This film was made by Alan Pickard who worked for Waddingtons at this time and who was an amateur film maker.  It isn’t known for sure if anyone else was involved in making it, as no information came with the film when it was donated by Selby College, and it has no credits. It appears to be a promotional film, done in a professional fashion. Companies often did make films of their products and manufacturing process, and the YFA has a variety of these from the 1930s through to the 1970s....

This film was made by Alan Pickard who worked for Waddingtons at this time and who was an amateur film maker.  It isn’t known for sure if anyone else was involved in making it, as no information came with the film when it was donated by Selby College, and it has no credits. It appears to be a promotional film, done in a professional fashion. Companies often did make films of their products and manufacturing process, and the YFA has a variety of these from the 1930s through to the 1970s. 


This film was made by Alan Pickard who worked for Waddingtons at this time and who was an amateur film maker.  It isn’t known for sure if anyone else was involved in making it, as no information came with the film when it was donated by Selby College, and it has no credits. It appears to be a promotional film, done in a professional fashion. Companies often did make films of their products and manufacturing process, and the YFA has a variety of these from the 1930s through to the 1970s. 

Alan gained an apprenticeship as an engineer in York and obtained employment – according to his second wife, Joyce Pickard, in rather unorthodox fashion – for the games manufacturer Waddingtons in Leeds.  His talents for filming and for innovation, and his qualities as a fun loving person, were clearly recognised and these seem to have been fully exploited by Waddingtons.  He edited the works journal, and was given the job of coming up with and testing new ideas, making the most of his natural sense of fun. These he would test on himself, playing new games with his friends and family (not a bad job!).


Alan Pickard’s father was a professional photographer and his photographic knowledge passed on to his son. Alan used this in a number of films he made during the 1930s and into the 1950s. One of his early ones, made before he was married, is Grand Prix Di Pozzo, a comical film using stop motion animation, made about 10 years before this film of Waddingtons.  Whilst with Waddingtons Alan went on a time and motion course in the 1930s. Around the turn of the century the American engineer A W Taylor developed a set of principles for use in workplaces, which he elaborated in his book, Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. 


These principles, which become the basis of scientific management (also known as Taylorism), became extremely influential, and out of them came, among many other things, time and motion studies. Alan Pickard had the idea of filming the manufacturing processes before and after changes to working practices were introduced, in order to test the difference they made. Undoubtedly these other films would have served as a trial for the film that is seen here.  


Perhaps coincidentally, maybe not, both A W Taylor and Alan Pickard were Quakers. In fact a good many innovative manufacturers, like the Rowntrees, were; as were many of the filmmakers featured on YFA Online. It was these convictions that led to Alan being a conscientious objector in the Second World War. At the end of the war Alan visited war torn Germany as part of the Quaker Friends Relief Society – in order to raise money to help in relief projects. He filmed much of the devastation and severe hardship he witnessed in While Germany Waits (1945). See also the Context for Grand Prix Di Pozzo.

Waddington’s were founded by John Waddington and Wilson Barrett in the nineteenth century, starting off as a small printing firm producing posters and programmes for theatre productions as well as other things.  It later began printing playing cards and board games for which it became renown.  Some of its most notable games include Sorry, Subbuteo, Monopoly and Cluedo.  During the Second World War Monopoly was used as a means to help British prisoners of war escape. Allowed to be included as part of humanitarian packages, the British Secret Service concealed within cut-out compartments in the boxes a compass, small metal tools, such as files, and silk maps (by far and away the best material). 


Coincidentally, John Waddington Ltd had mastered the difficult art of printing on silk and also happened to be the U.K. licensee for the game of Monopoly.  They fully co-operated in this operation.  Victor Watson, who retired as chairman of the company in 1993, states that, "It [Waddingtons] made a name for itself for being able to print on silk," and that Waddingtons, "in the pre-war era was printing on silk for theatre programs, for celebration events for royalty and that kind of thing." It is estimated that some 10,000 prisoners of war used the maps to escape (see Heussner).


Waddingtons also bought the rights to Subbuteo after England's 1966 World Cup triumph, and this became extremely popular, continuing so until the recent dominance of computer games.  In the run up to the Second World War the toy industry was becoming very competitive, with several well-established brands alongside Waddington, such as Meccano, and the German companies Märklin and Spear. In 1929 Eiichiro Tomiyama founded Tomy, setting underway a huge future growth in the industry in Japan. Often assembling and packaging would be leased out to companies in other countries.

In his book, Roger Tilley writes of two sets of legends relating the origins of playing cards, in both they were apparently invented as a means of relief from boredom (see References).  One story relates to the harems of the Chou Dynasty in China (112-255 BC); the other to the neglected wife of an unidentified Indian Maharajah.  Other sources put the origins of playing cards to Korea. One noted collector of playing cards at the end of the nineteenth century, the British China Consular Sir William Wilkinson, argued for the Chinese origins of European playing cards, although the evidence for this is weak. Of greater resemblance to European cards are those from Persia. Tilley states that there is a strong case for the Crusaders, among many other things, bringing back with them playing cards which originated with the Saracens (Arabs or Muslims).

But playing cards as we now know them first make their appearance in Europe in the second half of the fourteenth century, though none remain from this time. Exactly where they originated is a matter of speculation, although Tilley argues a case for Italy during the Renaissance – possibly from an artist painting miniatures, or as an educational tool. The first known packs are for Charles VI of France, from 1392. These were in fact tarot cards, with the four suites representing either the four virtues (Justice, Fortitude, Charity and Faith), or the four classes of medieval society (Church, Military, Merchants and Peasants). The meanings of the symbols on the cards – especially the trumps, which seems to have a separate origin, possibly with heretics during the Inquisition – has given rise to endless speculation. Tilley provides a detailed explanation of the symbolic meaning of the trumps, which he claims heretics, in particular the Waldenses, could use to propagate their beliefs in secret without being found out by the ever watchful inquisition.

The modern form of the four suites – hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades – is put by Wikipedia as originating in France around 1480, though Tilley puts it earlier at about 1430. However, these are not universal, and different suites can be found in other European countries.  The French are also responsible for the basic design of the high cards, from before 1516, although this has been much distorted. The extensive entry in Wikipedia also claims that the place of the ace as being high or low, hence ‘ace high’, may derive from the French Revolution, symbolising the lower classes rising above the aristocracy; and that the joker originated in the US around 1870 as the third trump in the game of euchre.

These symbolic images on playing cards makes for a fascinating history, as it mutates across the ages and from country to country, functioning for much more than a simple leisure game. Compared with the often unimaginative cards of today, the range of cards and their illustrations is astonishing. In the 17th and 18th centuries cards often had a propaganda or satirical intent. In the 1830s several inventors began printing coloured cards. One of these, Thomas de la Rue, is credited with making the first modern cards, electrotyping on enamelled paper.  Despite surviving near bankruptcy, de la Rue was selling more than one hundred thousand packs a year by 1850 (with the family business making a fortune from printing everything from envelopes, to postage stamps to banknotes). Cards continued to represent anything under the sun (and beyond), especially during times of war. Card manufacturers would often issue commemorative packs, as Waddington did in 1893 to mark the wedding of the future King George V and Queen Mary, then for his coronation, and then again for the crowning of Queen Mary, the Queen Consort. Later, Waddingtons introduced novelty shapes, with circular cards in the 1920s, barrel shaped cards in the 1950s and Zulu shaped cards in 1959. 

The other game shown in the film, Lexicon, consists of lettered cards each having a different value. There are three different ways that Lexicon can be played – Master Lexicon, Lexicon Riddance and Lexicon Criss Cross – but all these games revolve around making words.  It was first marketed by Waddingtons in 1930, and has changed little since then.

Many card games have now passed into history.   Perhaps still the most authoritative source on the rules of card games is Hoyle’s Games book, written by Edmond Hoyle the English barrister and writer, who wrote several works on card games in the late eighteenth century. The Hamlyn Illustrated Book of Card Games, Hamlyn lists about 200 card games, but this ignores many card games played in European countries, often with packs different to the usual 52 card pack most commonly in use here. In 1994, the US toy giant Hasbro bought the rights from Waddingtons for £50m, moving production from Britain to Ireland and Spain; but their cards, Waddingtons Number 1, are still the most popular in the UK.

References

George F Hervey, The Hamlyn Illustrated book of Card Games, Hamlyn, London, 1973.

Roger Tilley, A History of Playing Cards, Studio Vista, London, 1973.

Nicholas Whittaker, Toys Were Us: a 20th century history of toys, Orion, 2001.

Ki Mae Heussner,ABC News, Get Out of Jail Free: Monopoly's Hidden Maps