned by the BBC 1931–1957, released on Fantastic Voyage FVTD018.
67.
Briggs III, 538.
68.
BBC WAC R19/244, G.46/43: Report on the Four BBC Contract Dance Bands and Victor Silvester’s Band, August 1943.
69.
RT 1089, 11 August, 1944, 5. Glenn Miller and the AEF Band broadcast weekly on the BBC Home Service for five weeks during July and August 1944.
70.
Correspondence between Marion Holledge and the author, 13 September 2008.
71.
BBC WAC R34/281, Crooners and Crooning, 21 May 1941.
72.
Ibid. Crooning, 28 May 1941.
73.
BBC WAC R34/275/1, Anti-Flabby Entertainment in Empire Programmes, 11 March 1942.
74.
BBC WAC R19/683, 3 November 1941.
75.
Ibid. 17 March 1942.
76.
Harman Grisewood, One Thing at a Time, London, 1968, 133.
77.
BBC WAC R19/683, 24 March 1942.
78.
RT 982, 24 July 1942, 3.
79.
M-O File Report 1351.
80.
Daily Mirror, 25 August 1942, 7.
81.
BBC WAC R34/275/1, Programme Report, n.d., c. December 1939.
82.
BBC WAC R13/312, Censorship, 20 January 1941.
83.
BBC WAC R34/292/2, Questionable Material in Records, 18 November 1941.
84.
BBC WAC R34/283, George Formby, 3 March 1942.
85.
John Fisher, Funny Way to be a Hero, London, 1973, 100.
86.
BBC WAC R34/283, ENSA Concert with George Formby, 27 January 1942. The song cited may be heard on Ibid, This Record is Not to be Broadcast: 75 Songs Banned by the BBC 1931–1957.
87.
Ibid. ENSA Concert with George Formby, 21 January 1942.
88.
Ibid. George Formby, 4 January 1945.
89.
BBC WAC R9/15/1, Listener Research Report No. 12: Vulgarity in BBC Programmes, 4 March 1940.
90.
BBC WAC R13/311/7, Variety Programmes, 19 January 1941.
91.
The term ‘compère’ was not unknown to the BBC: up to this point it had been used, for example, in their Staff List for 1938 and frequently in Radio Times.
92.
BBC WAC R34/275/1, Policy Points, 26 February 1942.
93.
Ibid. Directive from C(P) No. 94, ‘The Modern Army’, 28 November 1942.
94.
BBC WAC R34/275/2, Unconventional Language in BBC Programmes, 25 December 1943.
95.
BBC WAC R34/918/3, Variety Material for Overseas Transmission, 6 October 1943.
96.
BBC WAC R34/275/1, Propaganda Themes, 13 January 1942.
97.
Ibid. Don’ts In Relation to China, 14 May 1942.
98.
Ibid. Secretariat to Clarke, 24 January 1942.
99.
Ibid. The BBC and Drink, 17 February 1942.
100.
Ibid. Alcohol, 3 February 1942.
101.
BBC WAC R34/288/1, “Off Colour” Jokes in the Empire Services, 15 October 1942.
102.
Ibid. 27 November 1942.
103.
Maurice Gorham, Broadcasting and Television Since 1900, London, 1952, 190.
104.
BBC Handbook 1941, 57–59; BBC Year Book 1944, London, 1943, 91.
105.
BBC WAC R34/918/2, “Hi Gang!” Series, 9 June 1940.
106.
Valeria Camporesi, Mass Culture and National Traditions: The BBC and American Broadcasting, 1922–1954, Fucecchio, 2000, 160.
107.
BBC Year Book 1943, London, 1942, 49–50.
108.
Briggs, III, 585–88.
109.
BBC Year Book 1944, 107–8.
110.
Maurice Gorham, Broadcasting, 193.
111.
Both Maurice Gorham, Sound and Fury: Twenty-One Years in the BBC, London, 1948, 133–35 and Christina L. Baade, Victory Through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II, New York, 2014, 178–80, add useful comments regarding the BBC’s attitude towards the establishment of the AFN. See also Stephen Barnard, On the Radio: Music Radio in Britain, Milton Keynes, 1989, 28–29.
112.
RT 994, 16 October 1942, 4.
113.
Quoted in Camporesi, Culture, 164.
114.
BBC WAC R34/420, Americanisation, 26 January 1945.
115.
Barry Took, Laughter in the Air: An Informal History of Radio Comedy, London, 1976, 39–40.
116.
Gorham, Broadcasting, 224.
117.
BBC WAC R13/311/7, Report by Midland Regional Director on the Output of Variety Department, July 1943.
118.
Ibid. G44/43, Report on Output of Variety Department: Memorandum from Director of Variety to Controller (Programmes) 24 July 1943.
119.
BBC WAC R34/917, Variety from the North, 17 September 1943.
120.
BBC WAC R13/311/7, G44/33, Report on Variety Output: Note by Basil Nicolls, 26 July 1943.
121.
BBC WAC R34/578/1, Some Notes on Post-War Position, 19 March 1943 and Ibid. Comments on DG’s Notes on Post War Position, n.d.
122.
BBC WAC R34/420, Post-War Home Programme Set-Up, 21 December 1944.
123.
The reasons for this need not detain us but see Briggs, III, 532–40 for the rationale behind this move.
124.
Gorham, Broadcasting, 202–3.
125.
BBC WAC R34/420, Post-War Home Programme Set-Up, 21 December 1944.
126.
BBC WAC R34/421/1, G13/45: The BBC and New Talent, a Note by Senior Controller, 2 May 1945.
127.
Ibid. Post War Plans for Variety, 20 December 1944.
128.
BBC WAC R13/312, Untitled [valedictory memo from Director of Variety to all Producers], 27 July, 1945.
129.
BBC Year Book 1946, London, 1945, 63.
130.
Angela Jeans, The Man Who Was My Husband: A Biography of John Watt, London, 1964, 138.
131.
BBC Year Book 1945, London, 1944, 47.

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Dibbs, M. (2019). 1939–1945: We Will Be Working Under Difficulties. In: Radio Fun and the BBC Variety Department, 1922—67. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95609-1_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95609-1_4
Published: 18 September 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95608-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95609-1
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