This film is one of a number of advertising or promotional films made by commercial companies in Yorkshire after the end of the Second World War. Others made around this time include Parker’s Mill (1946-47) and Wimsol Bleach Factory (1951), from Keighley, advertising their cleaning products. More closely related still is Men of Steel (1948), a promotional film for Parkgate Iron and Steel Works in Rotherham, made by Charles Chislett.  Unfortunately there is no information on G.B. International Limited, the credited filmmakers for this film. Like many small independent commercial filmmakers from that period they have disappeared leaving little trace.

However, the director of the film, Irene Wilson does crop up at this time as working in films for the British Council, where she is credited as a director in their film catalogue for 1942-43, along with several other female directors. The editor too, Kit (aka ‘Kitty’) Wood is also credited on films from the post-war period, including one from 1945, The Ten Year Plan, made for the Iron and Steel Confederation, and for the National Coal Board Film Unit, New Power in their Hands (1959), featuring Ewan MacColl. Kitty Wood has been i

In an article in Counterpoint, the think-tank of the British Council, Al Robertson writes: “ At this time, regular female production staff included directors Mary Field and Irene Wilson, and writer Mary Cathcart Borer. They were part of a wider contemporary female presence in documentary; a presence that, sadly, would not be sustained after the war.” (References) Adding to this observation on Screenonline, Sarah Easen states that: “Although women continued to find work making industrial, corporate and advertising films throughout the 1950s, there were less opportunities for women in the non-fiction sector. The heyday of the documentary movement was over, due to postwar changes in both production and exhibition infrastructures and increasing competition from television. Attitudes to women in the workplace had also altered since the war and many women left filmmaking careers to bring up families.” (References)

Having a woman director is clearly appropriate for a film that has only women in it and is clearly aimed at women as consumers. In fact it is perhaps ironic that a film that exemplified the push of women back into the home after the war was made in part by women who would be adversely affected by this. The post war period saw a great increase in new household appliances and other consumer products, and although this undoubtedly made housework less arduous in many respects, it did reinforce traditional gender roles in a way that was to be challenged in the 1960s and 1970s by the women’s movement.   Part of the criticism was that advertising constructed an ‘average woman’ as a norm, to which all should aspire, that was oppressive of women, and that this ‘discourse’ becomes so ingrained in culture as to be taken for granted – see Kates and Shaw-Garlock, References.

The film not only contrasts an old kitchen with a new one; but it also contrasts the old with an idealised lifestyle and family, with an idealised mother, father and two children, in an idealised home. This idealisation in advertising, together with the whole consumer culture gradually spreading out from being purely a middle class phenomena, developed initially in the the US and soon found a home in the UK. In fact the representation of life with an ‘old style’ kitchen was something of an oversimplification in that housework was timetabled to avoid the kind of conlflict shown. Thus bathing or washing would be allocated a specific day. The problems of overcrowding and house layout were addressed in official government reports, in 1918 in the Tudor Walters Report and again in 1944 in the Dudley Report. The modern kitchen shown in the film, with a refrigerator replacing a larder, fitted in with changes to the standards for new homes – see also the Context for Environmental Health Part - Park Hill Slums 1-5, which looks at slum clearance in Sheffield after the war. Of equal importance in separating the kitchen from the eating area was the replacement of cooking on a coal burner with gas cookers.

‘Staybrite’ became the world’s most widely used type of stainless steel, building upon the success of ‘Staybrite City’ at the 1934 Daily Mail Ideal Homes Exhibition. It was the trade name given to 18/8 stainless steel (i.e. 18% chromium, 8% nickel) in 1924.  It was just one of a number of alloys that were resistant to rust, acid and heat: others were 'Immaculate', 'Vikro', 'H.R.Crown Max', "F.V.S.", 'Vesuvius' and 'Pyrista'. In the 1920s and 1930s stainless steel came to be used in more and more applications, such as aircraft, the Mersey Tunnel in 1934, and for the kitchens of the Queen Mary in 1936, as well as on ships, industrial plants, road studs on pedestrian crossings, hospital equipment, chemical tanks, rolling stock and seaplanes.  

Stainless steel was perfect for the kitchen, especially for cooking, for as well as being corrosion and heat resistant it is also hygienic, has a good strength to weight ratio, and is very versatile, with over 100 grades. Another advantage to stainless steel is that it is 100% recyclable. In fact its properties had already been celebrated in another pre-war film made for Firth-Vickers, by Gaumont, Staybrite Rust And Acid Resisting Steel (1934).

Staybrite was developed by steelmakers Thomas Firth of Sheffield, apparently by chance by metallurgist Harry Brearley in 1913, whilst researching for improved steel for rifles and gun barrels, finding a steel that retains its shinyness. By adding nickel as well as chromium, he produced a malleable stainless steel, called martinsitic. Although Harry Brearley is usually credited with the invention of stainless steel, similar developments were taking place across Europe and in the US for some time, such as in Germany with the giant Krupps Iron works – the British Stainless Steel Association provide a more detailed and nuanced history of the orgins of stainless steel on their website (References).  In fact Harry Brearley was at the time working in the Brown - Firth research laboratory, and the two companies didn’t merge, to become Firth Brown Steels, until 1930. The steel was further developed by his successor Dr W H Hatfield, the first person to use stainless steel on a car, applying the metal as a radiator and trim on his bullnose Morris Cowley.

Vickers were formed in Sheffield by miller Edward Vickers in 1828. The company has been through many name changes, becoming just Vickers Ltd in 1911 and Vickers Armstrong in 1927. In fact the factory was named Staybrite Works. What remained of the Staybrite Bar Rolling Mills was closed in late 2005 and the site sold for development – some photos of what became of the works can be seen on the 28dayslater website.  Nevertheless, despite the decline in steel manufacture in Sheffield, it remains a leading producer of stainless steel – for an update on recent developments in the steel industry in Sheffield see Insider Media (References).

References

William Alexander and Arthur Street,  Metals in the Service of Man, 9th ed., Penguin, 1989.

Molly Harrison, The Kitchens in History, Osprey, 1972.

Steve Kates and Glends Shaw-Garlock, ‘The Ever Entangling Web: A Study of Ideologies and Discourses in Advertising to Women’, in Roxanne Hovland et al (eds.), Readings in Advertising, Society, and Consumer Culture, M E Sharpe, London, 2007.

Alison Ravetz, The Place of Home, English domestic environments, 1914-2000, E & FN Spon, London, 1995.