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Rinso Soap Powder: Then Came Happiness (1931)

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Then came happiness education content clip 1

This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

Taking a narrative form, this advertisement from 1931 begins with Helen hanging out the clothes. Her daughter, Joan, brings her the mail and she opens an invitation to a bridge night which happens to be on the same night as washing day.

The advertisement then cuts to the bridge night where her husband, John, discusses how the housework seems to be getting Helen down with his friend. Helen and her girlfriend, Anne, walk in and Helen exclaims how Anne has just told her about a new and marvellous way to do the washing so now she won’t be cranky on Monday nights.

Next washing day John arrives home from work. As he walks through the front gate he is welcomed by his daughter and walks into the kitchen to find Helen cooking. John tells Helen that she looks 'so happy’ and she explains that she soaked the clothes with Rinso and that there was no need for rubbing or scrubbing. And no backache.

John says he wouldn’t even mind having a go at doing the washing and Helen says she doesn’t even mind if Joan gets her frocks dirty anymore. The advertisement ends with a close-up of a packet of Rinso.

Curator’s notes

This black-and-white Rinso soap powder advertisement illustrates the traditional roles of men and particularly women in Australia during the 1930s.

In the last scene the man takes a handful of Rinso soap powder and surreptitiously drops it on the ground. If you look carefully, you will see a pile of Rinso soap powder already on the floor indicating that they did a few takes to complete the shoot.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows a 1931 black-and-white 'talkies’ cinema advertisement in which the life of a worn-out housewife is transformed by a new washing powder. The story begins with an invitation to the woman and her husband to play bridge the following Monday (washing day).The husband is then seen telling a friend about his concern for his wife, as 'housework is getting her down’. The two wives enter the room, all smiles because one has introduced the other to a new way of washing. In the final scenes the wife extols the wonders of Rinso for getting the washing clean without hard rubbing.

Educational value points

  • This cinema advertisement follows the classic structure of an imaginative text (in this case, a filmed story) – orientation, complication, resolution. The opening scenes introduce the middle-class characters and the domestic location. The complication of the housewife’s exhaustion is described by the woman herself and confirmed by discussion among the men. The resolution is shown in the happy family scene cutting to an almost full-screen depiction of the Rinso packet.
  • Commonly accepted gender roles of the 1930s are depicted in the advertisement, the wife being shown as a housewife responsible for the weekly washing, tied to her housework routines. The husband earns the household income. Although he is concerned by his wife’s tiredness and then relieved by the advent of Rinso, the unvoiced expectation is made clear that, despite what he says, the husband will never do the washing. This was the role of the wife and mother.
  • The advertisement’s title, 'Then Came Happiness’, was not intended to be ironic. Housewives in the 1930s were believed to be focused on domestic duties to such a degree that a new washing powder could indeed bring happiness to their lives. It was not until the late 1950s and 1960s that attitudes such as this were challenged by a renascent feminist movement and women began to object to advertisers trivialising and sentimentalising household work in the way depicted here.
  • The clip is an example of an early cinema advertisement featuring sound, with the actors’ delivery reflecting both the early years of 'talkies’ and Australia’s close ties to Britain. The staged nature of the dialogue indicates the problems and uncertainties of actors and technicians getting used to the new sound medium. Although the advertisement was made in Australia, no effort was made to reflect this – rather the actors’ English accents link the film closely to England.
  • 'On-screen’ advertisements were part of the cinema program from the beginning of cinema in the 1900s and often reflected the structures and conventions of feature films, communicating their messages in story form. The preference of soap companies for this style of advertising led to their later associations with radio and television dramas and to the emergence of 'soap operas’.
  • Washing machines did not become widely accessible in Australia until after the Second World War, before which washing could take an entire day or longer. On wash day (generally Monday) 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 on long lines propped up by 'clothes props’.
  • The high level of middle-class formality in Australia in the 1930s is evident in the clip. At a bridge night among friends the men wear formal suits, white shirts and ties, while the women wear formal dresses with a mid-calf hemline, and necklaces.
  • 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. Such powdered soaps were used until the introduction of heavy-duty detergents in the late 1940s. Sales of Rinso dropped during the 1950s and the product was removed from the market in the mid-1970s.

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australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

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  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

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ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

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