Dont know why I picked these two items but I have.

The Kodak advertisment comes from a publication called The Studio Review of 1950 and obviously seeks to capitalise on the release of Walt Disney’s Treasure Island – as a child one of my first memories of the cinema.

Walt Disney was a proclaimed master at promoting a film in the lead up to its release and afterwards too – as  anyone who was around at the time of Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier will know.   I bet most could still sing  the song from the film although they would by now have discarded the Davy Crockett hats which we all wore at the time.

The first post I did in July of this year featured Treasure Island – well I had to start off somewhere and in terms of 50s films it wasn’t a bad place to start. The boy in the picture does look a bit like Bobby Driscoll, who played  Jim Hawkins but Jim Hawkins but its not him.

We then jump a few years to May 10th 1956 by which time TV was in full swing and one of the most memorable series EVER made was The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene.

Made by Sapphire Films it became a great success in the USA.

Who could forget that thrilling opening sequence as the arrow thuds into an oak tree with rousing music accompanying it, so  setting the scene for the excitement of the next half hour. It’s funny how little things lodge in the memory because I do remember one of the episodes called  ‘The Goldmaker’ which had Alfie Bass playing that  part,  an actor we all think of as Bootsie from The Army Game and later ‘Bootsie and Snudge’.  He also had a small part in a film from the fifties that fascinates me called ‘ ‘The Night My Number Came Up’ about a dream of impending doom that becomes a self fulfiiling prophecy on a military transport plane in the far east. I will save that one for another day though.

I do recall the slogan ‘Ilford Films for Faces and Places’ at the time and I have to say that based on the above it would seem that Ilford came out on top here although it’s fair to say it was published some 5  years after the Kodak one.

In a way it just shows how the world moves on even in a few short years.