This is one of a large collection of films from the Rowntree Archive that YFA has recently been able to restore and digitise with the aid of Nestlé funding.  The collection mainly consists of adverts, many dating from the 1950s onwards, covering just about every product that Rowntree has produced over this period. There is also film of aspects of the lives of the employees, as well as of the Rowntree family in the 1930s – see Rowntree Sports Day. It is claimed that Mr York of York, Yorks –...

This is one of a large collection of films from the Rowntree Archive that YFA has recently been able to restore and digitise with the aid of Nestlé funding.  The collection mainly consists of adverts, many dating from the 1950s onwards, covering just about every product that Rowntree has produced over this period. There is also film of aspects of the lives of the employees, as well as of the Rowntree family in the 1930s – see Rowntree Sports Day. It is claimed that Mr York of York, Yorks – also sometimes called Meet Mr. York - A Speaking Likeness – is the first animated advertisement to be made with synchronised sound. 

The animation and direction of the film was done by Joe Noble, who also plays these parts in the film (closely resembling the cameraman!).  At the age of 23 Joe joined Mitchell’s Pictures in Shaftesbury Avenue as an art title designer. It was whilst here that he came into contact with Dudley Buxton making silent cartoon films in the same building, resulting in his working for Kine Komedy Kartoons, then the BJ Film Producing Co.. He went on to work for Pathé and work on a number of animated sequences, including a doleful Dalmatian named Dismal Desmond, Pongo the Pup and Sammy and Sausage. In his obituary of Joe Noble, Ken Clark states that: “Early in 1928 he was granted a master patent for a sound cartoon film system, and in November he released the first British talking cartoon, ‘Orace the ‘Armonious’ Ound’, later completing the first animated sound-film commercial, ‘Mr York of York, Yorks’.” He continued to work for Pathé, writing and directing live-action films and providing the occasional animated insert (see also The life and films of Joe Noble, References). The apology at the end is to Alfred Leete an illustrator for, among others, Punch magazine, who designed the famous First World War Lord Kitchener poster.

In the mid-1920s, although Rowntree were doing reasonably well, they were still falling behind both Terry’s and Cadbury’s; which Seebohm Rowntree put down to the latter’s investment in better production techniques. In particular they had lost the milk chocolate market to Cadbury’s. In response to this situation Rowntree extended into the market for cheaper products, and expanded production outside of York. But it also changed its policy to take advertising more seriously, with a view to creating consumer recognition of their products. In a letter to The Press of 28th May 2009, Steven Burkeman of the Rowntree Society, states that: “Seebohm Rowntree, Joseph’s son, was the company chair at the time. Joseph had opposed the use of advertising, because he worried about the false claims which so many advertisers made – at that time, Quakers believed that if a product was of sufficient quality, it would sell itself.” But competition dictated a change of stance, moving away from the belief in just having high value products and deriding the ‘cinema-going frame of mind’.

In January 1925 Rowntree introduced a new plain chocolate and the cheerful character of Mr York to promote it. He resembled other advertising figures of the time, such as Johnny Walker of Scotch Whisky fame (not the BBC dj), meant to portray straight dealing and honesty. Mr York was used extensively, appearing in newspaper ads throughout the world, fronting a new ‘Trip to York’ game, placed on the Headboard of a Rowntree's special train for its employees and even featured on rulers.  His image was everywhere – there is a photograph of ‘Plain Mr York of York Yorks’ visiting an orphanage in Montreal Canada, in a stage coach and handing out free chocolate (Murphy, References).

The car featuring in the film was no accident: there was a Rowntree’s Motoring Chocolate bar; associating it with the newly discovered joys that cars were creating. By emphasising the way the chocolate is consumed – on holiday, whilst being at the seaside – Rowntree were early on helping to shape the pattern of advertising that continues to this day. As can be seen from the film, starting out promoting plain chocolate, he later goes on to sell ‘milk’ chocolate, which Rowntree had too easily conceded to Cadbury. In the wake of the Great Crash of October 1929 a Sales Committee was set up to oversee selling and advertising. By 1930 Rowntree was in a perilous position that was to be turned around during the 1930s by new blood in sales and marketing; among them George Harris who went on to become Chairman in 1941.

Yet in making Mr York of York, Yorks Rowntree certainly stole a march on their competitors. Animated film had been around since the earliest days of film with, for example, the British Birt Acres’ short ‘Tom Merry’ animations of 1896.  Others soon followed, by animators such as Walter Booth and the Anglo-American James Stewart Blackton. In France Emile Courter (aka Emile Cohl) was experimenting with cartoon films for Gaumont. In the US Winsor McCay, a comic-strip animator for New York Herald, created comic strips from 1904 onwards. The form really took off in 1919 with Felix the Cat, created by animator Otto Messmer in the Pat Sullivan Studios.

The earliest surviving stop-motion advertising film was an English short by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper called Matches: An Appeal (1899), developed for the Bryant and May Matchsticks company. But the full use of animation in advertisements really goes back to Raoul Barré in the US in 1910; establishing his Animated Cartoon Studio in New York in 1913. In fact Walt Disney was originally an advertising cartoonist at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. By the time of 1929 there were many other animated commercials around: including, ‘Mr. ... Goes Motoring’, a Shell ad animated by David Barker and designed by H.M. Bateman; and ‘The Boy who Wanted to Make Pictures’, a Kodak commercial also from Barker and Bateman (see The Lost Continent, References).

Sound on film had been developed in 1922, although it wasn’t until Fox’s Movietone produced a synchronised sound system in 1927 – two years ahead of Pathé – that it become commercial. This was soon followed by the first ‘talkie’ feature film, The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. Sound had been introduced into animation by the Fleischer Brothers, whose mid-1920s ‘Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes’ featured a soundtrack. But the first cartoon with post-produced synchronized soundtrack was Steamboat Willie, when it was re-released with sound on November 18, 1928: to be quickly followed by other Mickey Mouse films from 1928, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho.

Alongside the huge growth in moving image advertising, first in cinema and later with TV, there came a massive development in market research. This even came to dominate much psychological research. Rowntree employed the National Institute for Industrial Psychology to carry out market research for the launch of Black Magic in January 1933. This discovered that the majority of chocolate is bought by men for women – chocolate cravings are admitted by 15% of men and around 40% of women – see also the Context for Rowntree Sports Day.

Cacoa (from cacao) beans consumption can be traced back to 500 A.D and ancient Mayan civilization. Discovered by Columbus and brought to Europe by Hernando Cortez in the 16th century, it wasn’t until the 19th century that it ceased to be a luxury item, and not until 1879 that a Swiss chocolate manufacturer, Daniel Peter, combined it with powdered milk (invented by Swiss Chemist Henri Nestle in 1867) to make milk chocolate. Then another Swiss confectioner, Rodolphe Lindt, invented conching, adding cocoa butter, to produce a smooth creamy cocoa mass.  This was introduced into Briatin first by Fry in 1902 and Cadbury in 1905. Despite some reports to the contrary, the Swiss are still the leading consumers of chocolate, well outstripping Britain, who are seventh.

Chocolate has many properties, including being psychoactive, and many claims have been made for its value for good health: such as protecting against heart disease and helping to produce a good mood. Whatever the reality is of the many studies – and some are funded by chocolate manufacturers – it has a history of being associated with slavery, which continues even today, with campaigners maintaining that production often involves trafficked or exploited child labour. Which is why the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has urged consumers to opt for that marked ‘Fairtrade’, and was pleased by the arrival in January 2010 of Nestlé’s Fairtrade KitKats.

References

Sophie Coe, The true history of chocolate, Thames & Hudson, 2003.

John Grant, Masters of Animation, B T Batsford, London, 2001.

Robert Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution 1862-1969

Joe Murphy, The History of Rowntree’s in Old Photographs, York Publishing Services, 2007.

Gillian Wagner, The Chocolate Conscience, Chatto & Windus, 1987

Steven Burkeman letter to The Press

Ken Clark, A tribute to Joe Noble, The Animator, 11, Winter 1984.

Film Site, Animated Films

The life and films of Joe Noble, The Lost Continent

The World Atlas of Chocolate

Mood Food, Chocolate and Depressive Symptoms in a Cross-sectional Analysis

Moderate Chocolate Consumption Linked to Lower Risks of Heart Failure, Study Finds

Chocolate References

StopChocolateSlavery

If that chocolate is not Fairtrade, then don’t buy it, says the Archbishop of York

Fairtrade KitKat