Introduction
The infant television made its entry into our lives shortly after the end of World War II. Since then it has developed into a form of communication and entertainment which towers above everything else.
In the earliest years of its development, necessary as he was, the TV scriptwriter received little reward and even less credit for his efforts. The few dramatic presentations at the beginning were mainly drawn from past stage successes and, to some extent, from programmes first heard on radio. Even the early comedians supplied their own club or stage routines and gags.
Those were the days of live transmissions, complete with scenery which was often not much better than that built for amateur theatricals in a village hall. There were doors which jammed at a crucial moment, matches which refused to light, boom microphones which could be seen hovering over the heads of the actors and studio lights which fused at the worst possible time. There was also, more often than not, the stage-hand who wandered, unaware, in front of the camera, or suddenly looked in on us through a window when we were supposed to be up in an apartment on the 52nd floor.
It was a period of learning for actors, producers, technicians and scriptwriters alike, and a time when, Riley's Law was almost a way of life - Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong!
By present day standards, the early TV productions seem to be quite amateurish. But what the people who made them lacked in experience with the new medium, they compensated for with enthusiasm and hard sweat. And so this infant grew - as the comedian Arthur Askey has it - right before your very eyes!
From whence did these early scriptwriters come? You can name any area that you wish, and you are almost certain to be right. But the best of them certainly had some experience in writing for radio.