Vivienne Chatterton - 15486

British singer and actress. Chatterton had a busy career. She had a fine voice, winning an open scholarship in 1919 to the Royal College of Music. She became a singer of lieder, oratorio and opera, with roles in a number of London shows. Chatterton had begun working for the BBC as early as 1924 in a radio broadcast of the two-act comic opera, The Rose of Persia, with music by Arthur Sullivan (first staged in 1899). On the 15th December 1928 she became the world's first television actress when she appeared as Mrs Bouncer in Gordon Sherry's production of John Maddison Morton's Victorian farce Box and Cox for John Logie Baird's Baird Television Development Company, transmitted from the BBC's long Acre studio. More work for the BBC followed in the early 1930s, as an actor in radio plays and schools programmes and in singing roles in regular BBC Television broadcasting. Chatterton was engaged throughout the Second World War on children's programmes, and in her post-war career she became noted as radio actor, voicing the character of Mrs Mountford in Mrs Dale's Diary, and appearing in several hundred radio plays. She was said to have an 'unusual talent for every type of dialect'. There was also occasional film work for Chatterton in the 1930s including a lead role in the comedy Love Up the Pole (1936) and supporting roles in Mayfair Melody (1936) and Annie Laurie (1939) This is a fine vintage black and white photograph (5.75" x 4.25") boldly signed ("Greetings from Vivienne Chatterton") in blue ink across the image. In good condition. SCARCE