The first post-war Christmas in America and the rush is on to reconnect the customer with their peace-time duty to consume. American industries found it much easier to adapt the production lines to cater for the consumer than their British counterparts where resilience had been shattered by the ravages of war and a desperate shortage of labour, compounded by decades of under-investment. It would take the UK economy a decade to recover to the point the US economy reached in 12 months. This small selection features some great illustrators, including Haddon Sundblom’s exuberant pageant of blissful parenthood for Coca-Cola and Constantin Alajolov’s witty sequence of multiple Santas for Arrow Shirts. The big Christmas crowd pleasing movie of 1945 was “The Bells of St. Mary’s” with Bing Crosby (Father O’Malley) and Ingrid Bergman (Sister Mary Benedict) – a sentimental tale based in a Roman Catholic inner-city school. For those whose taste ran to darker themes, both “Scarlet Street” and “Spellbound” were released in December 1945.
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