Released on September 25, 1932, The Crooked Circle, a comedy-mystery directed by Bruce Humberstone, was a pretty mundane story of amateur detectives at the Sphinx Club and an evil gang known as the Crooked Circle. It did not trouble the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but it did earn a footnote in the history of cinematography. It was the first feature film to be shown on television.
In Los Angeles on March 10, 1933, the Don Lee Broadcasting System showed the film over their experimental station, W6XAO, transmitting an 80-line resolution mechanical television picture. Sadly though, there were less than half a dozen receiving sets in the greater Los Angeles area that could enjoy this landmark event. Curiously, the film was again selected for transmission by the NBC Television experimental station, WX2BS, in New York City on June 18, 1940.
Hitherto the only place to see a film was at a cinema but The Crooked Circle was the film that started the push to grant wider access to films. Nowadays, the schedules of television stations would be pretty threadbare without films to show and, of course, we can stream almost many film to our heart’s content. Truly, a landmark cinematic moment.
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