Jasmine Bligh
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Jasmine Bligh (born May 20, 1913 in London, England, United Kingdom; died July 21, 1991) was one of the first three BBC Television Service presenters in the 1930s, along with Leslie Mitchell and Elizabeth Cowell, providing continuity announcements and introducing programmes in-vision. She rejoined the service in 1946 after its Second World War hiatus and was the first person to appear when broadcasting was resumed, greeting viewers with the words "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?" After twenty minutes she introduced the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Gala Premiere, which had been the last programme shown before the beginning of the Second World War in 1939.[1]
Later she presented the BBC's Television for Deaf Children in the 1950s. She continued to work in television up until the 1970s, when she presented Good Afternoon for Thames Television.
Bligh was the niece of Esme Ivo Bligh, the 9th Earl of Darnley,[1] and also said to be a descendant of Captain William Bligh, the commander famously usurped in the mutiny on the Bounty in the 18th century. She married twice, first in 1940. Her first husband was Lt-Col Sir John Paley Johnson, 6th Bt, with whom she had a daughter, Sarah; they divorced in 1947, and she married Frank Hugh Shirley Fox in 1948; they divorced in 1953.
[edit] References
- ^ Burke’s Peerage & Baronetage, 106th Edition, Charles Mosley, Burke’s Peerage, Crans, Switzerland, 1999, p. 767. Jasmine Bligh was granddaughter of Ivo Francis Walter Bligh, 8th Earl of Darnley; her father was Noel Gervase Bligh, brother of the 9th Earl, and her mother was Mary Jack Frost, daughter of Captain George Alfred Frost.
