Queen Elizabeth II
This is partly the reason the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June of 1953 was a near-flawless production.
The epitome of grace, dignity, and tremendous majesty, Elizabeth II gave a display of composure that entranced the nation – a solemn and deeply religious ceremony that the young Queen regarded as the start of her life as sovereign.
Rehearsed, reverent, professional, everyone agreeing to what had to be done to make it the classic ceremony that had taken place time and again over the last thousand years.
The one-day ceremony took 14 months of preparation: the first meeting of the Coronation Commission was in April 1952, under the chairmanship of the Queen’s husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Her coronation date was reportedly chosen based on the weather, when, meteorologists advised the then soon-to-be queen that June 2 was statistically the most likely to have good weather. Unfortunately, it rained.
Other committees were also formed, such as the Coronation Joint Committee and the Coronation Executive Committee, both chaired by the Duke of Norfolk who, by convention as Earl Marshal, had overall responsibility for the event.
Many physical preparations and decorations along the route were the responsibility of David Eccles, Minister of Works.
It was estimated to cost £1.57 million (c. £38,680,000 in 2016), which included stands along the procession route to accommodate 96,000 people, lavatories, street decorations, outfits, car hire, repairs to the state coach, and alterations to the Queen’s regalia.
The Queen’s Beasts are ten heraldic statues representing the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II, depicted as the Royal supporters of England.
They stood in front of the temporary western annexe to Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s coronation in 1953.
Each of The Queen’s Beasts consists of an heraldic beast supporting a shield bearing a badge or arms of a family associated with the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II.
Eccles described his role and that of the Earl Marshal: “The Earl Marshal is the producer – I am the stage manager…
However, it was television immediately became the most contentious issue among organizers.
Then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for example, argued that ‘modern mechanical arrangements’ should be banned from the coronation, and ‘religious and spiritual aspects should [not] be presented as if it were a theatrical performance.’
Queen Elizabeth led this approach at the age of 26, siding with palace traditionalists who feared that allowing cameras into her coronation would erode the monarchy’s mystique.
The decision provoked such public outrage that she then backpedaled, allowing the BBC to broadcast the early stages of the ceremony, though not her anointing
In the years that followed, royal gatekeepers have retained stringent control over broadcasters seeking interviews.
Strong reservations were held about the access it would initiate.
The difference this time would be the common folk in Great Britain and ultimately millions worldwide would have a better seat for the ceremony than any Duke, Duchess or Earl.
After intense pressure from the media industries, coronation organisers acquiesced to television footage, and in a press conference in May 1953 the Earl Marshall confirmed the final terms: cameras would be allowed, but the broadcast would be carefully planned and stage-managed.
In the end, the BBC worked with organisers to reach a compromise: no so-called ‘Peeping Tom’ close-ups, but a zoom lens could capture ‘very special shots’, such as four-year-old Prince Charles watching the ceremony.
Once the decision had been made to go ahead, television manufacturers began advertising their sets with specific reference to the coronation.
Also , news that the coronation would be fully televised increased the pressure to make television truly national, for at this time many on the country’s fringes and coastlines couldn’t receive it.
In 1951, worried about a resurgent Germany and the onset of the Cold War, the government had diverted money into rearmament and postponed the building of more TV transmitters.
‘Coronation’
In the North East, miners’ lodges passed resolutions against the region’s continuing televisual deprivation, and Whitley Bay council lobbied the government on behalf of the three million people cut off from the Holme Moss transmitter’s signal by the Pennines.
In October 1952, the same month that the Coronation Commission reversed its decision, the Postmaster General announced that transmitters at Pontop Pike, a moorland peak in County Durham, and Glencairn, in the Belfast hills overlooking that city, would be built after all, so that people in these areas could see the coronation.
1 May, 1953 – these one-kilowatt masts were makeshift, austerity affairs housed in old prewar outside-broadcast vans. On each hilltop, a skeleton staff of eight engineers lived in a rudimentary wooden hut, with an Elsan chemical toilet.
The Belfast signal had to be routed through the Kirk o’ Shotts transmitter in central Scotland, across 70 miles of Scottish hills and 30 miles of sea; by the time it was scattered over the rooftops of the province to about 900 TV aerials, the results were mixed.
Belfast and the flat country surrounding the city got a passable reception, but beyond it there were only fading pictures and the sound arriving in whispers.
In this poorest part of the kingdom there was little clamour for television anyway, but Ulster Unionists welcomed it as a sign that Northern Ireland was fully part of the UK; Irish Nationalists, on the other hand, were deeply suspicious of both the coronation and the anglicising influence of BBC television.
Coronation-themed televisual broadcasts began in the months leading up to the event. Educational programs taught viewers about key coronation iconography, from the history of Westminster Abbey to the origins of God Save the Queen.’
Sunday 31 May featured The Coronation Broadcast, in which Richard Dimbleby and Berkeley Smith explained the schedule of coronation day, and The Coronation and You, where a vicar described the religious ceremony.
Monday 1 June included an educational children’s program called What is the Crown? and a symposium of well-wishing messages from famous Americans called Salute from the New World.
A number of television programs documented celebrations around the Commonwealth to create a wider sense of communal feeling: concerts by Pakistani and Canadian bands were broadcast, and variety programs such as The Commonwealth Gala featured entertainers from various Commonwealth countries.
In the days leading up to the coronation, viewers adjusted their sets while picking up the build-up programs.
On About the Home, the television chef Marguerite Patten told them how to prepare melon cocktails and salmon mousse to eat in front of the television.
Two Metropolitan Police officers gave advice to viewers on preventing house burglaries on the big day, and on how to behave along the coronation route.
On Tuesday 2 June, BBC television opened earlier than ever, at 9.15am, with the test card, to allow people to tweak their aerials.
A million and a half people were gathering in places such as town-hall ballrooms, hospitals, and churches, which had been granted a collective license to watch television.
Many Street parties were held.
Neighbors pinned up the handmade bunting, pulled out the trestle tables, and were determined to enjoy a good old knees-up no matter how much it rained.
Members of various communities wrapped up against the unseasonal cold and rallied to lay on parties which the children would remember for a lifetime.
“I recall helping make red, white and blue hats for the children to wear,” says Rosina Rowland who grew up in Derby and was eight years old in 1953.
All the children received a silver spoon to commemorate the event.”
“The streets were full of bunting – all red, white and blue – and there was music, games and laughter throughout the day.
Dorothy Greaves remembers the tables that ran down the length of her road in Blackpool.
“All our mums made food and the girls were in white dresses with red, white and blue sashes and we all had Union Flags.”
Sheila Richardson, from Maidstone, Kent, remembers the commemorative tea towels her uncle carefully hung from his windows.
“We also had a picture of the Queen (a centrefold from a newspaper) glued to the back of a tray, standing in the front window.”
In 1953 many food items were still rationed but households were allowed to buy an extra 1lb of sugar and 4oz of margarine for the celebrations.
The Ministry of Food granted 82 applications for people to roast oxen if they could prove that by tradition, an ox had been roasted at previous Coronations – a welcome concession at a time the meat ration was two shillings a week.
Coronation Chicken was invented for the foreign guests who were to be entertained after the Coronation. The food had to be prepared in advance, and Florist Constance Spry proposed a recipe of cold chicken in a curry cream sauce with a well-seasoned dressed salad of rice, green peas and mixed herbs.
Constance Spry’s recipe won the approval of the Minister of Works and has since been known as Coronation Chicken.
Spam sandwiches and jelly and ice-cream were popular street party choices.
“I was three when the Coronation happened,” says Peter Smith, from Weymouth, Dorset.
“Sweets had just stopped being rationed and we had lots of cream cakes and sandwiches, squash for the kids and tea for the adults. It was the happiest day.”
But the street parties weren’t all about food.
Back then it was unusual for households to have a television but those who did have a set – black and white of course – switched on and invited neighbors to come to watch the live coverage of the ceremony in London.
“I remember watching the Coronation on a 9 inch television belonging to a friend of my parents,” says Rosina.
“I was playing outside until my mother called me in and said,
‘This is history, come and see the Queen being crowned.’
There must have been about 20 people crowded into this small room waiting for the moment the Queen was crowned.”
Betty Ward, 89, organised all the festivities for the Leicestershire village of Kibworth Harcourt, where she has lived on the same road all her life.
“We had a fancy dress parade, a glamorous grandmas contest and a pram race, which involved ‘nannies’ (men dressed in nursemaid’s uniforms) pushing ‘babies’ (women dressed in bibs and bonnets) around two villages.
They had to stop and drink a half-pint at each of the nearby pubs,” she recalls.
Fancy dress parties were a familiar theme at many of the hundreds of street celebrations.
Christine Hewitt, who was seven at the time, won hers.
She recalls: “I was dressed in red, white and blue crepe paper hat and skirt decorated with labels from old wine bottles and I was a Coronation Spirit!”
In London’s Royal Festival Hall, 3,000 holders of tickets, which had sold out within 54 minutes of going on sale in April, arrived at 10 am and collected a packed lunch.
The same number filled the Odeon in Leicester Square. Butlin’s holiday campers in resorts like Filey, Skegness and Clacton watched on big screens.
The positions of cameras in Westminster Abbey were precisely staged.
Five cameras were restricted to designated positions and complemented by 29 microphones, and the cameramen were shut in boxed cubicles to disguise their work, demonstrating adherence to keeping ‘modern mechanical arrangements’ away from areas of religious importance.
The procession included foreign royalty and heads of state riding to Westminster Abbey in various carriages, so many that volunteers ranging from wealthy businessmen to rural landowners were required to supplement the insufficient ranks of regular footmen.
The first royal coach left Buckingham Palace and moved down the Mall, which was filled with flag-waving and cheering crowds.
It was followed by the Irish State Coach carrying Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who wore the circlet of her crown bearing the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
On the procession route, Along a route lined with sailors, soldiers, and airmen and women from across the British Empire and Commonwealth, guests and officials passed in a procession before about three million spectators gathered in the streets of London, some having camped overnight in their spot to ensure a view of the monarch, and others having access to specially built stands and scaffolding along the route.
Some 500 photographers and 2,000 journalists from 92 nations lined the Coronation route – among them a 23-year-old Washington-based photojournalist named Jacqueline Bouvier – later famous as US First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
Another unlikely celebrity to witness the Coronation was future Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, then a nine-year-old choirboy at Westminster Abbey.
The four-and-a-half mile return route to Buckingham Palace was designed to give the crowds the best possible chance to see their new Queen. The procession of 16,000 participants, marching 10 abreast, stretched for two miles and took two hours to pass by.
For those not present to witness the event, more than 200 microphones were stationed along the path and in Westminster Abbey, with 750 commentators broadcasting descriptions in 39 languages; more than twenty million viewers around the world watched the coverage
And for the first time ever, the ordinary people of Britain were going to be able to watch a monarch’s coronation in their own homes.
It was announced earlier in the year that the crowning of the Queen would be televised, and the sales of TV sets rocketed.
Nearly 65 years later, she recalled that the Gold Stage Coach, which weighs four tonnes, she traveled in was “horrible”, adding: “It’s only sprung on leather. Not very comfortable.
You can only about four or five miles it can only goto a walking pace no the horses couldn’t possibly go any faster right it’s so heavy really.
The horses pulling the Gold State Coach were named Cunningham, Tovey, Noah, Tedder, Eisenhower, Snow White, Tipperary, and McCreery
On her way to the Coronation, Her Majesty wore the George IV State Diadem – the crown depicted on stamps.
Made in 1820, the Diadem features roses, shamrocks and thistles with 1,333 diamonds and 169 pearls.
Norman Hartnell was commissioned by the Queen to design the outfits for all members of the royal family, including Elizabeth’s coronation gown.
His design for the gown evolved through nine proposals, and the final version resulted from his own research and numerous meetings with the Queen: a white silk dress embroidered with floral emblems of the countries of the Commonwealth at the time: the Tudor rose of England, Scottish thistle, Welsh leek, shamrock for Northern Ireland, wattle of Australia, maple leaf of Canada, the New Zealand silver fern, South Africa’s protea, two lotus flowers for India and Ceylon, and Pakistan’s wheat, cotton and jute.
The Imperial State Crown, which was worn by The Queen during her return to Buckingham Palace, contained four pearls traditionally believed to have been Queen Elizabeth I‘s earrings.
The six maids of honor who flanked Queen Elizabeth II on the day of her Coronation on 2 June 1953 became notorious in their own right when their names were announced as the women selected to follow the princess down Westminster Abbey to be crowned the new Queen of England.
Now, 60 years on the ladies in waiting have spoken about the historic day, with five of the women reuniting to share their memories of the spectacular event.
Lady Rosemary Muir, Lady Anne Glenconner, Lady Moyra Campbell, Lady Mary Russell, Lady Jane Rayne and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby were intensely scrutinised by the young women and Press of the day.
Such was the attention lavished upon the women Lady Glenconner even claimed they were seen as the Spice Girls of their time.
Buckingham Palace’s ballroom was transformed into a replica of the Abbey’s ‘theatre’ area near the altar where the major action would occur.
Curtains were pinned to Elizabeth’s shoulders replicating her heavy robes and 20ft train.
She had said of the ceremony:
‘Did my father do it? Then I will too.’
Elizabeth, whom Winston Churchill described as
‘this young, gleaming champion’,
began training, much like an athlete, months in advance, commenting,
’The extraordinary thing is that I no longer feel anxious or worried and I have lost all my timidity.’
In anticipation of the hot TV lighting in the Abbey and hot weather that was expected, rather than the downpours that ensued, her robes were lined with oyster silk instead of ermine.
To minimize kidney functions for the duration of the three-hour ceremony, Elizabeth was said to have followed a secret diet based on hard-boiled eggs and salt.
Lady Anne Coke, now Lady Glenconner, was one of the maids of honor at 20.
‘My father, the Earl of Leicester, was a lifelong friend and equerry to the Duke of York, who became George VI, and my mother was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen.
I often played with the young princesses. Elizabeth, who was six years older than me, seemed very grown-up while Margaret and I raced around having fun.
‘When I was asked to be a maid of honor, there was one run-through with the Queen.
She produced a couple of sheets for the train and, laughing, said,
“Come on. We’ve got to practice with this.”
She played recordings and watched films of her father’s coronation, learned much of the ritual by heart, and participated in several Abbey rehearsals.
Although the Duchess of Norfolk , whose husband was key organizer, sometimes stood in for her.
Occasionally the Duke of Norfolk, who had gout, became impatient with bishops who had difficulty walking in step during rehearsals. ‘
If you can’t get it right we’ll be here all night!’
he snapped.
To one peer who enquired whether being divorced would preclude his attendance, Norfolk snorted,
‘Good God man! This is a Coronation – not Royal Ascot!’
(divorcees were precluded from Ascot’s Royal Enclosure).
A ventilation system that changed the air inside the Abbey every hour was also installed.
But she refused the offer of a rest break during the service, retorting,
‘I’ll be all right. I’m as strong as a horse.’
The ladies in waiting all remembered how just before they entered the Abbey for their slow process to the alter, the Queen, then aged 25, paused and, in recognition of the life changing event, simply asked them:
‘Ready girls?’
Prince Charles received a special hand-painted children’s invitation to his mother’s Coronation and was the first child to witness his mother’s coronation as Sovereign.
Princess Anne did not attend the ceremony as she was considered too young.
On Coronation day, four-year-old Prince Charles in white silk shirt, sporting his first medal – struck for the Coronation – and slicked-down hair was bundled into the Abbey to see his mother crowned.
Lady Moyra Campbell tells how Prince Charles was extremely proud he had been allowed to use his father’s hair lotion – and asked the ladies to smell his hair.
As the Queen in full regalia posed for official pictures with the Duke of Edinburgh, her two young children – Prince Charles, aged four, and Princess Anne, aged two – play up by covering their faces with their hands.
The young monarch puts a hand on Charles to settle the youngsters down before Cecil Beaton’s shutter comes down.
At one point when a group picture of the Royal Family and European royals is being set up, the Duke is shown waving his right arm repeatedly to get people on his far-right to squeeze into the shot.
After the photographic session is over the footage shows the Queen, Philip and their children all holding hands together walking from view.
Bored at one point, he laid his head on his arm then bobbed down to reappear clutching Granny’s handbag.
High-spirited young Princes Richard and William of Gloucester were ticked off by their mother, the Duchess of Gloucester, for swinging their legs during the wait of several hours before proceedings began.
So, on June 2nd 1953 at 11 o’clock all over the country people settled down in front of their television sets.
The gasps were loud. As the 27-year-old Queen, in a sumptuous bejeweled gown, entered Westminster Abbey for her coronation on June 2, 1953, the splendor of her appearance caused an almighty collective intake of breath.
The huge, glittering spectacle of pomp, pageantry, and ancient rituals gripped the world – it was the greatest televised spectacle ever seen, and a nation exhausted by war, and all the dreariness of those years, suddenly saw color again.
‘Scenes of almost Byzantine magnificence,’ marvelled official photographer Cecil Beaton, who was one of 8,251 guests inside the Abbey.
Elizabeth had, he observed, ‘cheeks of sugar pink, her hair tightly curled around the Victorian diadem of precious stones, her pink hands folded meekly on the elaborate grandeur of her encrusted skirt.’
All the women had a small vial of smelling salts concealed in their gloves in case they felt faint during the ceremony and Lady Jane Rayne, who was then Lady Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 20, recalls how she was forced to use hers to prevent Lady Anne from keeling over.
Lady Rosemary Muir, who was 23 on the day, was not so lucky, revealing how when the Archbishop shook her hand to greet her, he accidentally crushed the vial, releasing ‘the most terrible smell of ammonia’ from her hand. ‘When Rosie [Lady Rosemary Spencer-Churchill] sprang forward to shake the Archbishop of Durham’s hand her vial was crushed.
Thankfully, the awful smell evaporated before the ceremony began.’ She also recalled that when the Queen was taken behind the altar to replace her train, the Archbishop of Canterbury offered her his brandy flask, but she declined.
The youngest maid of honour was Lady Mary Russell who was 19 on 2 June 1953, she recalls: ‘It was an incredible moment, but all I could think about was how heavy the embroidery felt.’
The young women were responsible for carefully lifting and unfolding the princess’s’ 21 foot train as she alighted from the magnificent Gold State Coach.
Following the tradition set by Queen Victoria, Elizabeth chose to have ladies in waiting rather than page boys to carry her train in the ceremony
Made of heavily embroidered velvet with fur trim, the stunning train was by no means light, and had to be held using six specially designed silk handles discreetly sewn into the underside of the train.
The Queen arrived at Westminster Abbey looking radiant, but there was a problem in the Abbey: the carpet!
The carpet in the Abbey had been laid with pile running the wrong way, which meant that the Queen’s robes had trouble gliding easily over the carpet pile.
The Queen had to tell the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Get me started’.
The metal fringe on the Queen’s golden mantel caught in the pile of the carpet and clawed her back when she tried to move forward.
The service began with Her Majesty processing from the west end of the Abbey through the nave and choir, to the sound of Psalm 122 (“I was glad”) in the setting by Sir Hubert Parry.
Written for the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902, Parry’s version incorporates the cries of Vivat Regina! (Long live the Queen!) with which the boys of Westminster School traditionally acclaim the Sovereign.
Taking the Coronation oath, the Queen swore to “maintain and preserve… the doctrine, worship, discipline, and Government of the Church of England,” and to “Govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon… according to their respective laws and customs”.
As Her Majesty took her seat in the Coronation Chair and the Archbishop anointed her with holy oil.
All stocks of anointing oil had been destroyed in the blitz and the company that had made it no longer existed. luckily the recipe – comprising oils of orange, roses, cinnamon, musk and ambergris – had survived.
The choir sang the Coronation anthem Handel’s Zadok the Priest. Composed for the Coronation of George II in 1727, the setting has been used in every British coronation since. that date.
The Coronation Chair was made for King Edward I in 1300. It was designed to enclose the Stone of Scone – the sacred stone on which Kings of Scotland were crowned, and which Edward had captured in battle.
Apart from two brief interruptions (for the investiture of Oliver Cromwell and for safekeeping during the Second World War) the Chair and the Stone remained together in the Abbey for almost 700 years, until the Stone was returned to Scotland in 1996.
The new Queen Elizabeth II made only one minor error during her three hour coronation, forgetting to curtsey with her Maids of Honour at the north pillar of Westminster Abbey.
“The millions watching on their TV sets probably did not notice, but one man did: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.”
According to The Telegraph, he wrote in his diary:
“The Maids of Honour regretted it because they had taken much time to get it just right, and I regretted it because from the Altar the sight of the Queen and the Maids of Honour curtseying was a very lovely one.”.
The anointing was not filmed or photographed and was shielded from view by a canopy, made for George VI’s coronation in 1937 from a cloth of gold embroidered with silver eagles.
The Coronation Shift, the plain linen garment worn for the anointing, was originally made with hooks and eyes at the back.
It was the Marquess of Cholmondeley’s ceremonial duty to do this up but the fastenings proved too much for the elderly aristocrat during rehearsals, so the garment had to be redesigned with poppers.
‘It had to be very carefully thought through because the Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Devonshire, had to put the garment on (the Queen) and remove it while wearing kid gloves, so, after a certain amount of trial and error, it was decided that poppers down the back of the dress would be the best thing.’
Lady Glenconner divulges how the Queen, then aged 27, was assisted in getting dressed by Lord Cholmondeley who was the Lord Great Chamberlain at the time.
She recalls how she felt it was ‘awful’ for the Queen to have been dressed by the Marquess of Cholmondeley, with what she said were his ‘heavy fingers going down her spine’.
‘This is worn over the coronation dress for the moment of anointing,’ said Mrs de Guitaut.
Unexpected comic relief was provided during the ceremony by England’s premier baron Lord Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton.
As he stepped down from the Queen’s throne, where he had paid homage, as all peers do, ‘he was seen to be all over the place, bunching up his robes’ and, as the Queen said later, ‘with mothballs and pieces of ermine flying all over the place’.
The Duchess of Norfolk noted that when he paid his homage ‘he had filthy hands and looked straight out of comic opera’.
Some cost-conscious peers had their robes made of cotton velveteen instead of silk velvet and lined with rabbit fur instead of ermine, while cheap dye in some footmen’s crimson pantaloons turned their white stockings pink in the rain.
The peeresses’ arms in long white gloves were said to resemble the graceful necks of swans when they raised them in unison to put on their coronets as the Queen was crowned.
After the crown had been placed on her head, the Queen left the Coronation Chair and moved to the throne, in full sight of the whole congregation. By tradition, this is the moment when the Sovereign takes possession of the kingdom.
Said Lady Longford: ‘I would have liked to have bayed like a hound when we shouted “God Save the Queen”, but we were a bit timid and didn’t know how loud you were supposed to shout.’.
[But at least that was not the problem experienced by the Marchioness of Londonderry, who accidentally dropped her tiara into a toilet at Edward VII’s Coronation. It was removed with forceps by a doctor. ]
Later, during the palace photoshoot, Beaton saw Philip, who looked like a ‘medieval knight’ in his uniform of Admiral of the Fleet, ‘standing by making wry jokes, his lips pursed in a smile that put the fear of God into me’.
Beaton believed Philip had wanted his friend Baron Nahum to take the pictures.
The Gloucester princes were tugging at their mother’s train, he said, while Anne and Charles were ‘buzzing about in the wildest excitement’ and trying to dive under their grandmother the Queen Mother’s train.
‘She anchored them in her arms and put her head down to kiss Charles’s hair which made a terrific picture.’
Still , the The Sunday Times hailed it ‘Television’s Finest Hour’.
Fortunately for Elizabeth her Coronation ceremony was very different from the chaos of Victoria’s.
The event was both filmed in color and experimental 3D technology separately from the BBC’s black and white television broadcast, where an average of 17 people watched each small TV.
Around 20.4 million people watched at least half an hour of the service, nearly double the radio audience, with almost as many watching the processions.
The BBC was also was creating it’s first television event of international proportions.
Airing kinescopes proved to be a necessary way to fill the programming day in the post World War II period.
The picture quality was poor — it appeared grainy, fuzzy and sometimes even distorted — but it still remained an important method to reach out to a wider audience.
Eventually though, it faded out and it maybe the only television recording technology that has become completely obsolete in today’s world.
“Live,” kinescope recordings were the only way to distribute television programming and the BBC wanted to accommodate the many requests for copies in places they could not reach with a live signal.
Had they known what lengths the Americans would go, specifically CBS and NBC, they might have thought twice about giving up the films without more stringent restrictions.
For example, in the remote hope of getting a live signal from the BBC, NBC made elaborate plans including pressing RCA’s Long Island shortwave listening post into service.
Special aerials were erected and a British television receiver and kinescope film recorder were installed at Riverhead, Long Island, to intercept the signal should it appear. A helicopter will be standing by to rush the film back to Manhattan.
And then there were the airplane races.
CBS and NBC both had reasons to beat the other to air the first pictures.
They had promised their affiliates they would be first and worth the faith their stations (both current and potential) had placed in them. Aside from what it would do for the ego in one of the two executive suites, both networks were in a battle to win affiliation contracts.
NBC had lost the lead to CBS in radio, still the more widely reaching, and therefore, more profitable of the two media. NBC’s affiliated station in Norfolk, Virginia, had just been lured away by CBS and others were on the “critical list.
” Affiliates were concerned about leadership at RCA/NBC. On the other hand, CBS had advised its radio affiliates to wait to apply for television licenses so they could build their facilities around the CBS color system.
Now it looked like color wasn’t going to happen anytime soon and when it did it would not be the system CBS had advised its affiliates to wait for.
The first color TV models reached American stores at the end of September in 1951. But although the technology had been around for years, the road to market was anything but smooth.
Three companies were racing to be the first to wake-up TV from its black and white haze: CBS, RCA and Color Television, Inc. But when the Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to broadcast in color, only CBS was deemed qualified. The picture quality on the others was such that the FCC decided their technology wasn’t ready.
The losing companies responded by getting an injunction, arguing that the FCC’s decision had been arbitrary and reckless.
The claim meant that CBS couldn’t take sponsorship money for color programming—which effectively halted color TV broadcasting.
By the spring of 1951, the matter had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Radio Corp. of America v. United States in favor of the FCC and CBS, holding that the original decision could stand and CBS could go ahead with its system.
The Supreme Court found that the FCC and the lower courts had carefully considered the question. And, Justice Frankfurter wrote, if there was no evidence that the process had not been followed carefully, there was no way for RCA to seek relief, no matter how good their TV system was—after all, “courts should not overrule an administrative decision merely because they disagree with its wisdom.”
“Color television will sweep the country just as fast as sets can be produced,” Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, said in response to the ruling.
But, even so, most Americans did not get a color television for many more years.
Before the year was over, the needs of the Korean War required that manufacturers shift away from making new TV sets to meet wartime production demands. Color TV returned to America in 1953, but it would be another decade before every network had abandoned black and white.
The two networks sent separate teams to London to set up for the broadcast.
It appears no expense was spared. Both networks chartered large aircraft.
CBS’s British Overseas Air Corporation Stratocruiser, the largest airplane in transatlantic service at the time had a downstairs bar area that had been removed and converted to an office area, projection room and editing area. NBC’s Pan American DC-6 charter was similarly equipped for television. Both of these aircraft would fly directly to Boston for the late evening recap’s, about a ten hour flight.
Boston was the closest U.S. city to London saving about an hour of flying time over New York and was also the closest transmission point with the ability to feed the entire country for both networks. Again, buildings were leased and a microwave relay to AT&T’s television circuits were installed at the city’s Logan International Airport.
To get the kinescoped footage to Boston, both networks reserved space on a Royal Air Force jet bomber.
The CBC wrote “It involved Royal Air Force Canberra light bombers and Canadian CF-100 fighter jets flying coronation films from London to Goose Bay, N.L., to Montreal in a relay” to deliver the kinescopes. The stop in Goose Bay, Labrador, would allow CBS and NBC to offload their film to their P-51’s for delivery to Boston.
Two P51’s took off for Logan Airport. As the minutes ticked by it became obvious the NBC flight was not going to catch up to the CBS aircraft.
At 3:56pm both ABC and NBC switched to the CBC’s Ottawa program.
It was 4:16pm before the CBC switched to Montreal and the BBC London footage finally began to roll on North American television screens.
CBS was last to broadcast the coronation, so neither technically won.
In the U.S., the “Today” show went on the air at 5:30am EDT to begin coverage in any way it could. It relayed the BBC’s radio coverage and still pictures using a device called “Mufax,” a wire transfer machine that would relay still images in only nine minutes.
Both NBC and CBS placed full-page ads in the New York Times the next day bragging about how they brought the coronation to the U.S. first. From NBC’s claims
“First Pictures” (the wire photo stills from the Today show’s Mufax machine) to CBS’s claim “…the best medium to stage a spectacle is the best showcase for a product. There’s a crowning success for both on television’s most popular network.”
ABC kept their advertisement in the trade press.
In Broadcasting of June 15th, 1953, they lauded the British for their restrained and reverent coverage of the event and praised the Canadians for their efficient and speedy delivery.
ABC said, “if we can take credit for anything, it’s the fact that we brought this nationally important event to America efficiently, effectively and economically.”
However, whether the coronation was formative in popularizing television as a medium isn’t what matters. It is the perceived importance of television to the construction of the coronation as a national event in the historical imaginary, and what the effect of this has been on public experiences of the coronation and the monarchy.
The coronation offers us a moment where the monarchy can be understood as mediated and as an event. In analyzing it as a key moment in contemporary British history
