1953: Elizabeth II is crowned as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other Realms and Territories. Television cameras allow her subjects to view the ceremony live, but in this pre-videotape and pre-satellite era, millions of viewers in North America and elsewhere have to wait a few hours.
Elizabeth II became queen immediately on the death of her father, King George VI, on Feb. 6, 1952. After flying back from Kenya, where she was on an official tour, her reign was formally recognized and acknowledged in an Accession Council at St. James Palace in London on Feb. 8. The heraldic officials of England and Scotland then publicly proclaimed her the queen in brief ceremonies in London, Windsor and Edinburgh.
The coronation itself took more than a year to plan. It was a religious ritual, parts of it unchanged for a thousand years. The rite included the wearing of special garments, anointing, and oaths by the nobles to serve the queen, and by the queen to serve her people. She was presented with symbols of dominion: golden spurs, bracelets, a jeweled orb and cross, a coronation ring, two scepters and two ritual swords.
In the climactic moment the Archbishop of Canterbury placed St. Edward’s Crown (weighing 5 pounds and encrusted with 440 jewels and semiprecious stones) on Elizabeth’s head. The assembled multitudes inside Westminster Abbey then rose and shouted “God Save the Queen,” trumpets sounded and, miles away at the Tower of London, cannon fired.
All told, quite a show. Not to mention the procession from Buckingham Palace to the Abbey and back again in a golden coach. Crowds line the route. And nearly all of it was seen on TV.
The coronation of Elizabeth II’s father, George VI, in 1937 was the first broadcast on radio, and about10,000 people with early televisions were able to watch the processions. The coronation of her grandfather, George V, in 1911 had preceded the age of mass-media broadcast.
Conservatives in 1953, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill, opposed the plan to televise from inside the Abbey, seeing it as a technological intrusion on a sacred, mystical moment. They lost their argument to those, including the young queen herself, who wanted the monarchial ceremony democratized. The only compromise: The sacred anointing was hidden from the view of the TV cameras.
Throughout Britain, people watched the hours-long ceremonies on small black-and-white screens, often newly bought for the occasion, and often in the company of many neighbors who could not yet afford the still-expensive entertainment novelty. About 56 percent of the population watched on TV, compared to 32 percent who listened on radio. Viewers in France, Holland and West Germany also watched live.
People elsewhere listened to the ceremony on a live, global radio hookup. But those who wanted to see it had to wait a few hours.
Communications satellites were a decade in the future. Even videotape was still a few years off. Instead, networks made kinescope films of the the BBC television signal at Heathrow airport. They also rushed newsreel film by motorcycle relays from Westminster to the airport. They then loaded the undeveloped film in batches onto airplanes specially fitted out to develop the film in flight. The films were processed while flying west across the Atlantic.
Record-breaking Canberra PR3 jets of Britain’s Royal Air Force flew the films to Gander, Newfoundland. Then CFIOOs of the Royal Canadian Air Force took one series of films to Montreal, which supplied CBC in Canada and — through a special hookup to New York City — ABC and NBC in the United States. (This was Plan B for NBC, whose own hired jet developed mid-Atlantic mechanical troubles and had to turn back.) RCAF Mustang P51s flew films directly to Boston for the CBS national broadcast.
Once on the North American mainland, the freshly developed films were rushed to TV studios to be broadcast, sight unseen, to a waiting public. CBS lagged 10 minutes behind the other networks in getting its coverage on the air. But it was NBC that came in for considerable criticism for running too many commercials, and for airing a coronation “interview” with its famous Today show chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs.
The era of “global village” mega-events would not dawn until a decade later, with the state funerals of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and erstwhile coronation-on-TV opponent Churchill in 1965.
Source: Various
Photo: AP
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