Re: Plan 9 from Outer Space

In article <20080326.1139.108904snz@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
dbell@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ("David G. Bell") wrote:

> Was the TV-production story true? Well, in the early days they 
> had to use some odd-looking makeup for the same reason, 

There was a comedy drama series on the BBC back in the sixties called A
Hundred Years of Humphrey Hastings about a family of, well, I was going
to say inventors, but a better description would be tinkerers with the
latest technology.

One episode was set in the late thirties and the current head of the
household had built his own Baird-style TV receiver.  He visited the
BBC television studies at Alexandra Palace and met one of the
performers.  There was a joke in there, in that the performer was
wearing green makeup, which was presumably to do with the colour
sensitivity of the Baird process, which involved using film which was
developed immediately and then telescanned, even for live broadcast.

The problem was, this series was shown during the early days of colour
broadcasting in the UK, and we didn't have a colour set at home, so we
just had to guess this was the joke, although one of the characters on
screen later said he had been wearing green makeup.

And the performer was played by Arthur Askey, a comedian who actually
did take part in the early BBC TV broadcasts in the thirties.

(Interestingly, I can't find a record of this series in the IMDb.  It
isn't listed in the credits for either Askey or the actor who took the
title role, Dudley Foster.  A google on the name of the series did
bring up a BFI site that listed that episode and gave Askey and Foster
as the only two actors they knew were in it.  But they say the episode
was set in 1932, which was before the BBC started regular TV
transmissions.  But I suppose there might have been earlier test
transmissions that could be received.)