Figure 1.-- A magician from another planet teaches at a British prep school. "Mr. Majestik" features children in their prep school uniforms during the 1970s. |
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Britain was the first country to launch regular daily begin television transmissions. We have noted several English programs which illustrate English children's clothes. English clothes at the turn of the century are shown in 1900 House (1999). Clothing in the inter-war era are shown in Up Stairs, Down Stairs (1970s?). Clothing styles in the 1970s and 80s are shown in East-Enders. The long running Coronation Street has also provie glimpses of contemporary clothes over an extened period. Individual productions of Dickens classics and other title such as Little Lord Fauntleroy have provided iseful glimses in period costuming. (The non-serial TV productions are included in the movies section.) Many children's classics have been made into popular childrens shows, such as the Famous Five. There was also a delightfull show set in a prep school, although the name eludes me at this time. Another interesting series was Mr Majestik.
Britain was the first country to launch regular daily begin television transmissions. The BBC began these transmissions in November 1936. Few English people had TV sets at the time. The transmissions were suspended in September 1939 on the outbreak of World War II. Television was not an impirtant factor in most people's lives until the mid-1950s. It was Queen Elizabeth II's cornanation in 1953 that caused many to buy a set so they could have a look. English viewers for many years watched television rather as they had listened to the radio. TV viewing was likely to be scheduled. Viewers would only turn on the set for specific programs. As there were only a few stationms, and broadcasting had limited hours, it was possible to determine what was on offer with a very quick glance at the paper or Radio Times. Many older viewrs still watch television in this way. Today of course, the in many households is often kept rinning throughout the day, often even whern it is not being watched. Some will leave it on while preparing dinner, doing housework, preparing meals, doing homework, chatting on the phone, working on the computer. etc. Color television arrived in Britain during 1967. Viewing hours were still very limited even in the 1960s. There were no late night broadcasts and even during the day there were scheduled breaks. Unfortunately most of England's early television programing is completely lost. At the time few producers realized the potential commercial value of rebroadcasting programs in the future. Most programs were broadcast live and not recorded. At the time, the only way of recording a program in a quality that could be rebroadcast was film. But this was prohibitively expensive to both do and archive. As a result, not only has the commercial value of early television lost, but also a potentially valiable source of ciltural and historic value. Video taping was not introduced until the mid-1960s, but was also at first expensive. Often only samples or excerpts were archived and tapes reused for other episodes and programs. Programs were not routienly taped and archived until well into the 1970s.
We have noted several English programs which illustrate English children's clothes. Here are some of the English TV series that we have found particularly notable. We have not necesarily selected the best produced or most popular series, but rather those that have provided the most useful insights into boys' clothing. Many of the TV series we have noted in HBC are American. Most of the other are English. A few countries have produced a small number of series (Australia ad Canada). With few exceptions, England is one of the few countries that have produced notable TV series.
Well done British show about two boys who grow up after the war. One is from a wealthy British family, the other a German
refugee. The first show has them as boys at a prep school. The boys of course are all in shorts. A little canning and one boy
showing his marks to his mates on the beach. Well worth seeing. The rest of the series is well done, but only the first episode is
of real interest. The last episode shows the next generation. One boy is very small, the other about eight and read for his prep
school. They both wear shorts. The older boy is done up for one scene in white knee socks and proper sandals.
Lovely series set in Yorkshire about country vets. In the first episodes there are occasional, but all too infrequent shots of local boys, of course in shorts. The series is set immediately after the war feature Jimmy, James' son at about 5 or so. The boy playing Jimmy is brilliant. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance. In the next series James' son (Oliver Wilson) is about 12 or 13. While all to rarely pictured he does have a lovely school uniform with shorts and a red blazer and cap. In one episode he participates with a group of other children doing Scottish dances. He and other boys looked very smart in their kilts. I was watching this with my mother and she commented on the boys wearing kilts. "Don't they look silly," she said. "Those boys must feel foolish dressed like that or don't they know any better." In another episode he is shown in a sports jacket, cord shorts, fawn knee socks, and the sissy "t" strap sandals that British boys used to wear. Based on the James Heriot novels.
BBC production with excellent acting and quite faithful to C.S. Lewis' story; however it shows off just how bad the BBC's
special-effects department was before "Red Dwarf" gave them an opportunity to sharpen their skills on a regular basis! They
were on more familiar ground with the costuming, however; interstingly, Peter (the oldest boy) wears shorts throughout although
Pauline Baynes' illustrations (which date to the books' publication in the early-mid '50s) show him in long pants. (Personally, I'd
rather seen him in the actor's 1990 street clothes talking to an Aslan that didn't look like a giant stuffed animal!
Coronation Stree is perhaps the longest running program on television. Over the year many children have featured in the plots
and provided a window on changing English fashions. The long running Coronation Street has also provie glimpses of contemporary clothes over an extened period.
A British reader mentions a program called "Crackerjack". This is one of those words that has quite different associations in America and England. In America, "Crackerjacks" are a treat of carmalized popcorn, sold in small boxes with treats inside. I am not sure about the origin of the terms, but it is also a slang term meaning a person of great ability and can be used as an adjitive. In Britain, however, "Crackerjack" invairiably with the older generration means a popular 1950s-60s television show. The show ran until 1984, but its greatest popularity was in the 1950s and 60s. The program was a childrens variety show introduced by the late Eammon Andrews. The long running BBC show normally was made up of games, comedy banter or skits, an old silent movie, popular music and a mix of
old-fashioned variety fare aimed at children. The target audience was 8-10 year olds, but the way the program was presented provided for a much wider audience. The program often included an audience participation game called Double or Drop where boys and girls answered questions up on stage, receiving a prize for a correct answer and an outsized cabbage for the wrong answer. The idea was to hold all your prizes and cabbages without dropping any. If you lost control of the growing collection you went away empty handed. Early bits of film from "Crackerjack" featured a number of contestants wearing School shorts. He mentions a
group called "The King Brothers". The piano player wore proper grey school shorts. This surpprised one reader who remembered "The King Brothers" who in his recollection the King Brothers were a very popular act in the 1950s, but always appeared in natty tuxedo suits. In the 1950s and early 1960s it was common to see contestants appaering in their school uniforms. In those days a boy or girl might wear school uniform as a best outfit, taking considerable pride in it. Large numbers of Cubs, Scouts, Girl Guides and Brownies in full uniform made up the often very vocal audience. It was a proud moment for a contestant to appear on TV, especially in the early years. The boys and girls were often proud to wear their school uniform and there was abosultely no embarrassment at being seen in your well-pressed short trousers or gym slip. Another feature of the show was that everyone, winners or losers, received a Crackerjack pencil. Also, whenever Eamonn Andrews said
the word "Crackerjack" the whole audience cheered out loud. Another reader tells us, "I can confirm the report about contestants coming up on stage in their school uniforms. The BBC showed a clip from an old "Crackerjack" that I saw a few years ago, I think in 1998. It appears to have been quite common. I think in part because quite a number of boys did not have actual suits and contestans invairably dressed up to appear on the show."
Lovely British production of David Copperfield. The story is devastating indictment of the inhuman treatment of children and the
production catches the flavor of the book. The boy playing young David (Nolan Hemmings) has long curls. He appears a lot in
a lace collar, but the only interesting outfit is a jacket-like garment that looks like a skirt worn with trousers, I believe a tunic. Of
course his father dies and his mother remarries. The man is and his dreadful sister are beautifully played and ogres. With his
mother growing sicker his stepfather sends him to a harsh boarding school after David bites him during a beating. The school he attends is a dreadful Dicksonian establishment. David and another boy are beaten. He has to wear a sign saying he bites. The costuming is probably appropriate, but not very enlightening. David wears a lace collar occasionally, but no really fancy suits. David Dexter.
Series set in an English prep school where the boys wear shorts. Unfortunately few episodes are actually about the boys.
Clothing styles in the 1970s and 80s are shown in East-Enders. This long running English soap opera is set in the gritty East End of London, a tough working class neighborhood. It is one of the most famous shows in the history of English television. One of the main characters is Grace Brothers' Miss ??? from "Are
You Being Served". The show follow the saga of the travails of working-class families. This of course includes the children in
the family and the schools that they go to, many of which required school uniforms.
Many children's classics have been made into popular childrens shows, such as the Famous Five. Another famous English literary character was really a group of five--four children and a dog. The central characters are Julian, Dick, Anne, George, and the dog Timmy. This was a children's series created by famed children's writer Enis Blyton, one of Britain’s best-loved children’s authors.. It was one of the most popular series of children's books in England and America. The series began in 1942 and were translated into many languages. The boys were commonly costumed in period clothes, jumpers, short trousers, and sandals.
British production carried by PBS on its Masterpiece Theater series. I question some of the costuming decisions. It was in most respects a beautifully done production. The costumes were great, right down to the peaked cap the boy in the credits wears, but for some strange reason the boys all wear longs. It was a public school, but didn't the younger boys at any public schools wear
short trousers in the 1930s?
Rather witty show about the experiences of a young adolescent, Adrian Mole. The boy is quiet chap and wears glasses. He
almost always wears long trousers, although he did wear shorts once at the beach. I don't know of any especially interesting
episodes.
Not very interesting British serial about a boy and his father during the 1950s. The boy goes to a grammar school and wears
short trousers at the beginning. There is a scene where he gets his first pair of longs. He wears them to school and they send
him back home.
Well made British series based on the famous novel. The conditions at the school are well depicted, including a sinister teacher
who beats one poor girl viciously on the hand and makes her wear a shaming sign. Jane herself is made to stand on a stool and
the other students forced to shun her until the charges by a wicked vicar on the governing board are disproved. I didn't get to
see the subsequent sequences, but it will be interesting to see how the children she is to be the governess for are costumed.
Story of Churchill's American mother. Winnie is pictured furtively, first as an infant and later as a spunky red-haired kid. I didn't
see it all. He was pictured once in a nightgown will a frilly collar after he got into a fight at school. Jennie complained that they
beat him to much at his old school and now she is afraid that he is not beaten enough. Later he is pictured in a rather boring
knicker suit and he is sent off to play with his brothers, visible in their sailor suits in the background.
Lovely series about a delightful little Welsh boy during World War II. Several episodes are set in his Welsh home, a small rural
village. Others are at a horrid English prep school where he is teased. The boys at the school wear shorts, caps, and a blue
blazer.
TV series based on a the books describing the trials and tribulations of a British boy during the 1920-30s. I have not seen the
TV show, but the books are quite charming. I think there has been various productions.
TV series based on a the books describing the trials and tribulations of a British boy during the 1920-30s. I have not seen the
TV show, but the books are quite charming.
One of the most beloved character to have graced the English television screen has to be William Brown, better known as "Our
William". The William saga first appeared as a series of children's books which were also enjoyed by adults. Movies an a radio
series followed an finally a number of television series. A critical part of the William story is his classic school boy outfit, incluing
a peake hat with a circular esign and falling down kneesocks.
Individual productions of Dickens classics and other title such as Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy have provided useful glimses in period costuming. (The non-serial TV productions are included in the movies section.)
The BBC in 1995 produced another version of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Ironically the same young American actor, Michael Benz, that played in the Mike and Angelo Fauntleroy spoof, played Cedric in the newest BBC dramatisation. He appears to have been about 10 or 11 years old in the film.This film was condensed from the BBC television miniseries.
A campy British TV series on ITV had a kid series named Mike and Angelo about an American boy living in Britain. In one episode he thinks he has inherited a Lordship and, playing a clueless American to the hilt, he began dressing in an elaborate Little Lord Fauntleroy suit as appropriate for his new status. It was played for laughs. Mike Benz who played the American had some previous experience, having actually appeared in an BBC production of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Interestingly, Mike must be the best known American that Americans have never heard of.
A other interesting series was Mr Majestik. A magician from another planet teaches at a British prep school. The boys wear a striped blazer with short grey shorts. The
principal boy involved is about 11 or so. All the boys at school wear proper grey shorts. In one scene they have a Cub outing. Dreadful stories but children are usually featured. In one the good Dr. takes a properly dressed Cub troop on an outing. The children also appear in their prep school uniforms.
Nice serial about Gerry, a 10? year old boy, and his eccentric family. The boy (Darren Redmayne) is interested in natural
history and begins to write a book about his findings on Corfu during the 1930s. He soon finds his family more interesting than
the animals. The boy wears terrible baggy shorts with closed-toe sandals as was common in England during the 1830s. Based
on the best-selling childhood recollections of naturalist Gerald Durrell.
Lovely little series run on PBS. Oliver is mistreated in the orphanage and by Mr. Sourberry in the funeral parlor at the orders of
his screw of a wife. Nicely costumed program showing what poor and affluent children wore.
Nice sitcom set in a British prep school. The boys are quite charming. They all wear traditional uniforms, including short
trousers and kneesocks. I don't remember any episodes that actually dealt with clothing in the plot line.
I sat through much of this highly acclaimed film. Can't say that I really enjoyed it. There were a few scenes touching on clothing when the leading lady was still a school teacher. All of her boys were in shorts. They were about 6 or 7. One of her dream
sequences didn't have the children all dressed up in white short pants suits like the scene from the American movie.
Excellent production of the le Care spy thriller. The main character, Magnus, is depicted as a boy of about 10 or so has a
lengthy part at the beginning. I think he is meant to be a bit younger as in one scene his mother helps him put on his knee socks.
He wears shorts and knee socks and proper closed-toe sandals. He appears in both grey knee socks and light colored fawn
ones. One of the better TV shows with long sequences of a boy in realistic contemporary English boys clothing. There are a
couple nasty females, the cook and the nanny. The nanny threatens to put the boy in diappers if he countinues wetting the bed.
His grandfather gives him a real canning when he is rude to his. He appears once in a dark suit, but you can't tell if he is wearing shorts or not, almost certainly he was. I watched this with a girl friend who commented, "Why do the English always make their
boys wear short pants?" In the scene she was referring to it was obviously chilly outside and he was wearing a sweater with his shorts to keep warm.
HBC has done some work on the famed English (Granada) documentary Seven Up, but for some reason I can't find it now to create a link.
Clothing in the inter-war era are shown in Up Stairs, Down Stairs (1970s?).
50/50 is a program for children. This was a show where two school groups played against each other to win something for their school. They did various "physical challenges" (borrowing a term from "Double Dare" here), plus they answered trivia questions.
English clothes at the turn of the century are shown in 1900 House. This show depicts a modern family that spent several weeks living like a family of 1900. The son appeared once in a sailor suit and straw hat. He only appeared in the sailor suit once. Boys did wear long pants sailor suits in the 1900s, but HBC believes that kneepanrs suits were more common. This was the only time he appeared in the sailor suit. Most of the footage concentrated on the boy's precocious older sisters who appeared to enjoy wearing their elaborate Edwardian costumes. Their brother, on the other hand, seemed to be a rather unhappy Edwardian. In the picture he is accompanying his mother on a shopping expedition. The time depicted was the same time that the future George V's children were widely photograhed. They almost
always wore either sailor suits or kilts. They wore both kneepants and long pants sailor suits.
A reader writes, "I have been searching everwhere for a TV program that I once saw here in Australia on our A.B.C. Channel. Here, our A.B.C. channel shows a lot of British programs. So far, all the web-sites I've been to don't go into enough detail for me to narrow down my search. I'm hoping you know the title of the show, because it had old English fashion, so here's a few things I remember about the show. The episode I saw was shown sometime between 1983-1993. The show was set in a Boy's School. So all the main characters were male or at least I thinkthey all were. The show had a supernatural theme to it. During the episode that I saw, one of the pivotal characters died by standing on the edge of a cliff and gets struck by lightning. Further on the same episode, another of the main characters talks the character that died by looking into a candle flame. I've always wanted to own this program, but forgot the title of it. If you know which show I'm on about, could you please tell me."
HBC readers have provided a range of opinions about British TV.
An American teenager visiting England write up this assessment of English television, "Television:: Let's talk television for a moment. British television (in my opinion) is nothing compared to American TV. Sure, they do a fair job, but it's just not the same. I think that's why we all gravitated to SkyOne, which showed American TV. We saw The Simpsons, The Nanny, Star
Trek, Married with Children, America's Dumbest Criminals, South Park, and many other MERICAN TV shows on SkyOne. The British stuff was mainly on BBC 1 and 2. One show that I saw on BBC 1 during its CBBC programming period (programs for children) was a game show called 50/50. This was a show where two school groups played against each other to win something for their school. They did various "physical challenges" (borrowing a term from "Double Dare" here), plus they answered trivia questions. In the episode I saw, the two schools battling it out were "Callendar" and "Moffat". I believe that Callendar won the game, and they won a computer and some software for their school. However, one thing that you won't find in the U.S. are the British commercials, because we crank out enough commercials to last until we have to worry about a "Y3K" bug. {HBC note: I think the point here is that the British commercials are more imaginative and humerous.] But here's one sound clip from a commercial where it was like one of those operations where one person is fed orders from someone else. This was about the older brother having his younger brother prepare a TV dinner and bring it to him. At the end, the little brother is holding up the antenna, and says the quote duplicated here right before the commercial fades to black. "My arm hurts!" Another commercial featured three Mounties standing on a stage wearing nothing but their hats. Thankfully, you couldn't see anything. These three were advertising some kind of fruit drink. The drink was low in calories, "so we can stay firm ... (camera moves down the body, stopping at the stomach) where it counts!" At this point, the man pats his stomach."
Personally I prefer British TV. The adults programs are smarter and better written. They tend to be lower budgets and thus don't have the glossy look of American programs. I find recent British programs are becoming more like the American ones. THey are bigger budget glossier programs but the scripts are not nearly as interesting as the older programs. Our Argentine reader is quite correct about American children's programming. Its dreadful. And the commercials are only one of the problems. There is one exception, however, which is Publos Television (PBS). The PBS children's programming like Seasame Street is quite good. My major criticism of British TV is the BBC and the oftenly stridently ideological presentation. There is a lack of ideological ballance in British news programming.
I was most interested in the comments posed by your American reader re British and American Television. However, I do take exception when he says. "British television (in my opinion) is nothing compared to American TV. Sure, they do a fair job, but it's just not the same." I wish to point out that British Television is regarded as the world's best especially when it is directed toward children. Over here we have what is called the "watershed" in that all TV programmes screened before 21:00 hours are supposed to be free of any bad language or explicit sex references. One example of a fine British children's TV show is "Blue Peter" a magazine programme which has been running since 1958 and one I grew up with. The programme was originally transmitted twice a week, but has in the past few years been extended to three days. The programme does a great job especially at Christmas with its appeals in which children send in anything from old clothes to milk bottle tops in order to provide such things as guide dogs for the blind or riding fascilities for the disabled. Another feature of this programme is its annual summer break in which the presenters visit a foreign country where children are shown cultures which are totally alien to them. Another thing about British TV is that BBC-1 and BBC-2 are free from advertising, here again on the channels that do take advertising it is strictly controlled in that any advertisement for a particular toy for example, must now show the price, whereas, at onetime this was deliberately left off the advert in order for the child to pressurise the parent into buying the product, even if they couldn't afford it. It must be very frustrating for American viewers to see so much advertising in the space of a 25 or 50 minute slot. We have our commercial breaks, say one in a 25 minute slot and perhaps three in a 50 minute one.
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