settings than was possible with regular stage plays, and held a theory that while stage plays could show the actions of characters, in radio it was possible to get inside their minds. He was not an advocate of the soap opera genre – which was rising to prominence on radio in the United States at the time – instead, he preferred to concentrate on producing a variety of one-off dramas, rather than continuing series. He was not averse to producing the popular as well as the cultural though, with various mysteries and thrillers being broadcast as well as classical productions of Shakespeare plays among others. BBC television In July 1930, Gielgud was invited in his position as the senior drama producer at BBC radio to oversee the experimental transmission of a short play on the new medium of television. The play, The Man With the Flower in His Mouth by Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, was chosen because of its confined setting, small cast of characters and short length of around half an hour. Transmitted live on the evening of 14 July, the primitive state of television technology at the time allowed for only tiny 30-line pictures with one actor visible at a time, but the experiment was nonetheless judged to have been a success, and was watched by the then Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. Gielgud remained in radio for the rest of the decade, also working occasionally in film, adapting his thriller Death at Broadcasting House, in which he also appeared in a small acting role. In 1939 he returned to television for a time on a secondment to the BBC Television Service at Alexandra Palace, which was now a full-fledged, high-definition television network broadcasting to the London area. On secondment from his radio job, he produced one short play called Ending It, an adaptation of one of his own short stories starring John Robinson and Joan Marion, transmitted on 25 August 1939. However, a full-length play he was due to direct, and which had even been rehearsed, was cancelled from its planned slot on the evening of 1 September due to the television service having been suspended earlier that day in anticipation of the declaration of war. Gielgud returned to radio for the duration of the Second World War, but shortly after the return of the television service in 1946, he moved across on a more permanent basis to