Molly Brownless

Molly Brownless
Born	Molly Heritage 1920 Castle Bromwich
Died	2021
Occupation	Camera operator
Employer	BBC
Television	Coppelia 30 June 1947

Molly Brownless camera operator. From a production of “Coppelia: Act 2” – 30 Jun 1947, featuring The Metropolitan Ballet.

Molly Brownless was the first television camera operator at the first BBC studies at Alexandra Palace. She operated  an Emitron  camera in Studio B on the day the BBC studios opened after the second world war in June 1946, the day before the London Victory Parade. She continued to operate these cameras for the next 2 years.

Early life

Molly attended Erdington Secondary School and sang in the Birmingham City Choir.

Early career

Molly was an engineer who initially worked with radio transmitters at Droitwich trasmitting station during World  War II.

Work at the BBC

Molly worked at the BBC from 1946 to 1948. She was the first woman camera operator and was later joined by another woman called Bimbi Harris. The BBC camera operators wanted an upgrade to their job description so that they would be paid better, but the Association of Cine-Technicians considered the fact that women could be camera operators proved that it was not a very skilled job, and it would therefore be difficult to argue that they should be upgraded. So women camera operators, were told they could no longer do camera work and were moved to vision mixing.

Career after BBC

After Molly left the BBC she emigrated to Australia in 1951 and worked for TCN9 while the station was still being tested and when few of her colleagues had experience in television engineering.