British Films for British Cinemas

This seems to fit the current Zeitgeist, though it's from 70 years ago.

Plus ça change, as we rootless cosmopolitans say.

The Church of England Newspaper, 30 May 1947, 9.

The Poso-Graph: 'A great money maker'

A found advert for a photo booth, 1928.

Sunday News, 7 October 1928, p. 7.

Continental flavour

Run across in a search for information on, of all things, an execution (click for larger image):

The Times, 17 December 1959, p. 4.

I'm too young to remember such days, but was it ever that easy to be so effortlessly cool?

I have my doubts.

For you trivia fans: Wikipedia tells us that 'Noilly Prat' was the name that T.S. Eliot gave to his cat.

I feel I have done my educational duty for the day.

Cops and coppers

As I've noted, one of the nice things about early twentieth-century advertising was the use of hand-drawn artwork.

The charm of which is apparent, I think, in these two adverts for 'Gallaher's Park Drive Cigarettes' from 1927.

(They also demonstrate a rather relentless -- though perhaps typically British -- fondness for punning.)

(Daily Herald, 7 April 1927, p. 8)

(Daily Herald, 16 June 1927, p. 8)

The Cameron Variations

Even if the Internet never comes up with another Fun Thing as good as the David Cameron poster creation machine, then it's nevertheless established its Daseinsberechtigung.

I mean, the original is humourous enough.

But the variations....

I'm quite fond of Cthulhu, Absorbency and...um...Kittens.

The following isn't nearly as funny, but it was the first thing that occurred to me.



Thanks to the Ranter for bringing this to my attention and for discussing it so (expectedly) well.

A car is woman's servant...not her master

Things have been a bit auto-themed here in this household over the last few days (though not in a good way), so I suppose it's as auspicious a time as any to offer the following late 1920s adverts as handsome additions to my historical bycatch series.

As did some other ads in that period, this one might be slightly playing on women's recently equalised status as voters in Britain, and the related perceptions (whether positive or negative) of the 'modern woman' which became rather a media fixation at that time.

(Click for a larger image)

Sunday Express, 13 July 1930, p. 11.

The text, in case you don't want to squint:

Woman takes the wheel

These are the days when women really drive. A car is woman's servant...not her master. And it's Pratts 'High Test'--no other kind--for the modern woman-at-the-wheel. Pratts 'High Test'...because it gives bigger mileage without costing more. Because it puts life inot the engine...power...snap...speed...sparkle, and always starts up instantly.'

Um...sparkle? Must be a chick thing.

Anyway, the next one is a bit more mysterious, in so far as the concept of 'motoring chocolate' is a new one to me.

Daily Herald, 8 April 1927, p. 5.

The Best thing to go Motoring on

Rowntree's Motoring Chocolate is a delicious combination of the famous Plain York (or Milk) Chocolate with whole blanched almonds and raisins. It is made specially nourishing for all who enjoy motoring and the open air.

Yes.

'Especially nourishing.'

Must be those raisins.

Happy motoring.

A warm thought for wintry days

One of the charming things about advertisements from the 1920s was the prevalence of hand-drawn artwork. Not all of them, of course, were winners; but when it worked, it worked.

At least for me.

Like this one, for Bovril.

Daily Herald, 31 December 1926.

I don't know much about the graphic artists of the time. Anyone recognise this signature?

Adventures in didactic cooking: Grimsby edition

Today, the historical bycatch series takes a more literal turn.

Recently, I finally ran across something I'd wanted to post for a while but had misplaced. (Three words to describe the interior of our house: Stacks. Of. Paper.)

While scanning through the 1929 Daily Herald earlier this year, I had happened upon an ad promoting the consumption of fish.

Maybe not the most immediately exciting of topics; still, it has its charms.

Daily Herald, 9 June 1929, p. 3. (Click for larger image)

The advert is interesting for all kinds of reasons.

First, I like the way it puts its audience decisively in its place: 'Can you fry fish? Most people can't. If you feel you've got anything to learn, read on.'

What follows is actually quite informative. It tells you something useful about how to fry fish. I mean, I'm guessing here, not being that accomplished with cooking fish myself; but it certainly sounds like practical, sound advice: 'If your fish is not properly dried it will be watery inside. If your fat is not properly hot instead of your fish frying to a golden crispness it will be soggy and greasy.'

And who, after all, wants their fish to be soggy and greasy, hm?

The ad was part of a promotional campaign, according to the small type, by the Grimsby-based British Trawlers' Federation.

And, as I searched further through that summer of 1929, I found that 'Can you fry fish?' was part of a series:

Daily Herald, 2 July 1929, p. 5.

Again, there's the rather hectoring tone, with all its 'musts', 'must nots' and 'oughts' to which the modern consumer is just not accustomed:

'You must drain your fish properly. Press every atom of water out.'

Somehow, I find myself afraid of disappointing the friendly-yet-somehow-intimidating woman in the white apron with her accusing stare and many handily available sharp implements.

In any case, the series reached a thrilling climax in its third and (as far as I could tell) final episode:

Daily Herald, 16 July 1929, p. 3

Maybe after all the challenges of frying and boiling, the Trawlers' Federation decided to take it easier on people: 'Steaming requires no attention and cannot fail to be successful.'

Certainly a relief.

And it seems they have expanded the availability of useful recipes, which can now be had for free from 'leading fishmongers.'

'Fishmonger' is an excellent word, one heard all too seldom these days.

I wonder how successful the ads were. I assume they appeared in other papers. The Herald at this time was owned by the TUC, and these ads seem tailored to appeal to working-class readers (more specifically working-class women).

Interestingly: not a word here about chips, the essential accompaniment to any fishy feast. Of course, from the trawlers' perspective, the potato farmers were on their own.

Happy cooking. I hope you've all learned something.

Our week in Conservatism: From the age of Supermac to the era of...Dave and Boris

Our research trip to London last week happened to coincide with the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

From what I can tell, it seems that David Cameron's Tories are indeed making progress in their main electoral strategy, i.e., hanging around long enough for voters to get sick of Labour while pretending that they've truly and genuinely changed and now really do care about poor people and, actually, quite like foreigners.

Whatever. The bits I saw left me underwhelmed, but, you know, I suppose I'm not really their target audience.

Anyway, coincidentally, while looking up information on a murder trial in 1959, I ran across a series of deeply creepy and Orwellian very charming newspaper adverts for Harold Macmillan's Conservative Party.

The worst best of them was the following (click image for a larger version):

(From: The News of the World, 30 August 1959, p. 7)

To avoid any misunderstanding: I've posted this out of purely historical interest and not as an endorsement of any kind.

In case you were wondering.

Quite incidentally: probably the most entertaining -- though not the most sane -- moments of the conference that I caught on television were offered right at its beginning by London mayor Boris Johnson.

Since the hotel where we were residing offers its guests free copies of the Daily Rage, I was able to read the following delightful paragraph over breakfast:

Boris was, according to a contemporary, an unmissable figure around Oxford, 'the silverback gorilla, the alpha male', who Cameron, as a socially gauche backroom boy with undeclared political ambitions, must have looked up to in awe.

Boris was also involved with the most beautiful girl at Oxford of the era, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, which increased his celebrity.

It was at about that point that said breakfast (full English, of course) nearly ended up all over our table.

Knowing the feeling

No comment.
Via.

"Camping out" with the Queen of Sheba

While looking through all the 1928 editions of the Sunday Express as part of a current research project, the fascinating advert you see below caught my eye. (Click for a larger view.)

(From the Sunday Express, 30 December 1928, p. 14)

Perhaps, were she still alive, my mother would be able to reminisce fondly about Camp Coffee, as it appears to be a product with some serious nostalgia value in Britain. (Though it has more recently been subject to some controversy. A case of "political correctness gone mad," no doubt.)

In any case, the text for the above ad reads:

Charades or Forfeits, Blind Man's Bluff or Queen of Sheba (you out to try that, at your next party!)--whatever the game may be, "Camp" is the Coffee your guests will appreciate afterwards.

More and more hostesses are serving "Camp" nowadays, because it is always such good coffee--and so easy to make, without leaving the jolly crowd for more than a moment.

At Dances, too, "Camping out" has quite taken the place of "sitting out." There is no refreshment more really refreshing than a cup of "Camp" Coffee.

"Camp" is made by experts, from coffee beans of the finest quality. You have only to add hot water and it's ready to enjoy.

Be sure to order a bottle of "Camp" Coffee in time for your New Year festivities.

But even more interesting than that--and more than a little baffling--is the description of the game "Queen of Sheba."

How to play "Queen of Sheba"

Every guest except the veiled "Queen" and her attendants goes out of the room. Each then returns, to kneel with uplifted hands on the rug before the Queen, and to ask her three questions, to which she must answer Yes or No. At the third question, the man at the end gives the rug a sudden pull--and then the fun begins!

Does it!? Why!?

What happened at these parties?

I mean, the image depicts a bunch of costumed party-goers of both sexes hopped up on coffee, so I suppose any kind of total madness is possible.

I'd be interested in your experiences.

Feminine discrimination

As The Wife noted, we were in Britain last week, and -- along with getting a lot of research done -- we also saw some good friends and did some interesting things outside the libraries in which we were working. Details, if we get around to it, might follow.

(Andrew Hammel has given a pretty fair run-down of an interesting talk by Cory Doctorow that we attended. Many thanks to Chris for letting me know about the lecture.)

Along with (an astonishingly vast amount of) project-related material, my trawl through the newspaper archives brought up a lot of bycatch that is either intriguing, amusing or appalling -- or some combination thereof -- which I will be sharing as time allows.

For now, I leave you with this somehow delightful Daily Herald (London) newspaper advert from 1929. It appeared shortly before that year's general election, the first in which British women participated with voting rights equal to men's. (Click for larger version.)

Daily Herald, 20 May 1929, p. 3.

Ten for sixpence: those were the days, eh?

Coolest. Ad. Ever.

For Nokia’s new N96 Bruce Lee Edition mobile:



(via David Thompson)

Doing it Dodge(y) style

In this heady pre-ballot phase, hardly a day passes without my favourite American expat in Germany voicing his surprise whenever Europeans, whether in the media or in person, express their bewilderment about the possibility that the McCain and Palin nightmare-team might have a serious chance of winning the US-election. "Europeans just don't get America", he mutters, in the face of our all too optimistic expectation that a November triumph for this charming Mr Obama is inevitable.

Well, things also work the other way round: Americans don't get Europe. Because if they did, somebody would have told US car manufacturer Dodge that promising Germans a cheap deal on a new car will not make them have more babies.

Dodge, you see, is seriously worried about the declining birthrate in Germany, as Der Spiegel can reveal. The 1,37 Kinder produced per Frau, a recent company press release points out, make this country bottom of the league in Europe, nay the world. Whether this is actually true, is another question - some figures lead to a slightly different conclusion. But let's not be finicky.

In any case, in an act of corporate concern and generosity, Dodge has come up with a (pro-)creative solution, promoted via the ad-campaign Helden zeugen. The slogan, admittedly, is a cute little pun, meaning both "heroes reproduce" and "produce heroes". That's about as funny as it gets. Customers mad enough to want to buy a grotesque gas-guzzling Dodge monstrosity will have the leasing rates deferred for nine months (clever joke, eh?) if they are able to present a positive pregnancy test.

You can just imagine it, can't you? Hundreds of German couples storming their nearest Dodge-dealers, waving little plastic DIY pregnancy kits like magic wands and screaming: "Look: two stripes!"

Behind this smutty nudge-nudge, wink-wink campaign (for more untranslatable punning see the Spiegel article) is of course the fact that Dodge itself is at the bottom of a league table, albeit a different one: sales of cars in Germany.

I suppose one must wish Dodge luck for their daring - and, I presume, doomed, project. For whether it comes to birth rates or sales rates, I suspect that they won't succeed.

Ferry very good?

After the first, positive reviews of his film Somers Town, which was released last week, Shane Meadows is now beginning to get some stick from the critics. Well, it had to happen, especially as Meadows had never made any bones about the film’s financing by Eurostar.

For David Cox in today’s Guardian, this is unforgivable. Somers Town, he writes, is a terrible precedent in cinema history and a despicable sell-out. Unlike the more benevolent critics writing warmly about the film during the past week, he refuses to see is as anything other than a cheesy ad disguised as art. Which is also why he relentlessly harps on about the film’s oh-so flawed and flimsy plot (Eurostar employees do not get free Eurostar tickets!) – as though a lack in plot had ever kept a Hollywood movie from becoming a blockbuster (quite to the contrary, I would think), or a nouvelle vague flick a cinema classic.

I haven’t seen the film yet – but really, what do you expect from this kind of improvisation filmed in two-weeks on 16mm (and which even with its Eurostar funding hardly went beyond the low budget)?

Or is there summat else involved? From the start, Mr Cox's slightly over the top grudge against all things Eurostar seems to betray a hidden agenda. Halfway through the article, one is suddenly struck by his quaintly phrased praise of “those excellent ferryboats provided by P&O”, which he thinks the film’s protagonists ought to have boarded to get to France.

Now, that would have made the film more convincing! Only on P&O, though. In wellies and flat cap. Plus whippet.

If Somers Town is advertising disguising as art, surely here we have an instance of advertising disguising as journalism (and investigative journalism, too, as Cox apparently had to make a couple of phone calls in the course of writing his piece). The murky waters of the Channel are criss-crossed daily by dozens of ferries from a variety of lines – both British and continental – so there’s no need to be quite so specific. Why not refer to Transmanche Ferries or SeaFrance? This unwarranted foregrounding of the excellence of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. is suspicious to say the least.

It also seems to me that Mr Cox is idealising the pleasures of travel by ferry. I’m sure he’s never spent a cold night in a deep and dark December waiting in Dieppe for a ship that hasn’t even left Newhaven by the time you were meant to board it in France, navigated the pools of vomit on the staircases during a particularly rough crossing (or in the wake of particularly heavy boozing) or tried to doze away the endless hours before you get to Dover or wherever, wedged in a quiet corner between the toilets and the fruit machines.

Knowing full well that you still have several hours on a dodgy train before you get to London!

Believe me, the twenty minute Channel Tunnel ride beats the ferry every single time. Why should such a clean, swift and civilised service not be advertised? No need to be quite so irate, Mr Cox.

The title of this post? There is a Dutch transport firm that uses this slogan. I cringe every time I see one of their lorries on the motorway.

Another orwellian ad

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which" (George Orwell, Animal Farm).

Ze Germans: Funnier (and funkier) than you'd have thought

On our last night in Britain, the BBC provided us with some simplistic but effective entertainment, in the course of which we found these little gems:





Well, ve had to laff ....

He's Alive!

Now what do you think this enormous crash test dummy is doing here?

1) he is in the process of erasing the woman's short term memory with the aid of an everyday device known only in The Dimension Where Crash Test Dummies Rule

2) he and she are members of a suburban theatre group enacting a scene from Frankenstein or Paradise Lost (he's Eve, tempting Rosemarie)

3) this is an intimate instance of courtship. He is handing her a pack of worm bait (or contraceptives?) that he usually keeps in one of the many pockets on his exceedingly fashionable survivalist waistcoat (currently on sale at Aldi for EUR 9,99)

Nooooo! You silly semiotically overcharged fools (been reading too much Derrida lately, have we?). He is offering her a packet of painkillers to assuage the pains in her arthritic knee (daintily indicated by her gloved hand on her leg).

Only a German marketing genius could come up with this at once subtle and surreal suburban snapshot.