Episode 2 The 1952 Show

Wo-hoh-hoh! I'm Len Goodman. For the next 45 minutes,

I'm the rocker in the rocker!

Taking you for a spin through that amazing decade

which kicked off 60 years ago in 1952.

When the new queen ushered in a new era - the fifties!

I love it!

The '50s! Oh, yes, it's that 1952 show

with your '50s stories and your walk down Memory Lane.

We hear from teddy boys and girls

on what it was like to rock the night away

in their blue suede shoes.

Then what about those classic '50s gadgets,

the household appliances. Do you remember your first?

Don't get saucy - I'm talking fridges, here!

Then there were the first TV stars, all new and spangly,

The Beverley Sisters, woo-hoo, I loved all three of them!

Come on, girls!

We've got - Woo-hoo - Marty Wilde!

My hero!

# The stars up above

# Why must I be a teenager in love? #

A great time to be young.

Now, swing it out, sisters,

it's time for The 1952 Show!

Now, teenagers, love 'em or hate 'em,

the teenager was really born in the '50s.

The New Musical Express published Britain's first singles chart in 1952.

Britain's first teenagers, the teddy boys and girls,

swaggered into the '50s, ready to take on the world!

-#

-Whop-bop a lu ma bala-bam-bam

-#

-Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

-#

-Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy... #

Having experienced the austerity of war,

the generation coming of age in the early '50s

craved excitement and wanted to be different from their parents.

Chris Fender-Black remembers what it was like.

We were rebelling against the Victorian era.

The meals, and you can't leave the table. Sit here

until everybody's finished and don't talk unless you're spoken to.

Tip the hats to all the old girls. It's endless!

-#

-You know I can be fair

-#

-Sitting home all alone

-#

-If you can't come around... #

With their distinctive look, teddy boys were the epitome of teenage rebellion.

Their flamboyant outfits scandalised the "make do and mend" generation their parents belonged to.

'Mike's a teddy boy. Teddy boys aren't popular with the public.'

Teddy boys, I don't like them at all.

I don't like their style of dress. It's just to prove what they are. They're ignorant.

Chris waited until his mother was out to use her sewing machine to make his trousers into drainpipes.

She used to come back home. Look at these! Look! "What have you done to your trousers?

"How dare you? You've ruined a lovely pair of trousers!"

She'd get hold of it and unpick it and put them back to normal!

When she went out again, I did it again and cut it off with scissors so she couldn't unpick it!

So I won in the end. It was a battle. Everything, a battle!

# I'm going crazy all alone with a crazy girl

# I love you, baby, but you know you're such a crazy girl... #

Nice girls didn't go out with teddy boys.

Because they had a violent reputation.

If you were a teddy girl, you were considered common.

But I still wanted to be one!

# Why do I love you when I know you're such a crazy girl

# I ought to leave you cos you've always got me in a whirl... #

The fashion was nice. It was sexy.

Pencil skirts, and then all the petticoats under the flared skirts.

With poodles on them, things like that.

Girls who weren't teddy girls were squares. They didn't wear nice clothes at all.

They were just squares. They'd wear like twin sets.

A twin set was a sweater and a cardigan together.

So if any of us had twin sets, we'd get the cardigan

and we'd do the buttons up and wear it back-to-front!

So you had the buttons down the back. It looked different.

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

# Just cryin' all the time... #

The young people of the very early '50s

were the first generation in Britain to lay claim to being "teen-agers".

Before then, you were either a child or an adult.

There wasn't anything in-between.

What changed all that was a heady cocktail of increasing prosperity,

a new mood of optimism in the country.

And music.

-#

-Yeah, you ain't never caught a rabbit...

-#

American rock'n'roll would become the soundtrack to 1950s teenagers' lives.

Bill Haley, Rock Around The Clock, and See You Later, Alligator,

and my most favourite one was Elvis doing Don't Be Cruel.

And the other side, Hound Dog.

Everything good came from America.

All the dress, all the fridges, everything,

and the films - everyone went to the pictures Friday night.

Everybody smoking, peanuts in the aisles,

and the stocking top of the ice cream lady as she walked down the aisle!

It was her suspenders, her stocking tops rubbing. Oh, that was fun.

In 1954, a new American film, Blackboard Jungle, struck a chord with teenagers everywhere.

As the cinema lights dimmed,

they were in for the biggest surprise of their lives.

It blacked out and we thought the camera had gone wrong.

It kept breaking down in those days. You'd get blackouts.

But it was the start of the film. It started in a blackout.

All of a sudden, it went, "One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock!"

Wow! Tell you what, that was the biggest wow of my life, that was!

-#

-We're gonna rock around the clock tonight

-#

-Get your glad rags on...

-#

The Bill Haley rock'n'roll classic instantly electrified British teenagers.

-#

-..We're gonna rock, rock, rock till the broad daylight

-#

-We're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight...

-#

It was like being hit on the head with a baseball bat!

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" And we did, didn't we?

All the teenagers in London have been jiving and rioting and ripping up the seats.

So we wanted to be like them, definitely.

We weren't going to do no rioting because everybody knew us cos it was a local village.

We just got up and started jiving.

And the manager stopped the film, walked down the aisle

and threw us all out and banned us for life!

So we weren't allowed to go to that cinema any more!

Teenagers rocked local dance halls up and down the country,

trying out their latest moves to impress the opposite sex.

I said, "Would you like to dance?"

She said, "Yes, please!" I thought, "Ooh, my lucky day!"

She stood up, she was only that high.

Right? She was tiny. I thought to myself, "I'm up here."

And as we started going round, my buttons on my suit got caught in her hair!

We were in the middle of the dance floor.

I couldn't get her hair out of the buttons on my jacket!

It was the most embarrassing moment!

We had to go to the... Walk back off with her hair hanging on! I'll never forget that one.

Faye took her dancing pretty seriously in the 1950s.

I decided that I wanted to be a teddy girl that jived

and I wanted to be the best jiver there was.

So I went home, put a mirror on the floor and practised the steps.

Then the next time I went to the youth club, a guy came up to me and said,

"Come on, we'll jive." And he started jiving

and he started doing some rock'n'roll movements.

We'd go dancing five nights a week.

Dancing was my life. I've always loved dancing.

She's still pretty light on her feet.

And Chris certainly hasn't lost his enthusiasm

for the music and fashion of the 1950s.

Keep rock'n'rolling! Yeah!

And look who's here! Chris Fender-Black.

Look at you! You look fantastic!

All the gear on. Fabulous!

-What's happened to your quiff?

-My quiff's long gone.

So's mine!

-Marty's all right.

-Marty's still hanging on there.

Do you wear that out and about, or is it just for high days and holidays?

-High days and holidays now. I used to wear it out.

-Of course.

-Those days are long gone now.

-The colour was brilliant.

-Yes.

Marty, were you interested in this?

Yes, I used to go to Burton's and have it all designed,

exactly the way I wanted it. Long drapes, trousers as tight as possible.

Ludicrous! The trousers were so tight I could hardly move!

I know the feeling!

What about your mum and dad. Mine wouldn't let me wear anything like that.

-What about you?

-The old man said - my father - he was an ex-army sergeant.

He was very strict in some ways.

He said, "If you dress up in those clothes, and you have that duck tail haircut" -

I used to have a little crop at the front and a DA at the back.

He said, "You're not coming on holiday with us."

Every year we'd gone to Ramsgate and Margate for all that time, since I was this high.

I thought, "No, he'll take me." And he didn't!

They got on the train and left, and I was home on my own for a week, which was really strange.

One of the things about the '50s that I thought was great was the music.

-Oh, yes.

-No question.

-Chris, who were your favourites?

-Bill Haley started it.

-Yeah.

-Then Gene Vincent.

-Yeah.

-And then onto Elvis.

-Fabulous.

-Absolutely brilliant.

And don't forget we had the wind-up gramophones with 78 records on.

-With big needles.

-That's right.

So when you went to the pictures, you couldn't believe the sound.

Wow! It used to really knock you back. Great times.

Marty, I've got a few photographs of you back in the day.

I'm loving this one. I love the wallpaper!

I love the whole look of the thing.

-Oh, my goodness me.

-He hasn't changed a bit, you know.

-I've not changed!

-Lovely jumper. Did you get that for Christmas?

You can see where it's been ironed down the side. Mum ironed it.

Great, that is!

There's a sort of a Presley look about this one, I think.

-Yeah, maybe. He was the main man as far as I was concerned.

-He was the king.

-Yes.

-No question.

And here you are in action. Full on!

That was at Philips Records, Stanhope Place in London.

Recording there.

-Probably.

-Fantastic.

-Yeah.

-Haven't changed a bit, you know!

-You've hardly changed.

Amazing!

I've got to say, Marty, you certainly were a stylish teenager.

-You were a piece of work!

-You think so, Len?

-Yes, I do!

So, from growing up to gadgets.

I remember my nan sweeping the stairs on her hands and knees.

And keeping the milk on the window sill in case it went off and it always did!

But for her indoors, all that started to change in the '50s.

New labour-saving devices were coming into the market.

Buying on the never-never was all the rage

and it seemed the whole country was ga-ga for gadgets!

-#

-Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp

-#

-Who put the ram in the rama rama ding dong...

-#

The start of the '50s marked the birth of the British consumer.

We fell in love with household gadgets, appliances and every sort of consumer item.

We couldn't get enough of them.

-#

-..He made my baby fall in love with me...

-#

I remember our first vacuum cleaner. It was very small and it was fun

because I used to sit on it and ride it while Mother did the vacuuming.

And as we strived to keep up with the Joneses,

the Joneses sometimes couldn't keep up with the technology.

The first washing machine that we had, it wouldn't go on.

When he came, he said, "Well, you have to plug it in, love!"

"Oh," I said, "do you? Oh, sorry!"

I never plugged it in!

But the boom in labour-saving devices

which promised to make the housewife's life easier

kept growing and growing.

-NEWSREEL:

-Contemporary is the word of the moment

and it goes for all the labour-saving devices on show, too.

Margaret Cadman, a young newly-wed from Bristol,

fell in love with her new vacuum cleaner.

It made a big difference to my life

having previously had to sweep the floor with a brush and pick up the dust with a dustpan and brush.

Margaret was one of the thousands who flocked to the new consumer shows

like the Ideal Home Exhibition in London's Olympia.

A friend and I went to the Ideal Home Exhibition every year during the '50s.

It was a really exciting day out.

We'd get the bus into Temple Meads, then the train up to London.

We really enjoyed our day out, looking at all the new things on display.

And they even had the royal seal of approval.

But there was one gadget that universally generated huge excitement -

the Kenwood food mixer.

'If you want tomatoes pulped up into what's called tomato puree,

'this machine will solve your problem.'

Ken Wood, the man behind the machine, was like many of the inventors of the '50s.'

Ex-RAF, he applied his war-time expertise to arming the housewife at home.

He was like the perfect buccaneering entrepreneur. Sell snow to the Eskimos!

Kenneth Grange joined the revolutionary Kenwood design team

and got to know his boss well - and his sales technique.

He'd go to Land's End to repair a fuse for some poor old girl

whose machine seemed to have stopped. He wouldn't charge her.

Out of that his products and he himself became virtual mythology.

You couldn't want for a better companion than a Kenwood.

-#

-Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp

-#

-Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

-#

The woman of the house would make all the decisions with regard to what we now call design.

The choice of the furniture, the lino, the wall coverings,

knives and forks. You cannot think of any single thing

that was the man's province.

'Breakfast can be fried on the breakfast table, if you like.

'It's all made easy - in fact, ideal.

The demonstrations were very important.

They were all shown to you. It was a communal activity, too.

The salesman and the consumer were all part and parcel of this exuberance.

-#

-Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp

-#

-Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

-#

Down in there you've got the essential, the heart of the machine,

this planetary action with a balloon whisk or a kneader.

Kenneth was given the task of redesigning the classic Kenwood mixer

which was relaunched as the A700 Chef.

This machine virtually made new foodstuffs

because it was so powerful

and would grind up or pulp up or mash or shred or whatever

almost anything in sight!

We had them in the office and you could mix concrete in the damn thing!

-#

-Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp

-#

-Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

-#

High employment, new prosperity and the freedom to pay in easy stages

when the Government waived restrictions on hire purchase in 1954

meant we'd never had it so good.

'Had that expectation of ownership

'not been sewn and had not become commonplace,

'I reckon the '50s wouldn't have been nearly as rich

'in the products that came forward had people had to find the money and put it down.'

But that was the introduction of making things available.

There. In goes the butter and sugar.

Ken Wood's kitchen creation would soon make him one of Britain's youngest millionaires

thanks to housewives like Brenda Hamer's aunt

who'd had one of the first.

It was very unusual for someone to have a Kenwood in those days.

It was very special. I used to go off to her house and cook with it.

Make cakes.

In a way it sort of became like an icon

for future prosperity in the home.

This one thing.

The rest of the home might be a bit tatty

but if you'd got this thing in the home, you were well on the way to being a successful family.

Brenda inherited her mixer from her aunt

and it's still going strong today.

It was a real asset in the kitchen

because at home we'd just use the normal wooden spoon.

So a machine was a great labour-saving device.

So 60 years on, this gadget also has its own diamond jubilee.

Happy birthday, Kenwood mixer!

-#

-Who put the bop In the bop shoo bop shoo bop

-#

-Who put the dip In the dip da dip da dip?

-#

What a marvellous film that was.

It's amazing to think that back then

there were so few things that housewives could use.

Do you remember your first gadget that came into your house?

The first gadget that really meant anything to me was the fridge.

-Yes.

-Before that, Mum used to put the milk in the cupboard

and keep it in the shade, trying to keep it as cool as possible.

After a day or so, it would always go off anyway.

My nan used to put it in a bucket of water, just to try and keep things cold.

For me, I remember when my mum got a washing machine.

-Top loader with a mangle on it.

-Mangle on the top.

It used to be right up against the sink

and the washing would be done and then out and into the mangle.

-Yeah.

-Then onto the washing line.

-For a woman, that was like...

-Yeah, because before that,

I remember my mum putting it in like this boiler thing

-and boiling it all up.

-Then the big mangle.

-The huge mangle outside. The outdoor mangle.

-Yeah. Or using the old scrubbing board. Wash board.

-Wash board.

It's truly amazing. And you know, the bloke who was on that little film

invented the parking meter!

-Nice guy!

-Give him one!

-I liked him until I was told that!

Anyway, now it's back into the newsreel archive

for another decade-defining moment of the '50s.

The 22nd September 1955 marked the launch of commercial telly.

And a whole new world of advertising.

Do you remember what the first ever British TV ad was?

I do!

-NEWSREEL:

-The Independent Television Act was passed by both houses of Parliament.

When this new act became law in 1954,

it gave the go-ahead for Britain's first commercial TV channel, ATV.

But only those in the know recognised the cut-throat competition

that was then unleashed behind the scenes in the advertising world.

I and my team were all very excited about what we were doing.

We felt a bit like pioneers of some kind.

But then, I guess, so did everybody in our rival agencies across London

who were all doing the same thing.

Brian Palmer was a copywriter at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam.

He was one of many ad men hoping their ad would get the prestigious first slot on launch night.

Another young hopeful, and Brian's competitor

was Archie Pitcher from Ogilvies.

I was very young and just in the business for a couple of years.

And of course the advent of the prospect of television,

commercial television, was really quite fantastic.

The shine of the new venture had been somewhat tarnished

by church leaders, teachers, university professors and MPs,

who all lined up to bash the new commercial channel.

The BBC were against it because it didn't conform to the Reithian idea

and introduced competition into their monopoly.

Winston Churchill was against it. Aneurin Bevan and a lot of parliamentarians

just thought it was not the right thing for Britain.

And that was tough and it was quite a difficult time

because you didn't know if it would actually happen.

But happen it did, and the ad agencies swung into action.

They were under starter's orders.

'It's fresh as ice. It's Gibbs S.R. toothpaste.'

Brian started filming his ad for Gibbs S.R. toothpaste.

But there were teething problems!

Well, it's obvious once you start thinking of it,

that filming a block of ice under red hot lights,

which you had in those days, is not going to be a very easy thing to do!

Archie also had trouble getting his Batchelor peas ad together, too.

-#

-Here is the news concerning Batchelors wonderful peas.

-#

We had endless rehearsals to get the ditty right.

Over and over again as one has to do for that kind of thing.

Eventually, it was in the can and off we went.

-#

-You can be sure that the time's always right

-#

-For Batchelors wonderful peas!

-#

Both men waited with bated breath to see whose commercial would be shown first

as this coveted slot was chosen by lottery.

'Studio, staff and technical equipment have all been assembled.

A new public service is about to be launched over the rooftops of London.'

Launch night arrived.

But to many people's surprise, the BBC tried to stage a spoiler

with a cliff-hanger from The Archers.

-ON RADIO:

-What's gone wrong?

-She's...dead.

It didn't really spoil the launch of ITV

because people were there at 6.45. ATV wasn't launched until 8.22.

So it wasn't really the spoiler that perhaps the BBC had planned to do.

At last the great night came.

We were actually going to be on the air. We knew we'd be somewhere on that first night.

It was a very exciting night. We all gathered there in the agency, Ogilvies,

and waited with huge anticipation.

And I invite all our viewers to a great evening's entertainment.

Each of our two ad men craved that all-important first slot

which would only be revealed on screen.

The first break came. A star burst on the screen.

And wow! There was our ad. We were so thrilled!

Gibbs S.R.

They actually cheered when the Batchelors peas ad came on.

We were over the moon!

-#

-Wonderful peas!

-#

But the television ad didn't quite live up to its hype.

ITV nearly sank without trace.

I used to have a dreadful time with my hair.

It was so dry and unmanageable.

Britain wasn't quite ready for it in '55,

but within a year, ITV's ratings outstripped those of the BBC

and by the end of the '50s, they had grabbed a quarter of every sort of advertising revenue.

Commercial television and TV ads had truly arrived.

We perhaps didn't realise that we were building something

that has grown and been a real contribution to the nation.

I thought it was actually the beginning of the consumer revolution.

It really was what sparked off the next 50 years of the way we lived.

Hi-Fi lipstick. New because it stays on till you take it off.

A new automatic refill that clicks into a new celebrity case.

New high-fidelity colours.

'An entirely new exciting lipstick.

Hi-Fi, a new kind of lipstick from Max Factor!

Wow! That brought back some memories.

-Lovely to have you with us, Archie.

-Thank you.

How was that? Was it like Mad Men,

all going for it in those days of advertising?

It wasn't quite like Mad Men, cos it was a very serious business.

People were very ill-informed about how to do it.

And we were reaching out technically to find as much knowledge

about how to make commercials as we could find.

Later, a lot of very key top directors

cut their teeth on making commercials.

Karel Reisz, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker.

Fantastic. That's how they started their careers.

But in the time that we're talking about here, '55,

and the run-up to that, we were casting around for people

who had some know-how and knowledge either from America, from the BBC, dare I say it,

and also from the cinema.

What about you? Do you remember Gibb S.R as the first advert, Marty?

-I wouldn't have remembered that.

-Do you remember any from that period?

Craven A, some of the cigarette ones with debonair men in trilby hats.

-It was all the big thing then, to smoke.

-Course it was.

It was cool! You did Batchelors peas. I nearly got a job

for Batchelors savoury rice.

There was a whole commercial thing going on.

I remember one of them was a couple of wrestlers in a grip

and one said, "Hurry up. I want to get home for my Batchelors... "

And I did a pilot thing in a tango and I was dancing round.

I went, "Let's get this over with and go home for some Batchelors savoury rice!"

Never got the job. If you'd been there, Archie, you'd have booked me?

-Would I?

-Course you would!

Anyway, I thought all that time

I used to look forward to the ads!

It's amazing. Now I try and fast-forward them!

But in those days it was so unusual. It was one of those things.

But great days and thanks a lot. Lovely. Anyway.

So, with the opportunity for greater TV exposure on two channels -

you can't imagine it, can you - two exciting channels and we were blown away!

Blimey, times have changed!

Many stars of stage and variety were having a go at making names on the telly.

People like Bob Monkhouse, Hughie Green, Bruce Forsyth.

Remember him? And of course the nation's darlings, The Beverley Sisters.

'In 1953, television was a new sensation.

'And so were three rising stars from East London.'

The Beverley Sisters!

-#

-Hi Li Hi Lo...

-#

Dressed identically and singing perky pop harmonies,

Teddy, Joy and Babs Beverley

can lay claim to being Britain's first girl group.

Today, twins Teddy and Babs have the same quirky charm that captured the nation's hearts

60 years ago.

Joy's sorry she can't be here today. She can't face the traffic on the M25!

She's 88, you see. She's entitled. We're 85, each of us.

The Beverley Sisters have been singing as long as they can remember.

Went to bed singing, woke up singing!

We inherited a talent to harmonise.

Nobody wanted to sing with a low voice, so we tossed up and I lost.

And then I was 55 years singing in my boots!

-#

-You never told me it was anything...

-#

As Britain switched on to television,

those who'd been working the variety circuit made the big leap to the small screen.

Stars like Bob Monkhouse, Hughie Green and Bruce Forsyth

would quickly make telly their own.

The BBC gave The Beverley Sisters their big TV break.

We were made for television. But we had to be very brave.

We were very shy, weren't we?

But all television then was live.

We did it all ourselves. Choreography, singing, lyrics.

If you see us on television, you may wonder why we're so...

One microphone for the three harmonies.

We had to stay absolutely still. You couldn't have a hand mic and move around.

-No such thing.

-One mic between us.

# Down in the valley #

We'd go to a television studio and do our show there

then we'd drive to a theatre and play there.

And then back to another theatre and back to the first theatre.

We were playing to several theatres a day plus television. Plus radio.

-We never thought about being celebrities or TV stars.

-Just got on with it.

-Yes.

But being famous was a mixed blessing.

Being a celebrity in those days, we couldn't go out for 20 years.

You'd be stopped all the time.

When Joy married England football captain Billy Wright in 1958,

it created as much excitement as the wedding of Posh and Becks 41 years later.

It was supposed to be a secret wedding when they got married.

We were working in the theatre every night

and Billy was playing for England at the time.

We didn't have many hours off.

-So we drove down to Poole in Dorset.

-It was a secret.

-A secret.

-Crowds hanging off the lamp posts!

-The crowd was so big we couldn't move.

-We couldn't get to...

-So Billy rolled down the window

-and called...

-"Policeman, what's going on here?

-"All these people..."

-"We want to get married and now there's this occasion going on."

And he said, "They're all here because you're getting married!"

Teddy and Babs found an unusual stand-in while Joy was honeymooning.

A young Bob Monkhouse!

-#

-While I'm babysitting

# And we'll sing a sweet... #

But the fun and games came with firm rules.

They were so strict, particularly with girls.

And we're not allowed to wear trousers. Did you know that?

Even when Joy went to a football match at Wembley with Billy Wright

he said, "Joy, they've told me to tell you not to wear trousers."

They were shocked. Not even to a football match.

-They were very smart trousers in those days.

-Not jeans like now!

Just trousers.

The censorship on young girls was terrible.

If they deemed it was sexy or saucy, out.

-We came over as goody-goody, but we were a bit naughty.

-A bit naughty.

Naughty, maybe, but oh, so nice!

-#

-Good night, my darling

-#

-Darling, I'm saying good night!

-#

Did you see those frocks? Nice!

-Beautiful hairstyles. Always immaculate.

-All those girls in those days.

Alma Cogan. They looked so lovely.

Pristine. Everything in place.

-Did you work with The Beverley Sisters?

-I would have done.

It's such a long time ago now!

-But you appeared on ATV in those days?

-I did.

-It must have helped your career.

-The Oh Boy! Show.

That was the best TV show I've ever been in in my life.

That brought forward people like myself.

It made Cliff, no question. And Billy Fury, artists like that,

wouldn't have had the impact without that show. It was phenomenal.

The thing was, back in those days, there were lots of variety shows

-that you could appear on.

-There was.

And also, weekends, you always looked forward to The Palladium.

Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Absolutely incredible.

-You must have appeared on that.

-I did.

-So many pop singers did in those days.

Yeah, I did.

I always feel Strictly Come Dancing is a bit like a variety show.

You've got dancing, the band, the singers, a bit of comedy from Bruce.

It's sort of got a variety feel to it.

-And they've got you!

-The old judge in the middle! What more could you want?

-Fabulous. Lovely, The Beverley Sisters.

-They were.

-Yeah.

Now, as all of you lovers of retro know,

the '50s are stuffed full of brilliant style.

Some furniture and fabrics from that time are regarded as classics.

I mean, just look what we have here.

We're sitting on a fortune here, Marty.

I think we are. Ooh, that's lovely.

New materials, new prints, new designers.

After the dark days of the war, doors opened for a new generation

with fresh eyes on the world about them.

-NEWSREEL:

-If you like really modern things,

if you've seen the light, as designers say,

you'll be fascinated by the latest collection of contemporary furniture

by Christopher and Anthony Heal.

It was out with the old and in with the new.

Ironing boards, trolleys and pull-out beds were all '50s innovations

as were these clever ideas.

Among the novel ideas is this cocktail cabinet by Nigel Walters

fitted with a simple device that enables the door to be opened out into a bar.

An idea long overdue is this dining table

that can be adjusted to three heights by a simple lever movement even when fully laden.

It can be used at normal height or lowered if you're in an armchair.

Solving the problem of the small bedroom, here's a practical suite

designed in pine and painted metal by Ernest Race.

It wasn't only furniture that was being reinvented.

Mary White had a new take on floral fabrics

that was bang on trend.

A young art student at the beginning of the decade,

Mary drew on her childhood love of plants for her design inspiration.

We used to go out into the country and take lots and lots of photographs.

Then I would sit down and doodle

and then I would sketch them into a pattern,

make sure it was in repeat.

My boyfriend persuaded me to go to London with my folder of designs.

It was a bit cheeky, I think!

I would just go and say, "Would you be interested in looking at my designs?"

It was all knocking at the door and trying.

Mary's designs would go on to become synonymous with the 1950s

as new technology brought fabrics like hers to a hungry mass market

as curtains and cushions.

A machine like this engraves the copper-plated rollers

which print coloured fabrics.

The pattern has been cut onto a metal plate.

By following the grooves in this,

the operator can repeat the design many times over on the roller.

I sold to other firms in London.

Then I started to go up to Manchester.

Eventually, I had so much money we bought a new car, a Vauxhall Velox, six cylinder.

It was smashing!

Mary wasn't the only young designer making a splash in the '50s.

The Festival of Britain in 1951

showcased the best in new British design

and the crowds flocked in.

The daughter of furniture makers,

Cheryl Shear had backstage access in the run-up to the festival opening.

I used to visit with my parents at the weekend

because they were installing the furniture in the Festival Hall.

There was the whole vitality of all these designers we were mixing with.

Among them was Robin Day, not the television personality,

but a young designer, a man with bold ideas on the new '50s style.

I know that some people feel modern furniture is strange and unsympathetic.

But I think the best of it does carry on the traditions of historic design.

That is, it does solve the problems of today

with the methods of today.

Across Britain, factories were looking at new ways of working with wood.

Cheryl's dad ran the Hille furniture company

and collaborated with Robin to make a chair

that stacked.

I'm sitting in the Robin Day Hille stack chair

which he designed at the beginning of the decade in 1950.

He was able to use our technology

to produce a ply-laminated chair.

Robin came up with the ingenious way of moulding the plywood

in different curves

to produce these curved backs and seats

to produce a really flexible and very light chair.

Of course, selling these new designs required radical thinking too.

My brother-in-law, on trying to sell it to the GLC for schools,

actually dropped it from the third floor of the GLC building

and fortunately, it didn't break. I think it landed on all fours.

And we did manage to get the order.

1950s designers were changing the way we looked at the world around us.

Everything had been very austere during the war.

Suddenly we had all this excitement of colour, of shapes, new materials, new technology.

As a child, it all seemed very exciting.

It started a whole new era of design in the UK.

And those pioneering designs, like Mary White's fabrics,

are coming full circle, proving as popular today as they were in 1952.

I feel very chuffed to think that my designs are coming back into fashion.

I'm still inspired by shapes.

I look at the trees outside.

Beautiful.

And to think that lady, as a young girl,

designed such an iconic cushion cover or whatever it was.

It's absolutely great.

-A great achievement.

-And as fresh now, 60 years later, as it was then.

-Hasn't done bad, has it?

-It's good.

Have you got anything from the '50s? Iconic bits of kit?

I've got a lovely big juke box. The thing I love about it is it's got a big dial.

A couple of dials, and you spin the dial up. A120, or whatever.

Then you press it and the arm comes over.

-Up it comes and then turns.

-That's right.

-Down it goes. Then the arm comes across. They were wonderful.

-Great sound, as well.

I loved the coffee bars. We had one open in Welwyn high street.

And it was like being in America!

-You had a glass cup and a saucer.

-Real coffee.

-Real coffee.

A big machine. Yeah. Nine pence, it was.

You wanted to sit in there as long as you could

-so you'd sip it.

-Keep the girl in there, as well!

There was about an inch of froth and a drop of coffee! Mmm!

Fabulous! I'll tell you what, Marty,

I could talk to you all day.

-It's been so much pleasure for me.

-My pleasure.

Thank you.

Well, all good things must come to an end.

I'll be here tomorrow with even more fabulous '50s tales.

We've got spies, we've got smog, we've got the class divide

and we've got calypso.

And they're all told by you.

That's me. My barrow's outside. Ta-ra for now. Bye-ee!

See you later!

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