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Going Shopping with Elizabeth Allan

Everyday essentials like brandy, teabags and Tupperware are all on offer at London's most famous store.

Advert 1955 8 mins Silent

Overview

"I do a great deal of my shopping here, do come in and help!" commands actress Elizabeth Allan as she strides through Harrods' famous Food Hall in this early 'infomercial', made for the fledgling ITV network. If one needed help in sourcing one's teabags, brandy or Tupperware, one was in luck! First up, Allan surprisingly bypasses the displays of foie gras to give a typically kitchen-phobic 1950s man a lesson in those newfangled Tetley teabags.

A trip up the "moving staircase" later and our hostess has progressed to the hard stuff, extolling the joys of Martell 3-Star brandy. Next on the list, a grinning blonde saleswoman pushes the Bex Housewares range with gusto ("Incidentally, aren't the lids attractive!"), confirming the suspicion that ordinary British housewives - rather than Knightsbridge's ladies-who-lunch - were the film's real target audience. Skegness-born Allan, who enjoyed a brief Hollywood career in the 1930s, also visited the Marshall & Snelgrove department store on Oxford Street for the Going Shopping series.

Featuring

Elizabeth Allan

Genres

Advert

Country

United Kingdom

Location

South Kensington

Language

No Dialogue with English subtitles

Subjects

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