Footie’s back to square one
QUESTION What was the first football match broadcast on the radio?
ON JANUARY 1, 1927, the BBC received its Royal Charter and became a public corporation. At the same time it was granted the right to broadcast major sporting events.
This had been resisted by Fleet Street, who were concerned live coverage would detract from newspaper sports pages.
The BBC broadcast its first live football match three weeks later, on January 22, 1927. The game between Arsenal and Sheffield United at Highbury Stadium ended in a 1-1 draw. The commentator was Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam, a former rugby player with Harlequins.
There were fears that listeners would be unable to follow the action, so producer Lance Sieveking devised a plan of the pitch divided into eight numbered squares, which was published in the Radio Times.
The idea was that a fan could follow the play from his armchair using the grid on his lap. This is believed to be the origin of the phrase ‘ back to square one’, as described in an earlier answer about misused terms.
The commentary was delivered from a wooden hut with Wakelam sitting beside his assistant, C. A. Lewis, who gave references to the grid numbers. Sadly, no recording of the match survives.
Wakelam proved to be a good choice as commentator. Test Match Special veteran John Arlott described him as ‘a natural talker with a reasonable vocabulary, a good rugby mind and a conscious determination to avoid journalese’.
T. F. Cummings, Warwick.
QUESTION Why did farmers paint their cattle during World War II?
THE wartime blackout, when regulations required street lights to be turned off and traffic signals and headlights to be dimmed, led to a dramatic increase in night-time road accidents.
The King’s surgeon, writing in the British Medical Journal in 1939, complained that by ‘frightening the nation into blackout regulations, the Luftwaffe was able to kill 600 British citizens a month without ever taking to the air’.
In 1940, one person died for every 200 vehicles on the road; today, the figure is one for every 20,000.
One of the main problems was latenight motorists hitting livestock. In a bid to keep their herds safe, farmers painted cattle with stripes of white paint so they could be seen in the dark.
Olivia Mason, King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
QUESTION Have studios changed films following poor test screenings?
COUNTLESS films have been changed following test screenings.
Since the 1930s, film studios have employed outside firms to recruit audience members and run the event. Typically, a moderator introduces the movie and advises the audience to ignore slight anomalies in the visual and sound effects that are yet to be perfected.
The film-makers watch the reaction to various scenes in the film. After the credits have rolled, the audience are asked to fill in a questionnaire — called the cards — on pace, clarity of plot, highlights, lowlights and, crucially, whether they would recommend the movie to friends and family.
The process is not always reliable. In a test screening for The Wizard Of Oz in 1939, the audience felt the scene where Judy Garland sings Somewhere Over The Rainbow should be deleted because it slowed down the film! However, executives insisted the song remained. It won an Academy Award and became Garland’s signature tune.
In Frank Oz’s 1986 adaptation of the off-Broadway musical Little Shop Of Horrors, the film was meant to end with the killer alien plant Audrey II consuming her owner, Seymour (Rick Moranis), and his girlfriend, Audrey (ellen Greene), before attempting world domination.
The test audience hated this. According to Oz: ‘For every musical number there was applause, they loved it, it was just fantastic . . . until we killed our two leads. And then the theatre became a refrigerator, an ice box. It was awful and the cards were just awful. They were saying that they hated us killing them.’
The apocalyptic denouement was pruned in favour of a happier ending where Seymour defeats the plant and marries Audrey.
In 1982’s First Blood, John Rambo, Sylvester Stallone’s tortured Vietnam vet, was supposed to die at the end of the film. That’s what happens in David Morrell’s novel on which the film is based.
However, director Ted Kotcheff filmed two endings: one in which Rambo completed his suicide mission and the other in which he survived. The test audience preferred the happier ending, which has allowed five sequels!
The director’s cut of 1987’s erotic thriller Fatal Attraction ended with Alex (Glenn Close) framing her former lover Dan (Michael Douglas) for murder before committing suicide.
After test audiences baulked at this dark ending, Paramount studio ordered a reshoot. The new ending transformed Alex into a slasher movie killer shot dead by Dan’s wife (Anne Archer).
The original ending was screened in Japan, where audiences were used to noir endings.
Ridley Scott famously created seven different cuts of 1982’s sci-fi film Blade Runner. Test audiences were confused by the complex, ambiguous plot.
The studio brought back Harrison Ford in between shooting scenes on Return Of The Jedi to record a notoriously bad voiceover in which he does his worst Sam Spade impression. Mercifully, we can now watch the narration-free director’s cut, final cut and international cut.
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