Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows silent, black-and-white footage from an advertisement for Kiwi Boot Polish. It opens with a hotel manager receiving 'the surprise of his life’ when the two boys he has reluctantly trialled as boot boys display all the boots they have successfully polished. The boys are hired and on pay day appear in their hotel uniforms to receive their £1 a week earnings. The clip concludes with an intertitle saying that Kiwi is the 'Australian polish that came over to help’ and with an image of the tin lid of the polish showing a Kiwi bird.

Educational value points

• On-screen advertisements were part of the cinema program from its beginnings in 1895. The first cinema advertising consisted of primitive announcements scratched or painted onto slides. Moving-image advertisements were made from about 1900 and, as the cinema became increasingly popular, advertisers used film as a marketing tool to reach a wide audience. This advertisement helped Kiwi Boot Polish become one of Australia’s most successful products.

• This advertisement in its entirety ran for about six minutes and, like many of the early advertisements, revolved around a story. Most stories have three distinct stages – orientation, complication and resolution – and here the resolution stage is shown. The boys are hired and reveal their transformation from shoeless urchins to uniformed boot boys on a regular wage.

• The intertitle describing Kiwi as the 'Australian polish that came over to help’ is a clear reference to Australia’s role in the First World War in support of Great Britain. By the end of 1916 Australian forces had taken part in the Gallipoli campaign and were engaged in trench warfare on the Western Front. In July 1916, for example, Australian infantry suffered 5,533 casualties in 24 hours, as part of the Allied Somme offensive at Fromelles, France.

• The clip reveals that some children (below 16 years of age) were in the labour force in 1916. Poverty forced many children out to work, while labour shortages due to the enlistment of men during the War also led to more children entering the workforce, particularly as factory workers.

• 'Boot boys’ are now unknown in contemporary hotels, but in the early 20th century most men and women wore lace-up or button-up leather boots that required polishing. Boot boys were responsible for polishing the hotel guests’ boots whenever they were required to, but most polishing was done at night.

• Before about 1930 films were both silent and black-and-white. The size and weight of the camera meant that films generally tended to have long, static shots. Intertitles were used to help tell the story or present key dialogue. Actors often used facial expressions and gestures to convey what they were feeling or doing, as here when the boys make gestures to indicate that they are ready to be paid.

• The clip contains an early example of drawn animation being used in cinema advertising. The animation zooms in on the lid of the tin of polish. The figure of the kiwi is then isolated. It bobs its head and produces repeated 'Kiwi’ words from its beak. While film animation began in the 1890s, it was still in its relative infancy in 1916 with progress in Europe and Great Britain interrupted by the War. The first animated feature film was not produced until 1917.

• Kiwi Boot Polish, launched in 1908, revolutionised shoe polish in that it not only added shine but also preserved leather and restored colour. Scottish expatriates William Ramsay and Hamilton McKellan began making shoe polish in a small factory in Melbourne in 1904. Originally called Mirror Polish, it was relaunched in 1906 as Kiwi, a name Ramsay chose as a tribute to his New Zealander wife.