In his book Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, Timothy Burke considers the advertising strategies of Lux within Africa. Burke explains that from the early 1940s Lux was ‘pitched to African consumers as the definitional essence of glamour and “smart” – commercial codewords for the African elite’. ‘Lifebuoy and Sunlight worked off hygienic imagery linked to Christian morality, labour and domesticity’, he noted, ‘while Lux mined another vein of ideology about manners and bodies, the thread that dealt with “modern living” and “civilised fashion”’ (Burke, 1996, 156).

Initially advertisements for Lux within the African media used white models or female film stars ‘to define images of beauty for black women to follow’. These advertisements carried lines like ‘Lux Toilet Soap is pure, you can see that because it is white’ and were often reprinted from “white” newspapers like the Rhodesia Herald. By the 1960s skin lighteners were widely advertised in Rhodesia and aimed at ‘men and women who want a lighter, smoother skin’ (Burke, 1996, 156). The relationship between whiteness and cleanliness, and also whiteness and professional success permeated these advertisements.

Advertisements for Lux also emphasised the power that women could exercise through these beauty products. ‘Women were advised that they could use a given product to enhance their sexual control over men’, wrote Burke, ‘while appeals to male audiences often depicted a forlorn man who has been persistently rejected by women because he is not yet hygienic or “smart” in his use of commodities’ (Burke, 1996, 158). The claim that ‘nine out of ten’ film stars used Lux was first adopted in 1928 after the J. Walter Thompson agency sent cases of Lux soap to every Hollywood actress and director. Jane Gaines argued that the Lux campaign was ‘one of the earliest attempts to tie up a brand-name product with motion pictures on a national scale’ (Gaines, 1990, 40).

Mary’s Lucky Day was produced by Films of Africa, a company founded by James Blake Dalrymple with the assistance of his brother-in-law Dick Peel. Dalrymple, a Scottish director, who had produced during the 1930s a large number of educational and travel films with John Elder, emigrated to Rhodesia a few years after the War. Geoffrey Mangin described Dalrymple’s company Films of Africa as the ‘very first commercial producer’ in the Federation and explained that they ‘produced sound films to screen to the indigenous peoples; mainly productions sponsored by the Tea Bureau, Lever Bros and the cigarette manufacturers including some excellent advertising comedies with up and coming local black actors’. Mangin noted that ‘most were for 16mm mobile cinemas both in the townships and rural areas’ (Mangin, 1998, 31).

The work of Films of Africa did in some ways challenge that of the Central African Film Unit (CAFU). In 1953 Vernon Brelsford, a writer, administrator and supporter of CAFU criticised Dalrymple’s slapstick comedies, which he insisted ‘disrupt the instructional atmosphere of many film shows’. His comments followed a scathing attack on CAFU by Dalrymple, who wrote to the Prime Minister of the Federation earlier in the year insisting that ‘an instructional film need not be dull, but can be amusing and exciting’. He criticised what he perceived as the amateurish and lifeless qualities of the CAFU films, yet James Burns suggested that Dalrymple’s attitudes ‘were hardly more enlightened’. He argued that Dalrymple’s ‘own films for Africans used simple techniques, contained comically deceptive advertising promises, and are astonishing in their racist imagery’ (Burns, 2002, 146-147). He quotes Mary’s Lucky Day as an example of the ‘racism of Dalrymple’s oeuvre’, describing the film as a story ‘of an African domestic who, thanks to Lux soap – which makes her several shades lighter – snares a husband’ (Burns, 2002, 239).

The music within Mary’s Lucky Day was provided by De Black Evening Follies who were, according to Thomas Turino, ‘perhaps the most famous of all the “concert” ensembles’ within Rhodesia. They performed, with shifting personnel, between 1943 and the 1960s and at the time of this film were lead by Sonny Sondo, the singer, dancer and comedian (Turino, 2000, 130).