Going Shopping with Elizabeth Allan

Going Shopping with Elizabeth Allan

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

"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.

Tags

From the collection

Celebrity Sells

A celebrity endorsement is one of the advertisers' most powerful weapons. 

For generations, movie stars, television personalities and sporting heroes have all bought in to selling out. A famous face can trigger a string of associations that advertisers hope will reflect well on the product. And for new faces, an advertising gig can be the path to recognition, and a career which enables you to be the star turn.

Behind the camera, too, advertising commissions can kickstart a career or offer a lucrative sideline. Directors like Alan Parker, Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson got an early boost from advertising work, and many continued to shoot ads long after they 'made it' in features.
 

15 videos in this collection

Harp - Ronnie Barker (Version 1)

  • 1972

The Economist

  • 1921

Sam's Birthday

  • 1934
Stanley Holloway recounts the exploits of Sam Small, whose wife sends him shopping for... what was it again?

Sam Goes Shopping

  • 1939

Shell: Sammy Davis Jr.

  • 1961

Sheila Sim

  • 1945
England's 1966 hat-trick hero doesn't sweat the small stuff - or at all, according to this deodorant commercial.

Target - Geoff Hurst

  • 1968
A triple bill of glamour courtesy of Lux toilet soap.

Close-ups of the Stars

  • 1946

Coca-Cola: Hey Coke - Masquerade Ball

  • 1958

Coca-Cola: Mary Hopkin

  • 1969

Arthur's Holiday Camp

  • 1949

Coca-Cola: Hey Coke - Party

  • 1958

Coca-Cola: Hey Coke - Beach

  • 1958

Pye Cinema & TV Advertisement starring John Cleese

  • Cambridge
  • 1970
Everyday essentials like brandy, teabags and Tupperware are all on offer at London's most famous store.

Going Shopping with Elizabeth Allan [At Harrods]

  • South Kensington
  • 1955
View full collection