Ingot Pictorial No. 17

The steel industry: the men engage with gigantic machines on a huge scale; the apprentice boys help and holiday; the women have their hair done with the stars.

You can’t beat the steel industry for size. “A big ‘un” – a 20-tonne slag bowl - is seen being cast at Richard Thomas & Baldwins’ Landore Foundry, and the second largest excavator in the world is used for development work at Scunthorpe. Small can be beautiful, though, and women operatives are used to provide a touch of glamour via hair make-overs at Merton Park Studios. Meanwhile, Ebbw Vale apprentices help out by working hard and are rewarded with an adventure holiday.

The Ingot Pictorials, quarterly screen reviews, were produced for a decade (1949-1959) for Richard Thomas & Baldwins by the Film Producers’ Guild, a collective (Verity Films, Technical and Scientific Films, Greenpark Films) operating mainly from 1940s-1980s. The Guild owned Merton Park Studios which explains the location for the hair make-overs seen here. The reviews were intended to be of interest to the steelworkers and their families and friends, each containing stories of developments in the industry and sports and social activities sponsored by the company. There were also personal stories from particular worker’s lives, as here the “bicycle made by two”.