BBC Radio 3

We're no longer updating our Tumblr but do feel free to scroll or swipe through the visual treats and archive wonders collected here. They're from the archives of BBC Radio 3, its predecessor the Third Programme and from all around the BBC. These photographs are mostly from the BBC's amazing digital photo library, ELVIS, so they're © BBC.

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Samuel Beckett described Billie Whitelaw as 'a perfect actress'. They worked together many times and she created definitive versions of several of his most important works, often bringing them to BBC audiences. She has died at the age of 82. From the picture archives, top to bottom, a 1957 publicity photo captioned 'Billie Whitelaw, a young actress who takes part in many BBC television productions'; Whitelaw as Winnie in a 1972 BBC2 production of Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'; playing Mary Dixon in a 1955 episode of TV drama 'Dixon of Dock Green'; from a 1982 BBC2 production of Beckett's 'Rockaby' and playing Dora in a 1972 production of 'Night Duty', a role for which she won a BAFTA award; Beckett and Whitelaw recording a series of his plays for a BBC2 season broadcast in December 1982.

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Genome - the mighty online database that contains every edition of the Radio Times, from its origin in 1923 to 2009 - tells us that, on this day in 1929, The Children's Hour featured "'The Little People' - a Gnome Play by Janet Muir." It also tells us that the broadcast included songs by baritone Harold Casey. Here's a picture of said baritone - leaning in, let's face it, quite a louche way - on a BBC piano in 1936.

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On this day in 1953, the BBC adopted its first 'television symbol' (these days we'd call it an 'ident'). It was designed by famous poster artist Abram Games and it quickly became known as the 'bat's wings' symbol. It lasted for eight years. On its 50th anniversary, the BBC's Nigh Higham wrote about the symbol on the BBC News web site.

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Edward Clark was a conductor and a hugely influential BBC music producer in the very early days of the BBC. He helped found the BBC Symphony Orchestra and made a huge contribution to bringing new music to BBC audiences from 1926 until he left the corporation in 1936. He brought Anton Webern to London on several occasions and on this day in 1929 the composer conducted soprano Ruzena Herlinger and a 'Special Orchestra' in his 'Five Pieces' Op. 10 in a programme from the Arts Theatre Club, in the fourth series of 'British Broadcasting Corporation Concerts of Contemporary Music'.

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On 24 October 1946, Sir Thomas Beecham (pictured, in 1954) conducted a live Tristan and Isolde for the Third Programme. Performed in German, the programme ran from 6-10.45pm, with two intervals. Arthur Carron sang Tristan and Marjorie Lawrence Isolde. The best part? There was a live repeat four days later.

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23 October 1946. The Third Programme, Radio 3's predecessor station, was only a few weeks old. The centrepiece of the evening's output was Paul Hindemith's complex, neo-classical piano work 'Ludus Tonalis', played by young Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. This splendid picture shows Hindemith conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a studio performance of his 'Requiem' in 1955. The composer died in 1963. Listen to Donald Macleod's epoisode of Composer of the Week about Hindemith on the Radio 3 web site.

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20 October 1934, on the National Programme broadcast from Daventry, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, adapted for radio by Barbara Burnham. Burnham - pictured, earlier in 1934 - had been adapting plays and stories since the previous year and went on to work as a theatre producer and to make television drama. She produced episodes of the BBC's Play of the Month and Saturday Playhouse and made several major TV adaptations, including a four-part Persuasion in 1960.

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The Post Office Tower (latterly the BT Tower), a near neighbour of Radio 3's own home, Broadcasting House, and, in its day, an icon of both sixties glamour (that revolving restaurant) and technological progress (that hypermodern shape, all those thrilling antennae), is 49 years old today. It was opened on 8 October 1965 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and then Minister of Technology Tony Benn. It's a thing of beauty to this day and still radiates a rather reassuring, pre-Internet optimism about life and the world (although the restaurant has been closed for years and the world has changed completely). These two pictures of the Tower feature, incidentally, star of TV and radio Nicholas Parsons (top) and the charming War Machine, star of Doctor Who's 1966 adventure 'Doctor Who and the War Machines'. The newly-completed Tower - playing itself - was a star of the series.

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Forty-five years ago today: Joan Bakewell vs Harold Pinter. Late Night Line-Up, BBC 2, 11 September 1969.

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Paul Tortelier, filming a programme for BBC TV in 1970. During the 1970s, the cellist gave a number of masterclasses for the BBC. His reputation, as an inspiring, dynamic musician grew. He became a big star. And on this day in 1979 a documentary about him appeared on BBC 2. The Radio Times billing read: "'Profile of a Master'. A documentary film featuring the famous French cellist at home with his musical family."

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It's Louis Armstrong's birthday. He was born on 4 August 1901. In 1968 the BBC marked his (67th) birthday with a 50-minute feature on BBC 2 about Louis and his legendary All Stars, at that time made up of: Tyree Glenn (trombone), Joe Muranyi (clarinet), Marty Napoleon (piano), Buddy Catlett (bass), Danny Barcelona (drums) and singer Jewel Brown. The feature, unlike these scratchy production stills, was in colour.

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Adelaide Hall played Hattie in the BBC’s first broadcast of Kiss Me Kate, a live radio relay from the London Coliseum on the BBC Light Programme on 1 August 1951. The Coliseum production was the first in London and the cast also included Patricia Morison (who later appeared in this BBC Two gala production), Bill Johnson, Julie Wilson, Walter Long. Hall, born in Brooklyn in 1901, had been a star of Broadway since the early twenties and was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance of that period. She made hundreds of appearances on the BBC until her death in 1993.

Listen to the John Wilson Orchestra’s version of Kiss Me Kate from the BBC Proms 2014 online now. The picture of Adelaide Hall at a BBC microphone was taken in August 1945.

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Cole Porter's

Kiss Me Kate was the gala centrepiece for the opening night of the BBC’s second TV station, BBC Two, on 20 April 1964. Stars included authentic Hollywood legend Howard Keel, Broadway star Patricia Morison, dancing prodigy Irving Davies. Local talent Millicent Martin, star of That Was The Week That Was was also present. Like the rest of the evening’s programming the show was taken off the air by a power cut but it went out the following night. Click the pictures for original captions.

The John Wilson Orchestra brought Kiss Me Kate to The Proms for the 2014 season. Listen on the Radio 3 web site for thirty days and watch the performance, appropriately, on BBC Two in December.

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When Edward Elgar died in February 1934, he left a number of works unfinished, including a major commission - for a third symphony - from the BBC. There was some controversy about whether or not Elgar had wanted it completed and, on this day in 1934, his daughter Carice Blake gave the manuscript for the surviving sketches to the BBC under the condition that it not be completed and not published for that purpose. It was later given to the British Library and a completion was eventually made, by Anthony Payne, in 1998. In the first picture Carice Blake hands over the manuscript sketches to the BBC's Director of Music (and founder of the BBC Symphony Orchestra) Adrian Boult and, in the second, they go over the sketches with R.H. Eckersley, BBC Programme Organiser.

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Harold Pinter's play 'A Slight Ache' had its world premiere on the Third Programme on this day in 1959. The cast included Pinter himself, under his stage name David Baron, in a silent role, Maurice Denham and Vivien Merchant. Ian Rodger, in The Listener, wrote:

A conversation piece between a man (Mr. Maurice Denham) and his wife (Miss Vivien Merchant) who talked variously about the weather, sex and a seller of matches whom they inveigled into the house. The match seller never spoke, which involved Mr. Pinter in some dramatic expertise, but it was hard to know, in spite of the sharp clarity of the performance and the sure speech formations of Mr. Denham and Miss Merchant, what the play was really all about.

The picture of Pinter was taken ten years later during production of a BBC TV programme.

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Telstar, a satellite and a pop culture phenomenon, began transmitting television signals on this day in 1962 - a trans-Atlantic mix of JFK, the Eiffel Tower, Walter Cronkite, Richard Dimbleby and much more. These splendid pictures come from some of those early transmissions. Click each picture for the original caption.

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"His dialogue runs as smoothly as a conference between cliché experts even when his people are considering a scheme for supplying eagles with parachutes and spectacles." - The Listener, 28 July 1960

N.F. Simpson's absurdist gem 'A Resounding Tinkle' had its theatre premiere at the Royal Court on 1 December 1957 and its first broadcast adaptation appeared on the Third Programme on 20 July 1960. Deryck Guyler and Alison Leggatt starred. Frederick Laws, quoted above, also said: "The play was very amusing but I also found it alarming and difficult to understand." Simpson - pictured, in 1963 - lived until 2011 and his final play, 'If So, Then Yes', had its premiere in London in 2010.