Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a cinema advertisement for Rinso washing powder. When a shopkeeper (Dan Agar) recommends Rinso to a female customer (Joy Nichols), she tells him that this is not an effective way to sell the washing powder. She is joined by a young man (Bill Kerr) and the two break into song about the wonders of Rinso. The couple use a series of drawings attached to a drawing board to illustrate the song. The grocer joins in the final chorus. The actors are credited at the beginning of the clip, which is in black and white and includes the title ‘Easy Does It’.

Educational value points

• Moving-image advertisements were part of cinema programs from the early days of cinema in the 1890s, and, like this Rinso advertisement, tended to reflect the structures and conventions of feature films, often communicating their messages in story form. The preference of soap companies for this style of advertising led to their later association with radio and television dramas, and so to the emergence of ‘soap operas’. The opening credits in this clip also replicate the style of credits in feature films.

• The style of this advertisement is influenced by the Hollywood musical genre, which had its heyday between the early 1930s and the 1950s, when about 50 musical films were produced each year in Hollywood. These films were themselves derivative of Broadway musical theatre productions and their songs, referred to as show tunes, which made up the popular culture of this period. Show tunes were written to be catchy but also to fit a context and advance a narrative.

• The similarity to Hollywood musicals and Joy Nicols’s American accent reflect a cultural shift following the Second World War that saw Australians being increasingly influenced by US popular culture. This influence was fostered by US troops stationed in Australia during the War but also by radio and film. This shift coincided with a rising post-war affluence that enabled Australians to pursue a higher standard of living based on the consumerism epitomised by Hollywood films and encouraged by advertisers.

• In the 1940s, when this advertisement was made, many people did not own a washing machine and had to hand-wash clothing and other items, an arduous task that could take much of the day. The washing was considered part of a woman’s domestic duties, and usually took place once a week on a Monday. The advertisement stresses that Rinso makes washing easier, with the slogan ‘Does the hard work for you’ and song lines such as ‘you don’t have to rub and you don’t have to scrub’.

• The illustrations in this clip, including those of a round copper tub and a scrubbing board, indicate how washing was usually done prior to the 1960s, when washing machines began to be used more widely. On wash day, clothes were boiled in a copper tub, rubbed on a scrubbing board, perhaps washed again, rinsed in clean water once or twice, wrung out (through a wringer or by hand) and hung out to dry.

• Grocery shops, such as the one depicted in this clip, were the precursors of the supermarket, and the grocer provided customers with personalised service, often recommending preferred brands. With the spread of self-service supermarkets in the 1950s, advertisers recognised the need to reinforce their advertising message by overtly linking slogans, jingles and the product design used in the advertisement with the product on the shelf.

• The advertisement features the Rinso brand of soap powder, introduced into Australia after the First World War. Rinso was manufactured by Unilever from 1918 and was one of the first mass-marketed soap powders, taking the place of soap cut from a bar. Powdered soaps were used exclusively until the introduction of heavy-duty detergents in the late 1940s. Increasing competition saw sales of Rinso drop during the 1950s and Unilever removed the product from the market in the mid-1970s.

• Bill Kerr (1922–) has had 62 film appearances but is most famous for his regular appearances in the popular BBC radio and television program Hancock’s Half Hour (1954–59). Kerr was a child actor who appeared in Harmony Row (1933) and The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934). He performed in radio and stage plays before moving to Britain in 1947 where he had a successful career in vaudeville, film, television and radio. Kerr returned to Australia in the 1970s and has since appeared on television and in films such as Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).