No Trams to Lime Street
Encyclopedia
No Trams to Lime Street is a 1959 British television
British television
Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...

 play, written by the Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 playwright Alun Owen
Alun Owen
Alun Owen was a British screenwriter, predominantly active in television, but best remembered by a wider audience for writing the screenplay of The Beatles' debut feature film A Hard Day's Night ....

 for the Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....

anthology series. Produced by the Associated British Corporation
Associated British Corporation
Associated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established in the United Kingdom during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this...

 (ABC) for transmission on the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 network, the play was broadcast on 18 October 1959. It no longer exists in the archives, having been wiped
Wiping
Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes, and telerecordings , are erased, reused, or destroyed after several uses...

, as with many programmes of the era.

Set in the northern English city of Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, where Owen had grown up from the age of eight, the play starred Alfred Lynch
Alfred Lynch
Alfred Cornelius Lynch was a British actor on stage, film and television.Lynch was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of a plumber. After attending a Roman Catholic school, he worked in a draughtsman's office before entering national service...

, Billie Whitelaw
Billie Whitelaw
Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...

, Jack Hedley
Jack Hedley
Jack Hedley is an English actor, best known for his performances on television....

 and Tom Bell
Tom Bell (actor)
Tom Bell was an English actor on stage, film and television. He was dark-haired, lean, and in his later years often played characters having a sinister side to their nature.-Biography:...

. It was directed
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...

 and produced
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

 by two Canadians
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 — Ted Kotcheff
Ted Kotcheff
Ted Kotcheff , sometimes credited as William Kotcheff or William T. Kotcheff, is a Canadian film and television director, who is well known for his work on several high-profile British television productions and as a director of films such as First Blood.-Early life:Kotcheff was born William...

 and Sydney Newman
Sydney Newman
Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s...

 respectively. Newman was at the time the Head of Drama at ABC. The storyline concerns three sailors on shore leave in Liverpool.
The play was a factor in Owen later being hired to write the script for The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

' first feature film, A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...

(1964), as they had been impressed with his depiction of their home city in the production. For his work on that film, Owen was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 in 1965.

Also in 1965, No Trams to Lime Street was remade by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, as part of their Theatre 625
Theatre 625
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line...

anthology strand, screened on the new BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 channel. It was presented as the middle episode in a trilogy of loosely-connected Owen plays, broadcast on 21 March 1965, being preceded by Progress to the Park on 14 March and followed by A Little Winter Love on 28 March.

The play was remade for television a second time, again by the BBC, in 1970, for the The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play was an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. Every week's play was usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured...

strand. Transmitted on 18 March 1970, this time on BBC1
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 this version was directed by Piers Haggard
Piers Haggard
Piers Inigo Haggard is a British film and television director, although he has worked mostly in the latter medium.He is the great grandnephew of H...

 starred Rosemary Nicols
Rosemary Nicols
Rosemary Nicols is a British actress, born Rosemary Claxton in Bradford, West Yorkshire.She comes from a theatrical family and was the author of the 1967 book The Loving Adventures of Jaby....

, Glyn Owen
Glyn Owen
Glyn Griffith Owen was a British stage, television and film actor, probably best known to British TV viewers for two roles: that of Dr...

, Anthony May
Anthony May
Anthony May is a British stage, television and film actor. He attended Ottershaw School, Surrey. May trained at R.A.D.A. from 1965 to 1967....

 and Paul Greenwood
Paul Greenwood
Paul Greenwood is a British film, television and theatre actor. He is best known for his role as PC Michael "Rosie" Penrose in the successful sitcom Rosie direct spin-off from the short-lived sitcom The Growing Pains of PC Penrose...

; and included songs and music by Marty Wilde
Marty Wilde
Marty Wilde is an English singer and songwriter. He was among the first generation of British pop stars to emulate American rock and roll, and is the father of pop singers Ricky Wilde, Kim Wilde and Roxanne Wilde.-Career:Wilde was performing under the name Reg Patterson at London's Condor Club in...

 and Ronnie Scott
Ronnie Scott (songwriter)
Ronnie Scott was a British pop music promoter, group manager and songwriter; known primarily for hit songs co-written with Marty Wilde in the 1960s, and Steve Wolfe in the 1970s.-With Marty Wilde:...

(not the famous jazz saxophonist and club owner).
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK