Original subtitles

This London department store

holds some incredible secrets...

..and the unique story of a man

who rose from rags to riches...

to take the American Dream across the Atlantic.

Harry Gordon Selfridge was the maverick that shook up British society.

He knew what the customer wanted

and gave it to them in style -

transforming ordinary shopping into an extraordinary adventure.

He was a genius from nine to five, a fool at the weekend.

This is the true story of Selfridges department store

and the visionary American who built it.

This program is made possible by contributions to your PBS station

from viewers like you.

On London's world-famous Oxford Street...

..one building stands imperious above the rest.

This is Selfridges.

Founded in 1909,

over a century it has become an icon of the capital.

I can't imagine Oxford Street without Selfridges.

Selfridges is an institution - a neo-classical gem.

Twice voted 'Best Department Store in the World'...

..it holds 13 acres of retail space,

spread over six floors.

A huge food hall, nine restaurants

and three storeys of women's fashion.

Selfridges has an entire department

dedicated solely to tailor-made denim.

It boasts Europe's largest designer shoe gallery.

And the aptly-named Wonder Room,

stocks only the most luxurious brands.

The modern store is a commercial success story.

In 2012, it posted profits of $200 million.

But Selfridges' significance

goes far beyond commercial success.

It has an astonishing hidden history.

The store helped change British society -

liberating women, shattering class divisions

and reinventing shopping.

Selfridges is the department store

that shook up old Britain.

And at its heart is an enigma -

founder and inspiration, Harry Gordon Selfridge.

The American outsider who came to be known as 'The Earl of Oxford Street'.

This man gave Britain energy

and he gave us excitement for shopping.

And he brought this American 'can do' approach.

Until recently this retail genius and irrepressible personality

had been almost forgotten.

Now, through private documents, family archives

and expert interviews

Selfridge's story has been pieced together once again.

His biographer, Lindy Woodhead,

has been at the forefront of his rediscovery.

Harry Selfridge himself is little known in America.

And I was talking to an historian

at the Chicago Institute about this,

and I asked her why there was so little written about Harry in America.

And she said, 'Oh, well, my dear, probably because he left us.

And she said, 'Is there much written about him in London?'

And I said 'No'. And she said, 'Well, why is that?'

I said probably because he was an American.

So now we can fuse the two together

and Harry's come home.

It seems Selfridge's destiny was shaped by his childhood.

A totally self-made man -

he was molded and motivated by severe hardship.

Adversity within the family will always mold a child.

Sometimes they won't be able to cope with it,

and other times it makes them much stronger.

Harry Gordon Selfridge was born in 1856

into a poor family in rural Wisconsin.

Harry Selfridge was an only child.

So he grew up with his mother

who had been deserted by her husband.

Robert Selfridge had left to fight for the Union forces in the Civil War.

He survived - but chose never to return to his family.

As a result Harry became extremely close to his mother.

What he knew as a child

was that he was going to have to help support his mother.

It made him very protective,

and it made him protective of women.

Selfridge grew up ambitious to improve his circumstances

and escape from poverty.

Soon, the bright lights of Chicago were calling.

In 1879 Selfridge landed a job at the city's newest department store,

Marshall Field's.

(Trolley bell rings)

Chicago was the frontier town of late 19th-century America.

People were really free with their money

and they were spending money to show that they'd made it.

And Marshall Field's was the shop

that was catering to those wild tastes.

It was at Marshall Field's that Harry Selfridge nurtured his talent for retail.

He started off as a stock room boy, apparently,

at Marshall Field's

and he worked his way up.

And that's where he started to innovate with advertising,

promotion, architecture.

Selfridge blazed a trail through the ranks.

Marshall Field's became the most popular store in Chicago,

thanks in no small part to Harry's bright ideas.

He introduced this kind of catchphrase which said:

'Only so many days until Christmas.'

That's still used today. You know, that kind of,

'You've only got so many days to buy your Christmas presents.'

That was him.

Within eight years Selfridge was the store's General Manager

and a well-known face.

But by 1901, he'd been at Marshall Field's for more than 20 years.

His career progression in Chicago had run its course.

He was feeling frustrated about his inability

to sort of rule things and to run things

and to innovate without any restriction.

Selfridge was essentially ambitious, impulsive,

a showman.

Selfridge dreamed of opening a grand store of his own.

Work trips had previously taken him to London

and the glamour of the Old World had turned his head.

London really was the center of the world.

It was at the heart still of an empire that spanned the globe.

It was enormously important for manufacturing,

for industry, for finance, for fashion.

You know, practically every sphere London dominated.

But there was one commercial sphere where London lagged behind: department stores.

The gap in the market was giving Harry Selfridge ideas.

He was looking at the retail market

and there were some amazing new shops

being built in Paris, which were described as Cathedrals of Shopping.

And those didn't exist yet in London.

Selfridge was able to provide something that London was actively missing.

Selfridge was decided.

He would realize his vision for a department store in London.

Today, the site Selfridge chose for his store makes perfect sense.

Oxford Street is one of the busiest shopping streets in the world.

But it wasn't always like this.

In 1905 the street was an undesirable back-water.

So when Harry Selfridge chose to build here,

he was taking a major risk.

He was going way over to the west end of Oxford Street

and an area which lacked very large stores.

So this was quite a daring thing to do.

To its advantage, the site was directly opposite

the newly-opened Underground train station, Bond Street.

One of the great developments of the early 20th century, late 19th century

was the rise of public transport.

It meant that people could come from further out of London into work in London.

And it meant that women could travel more easily and more independently.

And Selfridge was very, very conscious of that.

Archives reveal Harry Selfridge tried to have

the station renamed as 'Selfridges'

and build a tunnel to it from his store.

And his plans for the store's architecture were no less ambitious.

He commissioned a series of elaborate designs.

These submitted drafts were recently unearthed

at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

His initial drawings looked more like the White House

or St Paul's Cathedral,

and had a huge dome in the middle.

Unfortunately for Selfridge,

the authorities in London didn't appreciate his grand designs.

When the elevations were presented to the planning office,

at Marylebone council,

they said, 'We're sorry, Mr. Selfridge,

I'm afraid you can't have six storeys and a mansard roof.'

'Why not?' 'Because you'll be taller than St Paul's.

So they had to be ripped up and they had to be redone.

For one of the only times in his life, Selfridge scaled back his plans -

and they were finally approved.

As Selfridge waited for the construction to be completed

he set about promoting his store,

using the all-American innovation of advertising.

Nothing like Selfridges' bold, illustrated ads

had ever been seen in Britain before.

These are all part of Selfridge's fantastic campaign to launch the store.

So they were out in the newspapers, in the press.

This poster from the launch campaign -

'Shopping at Selfridges:

A pleasure, a pastime and a recreation.'

It has a picture of a woman and a man,

quite a seductive couple.

It hints at all sorts of possible encounters

in the shopping world.

And there's somebody actually at the back and I've never noticed her before.

And she's, I think, taken off her pince-nez,

to have a good look at this couple having tea here.

And maybe Selfridge was trying to make a kind of gentle, coded invitation

to people meeting indiscreetly.

Before the store was even finished,

Selfridge spent the equivalent of $2 million on advertising.

It was an unprecedented media blitz.

And the message to London was clear:

Selfridges would offer a whole new experience.

Modern shopping is based entirely around the concept of 'unlimited browsing'.

Customers are free to look around the store as they please.

But in London this was not always the case.

In the early 1900s, browsing was rare and difficult.

The way shops worked in London at the beginning of the 20th century

was that you couldn't look until you found something that you wanted,

you had to go in knowing what you wanted.

Hidden away in the upmarket district of Mayfair

some traditional London stores still remain.

The Piccadilly Arcade has been here since 1909.

The same year that Selfridges was founded.

Its shops' style of service remains almost untouched.

Good afternoon. I'm Mr. Rowley from Budd.

We're an old-fashioned haberdasher.

We've been here since 1910.

And we sell shirts, pajamas, nightwear.

But we specialize in socks.

The socks are stored away behind a counter.

You don't look through them yourself, you are served instead.

Gentlemen get quite passionate about their socks

and it's very important they're served properly.

If a customer comes into us and requires socks,

there's many questions we need to ask

to ascertain what it is that he wants.

We ask him what particular length he would require -

as in short, medium or long - and what material the sock's made of.

So we do many different fabrics and many different colors

and many different sizes.

It's quite important for a gentleman to come into us,

not to affect any sensitivities of the ladies

by showing some leg.

So what we like to do is to advise him to have

the longer sock which goes right to the knee.

So it's a little bit of an odd sort of conundrum

about what size you are.

And we find the gentleman needs to be served

and to be led through the maze of sock sizes

because it's quite difficult to get the correct one.

In 1900s London, not only could you not look at goods yourself,

there was heavy pressure to buy.

'Just looking' was simply not acceptable.

You didn't want a person who you were paying wages to

being tied up for long periods,

so the policy was developed

to weed out people who weren't going to buy.

Inside department stores,

the ominously named 'floor walker' stalked the aisles.

The floor walker was there to deal with potential time wasters.

And in 1900s London that included anyone browsing.

As Selfridge himself was to find out.

When he'd first come to London

he'd gone into a store and the floor walker had said,

'Is sir going to buy anything?'

And Harry Selfridge said, 'No, no, I'm just looking.'

So he said, 'Well, 'op it then, mate.'

He was just, you know, a thug dressed in a morning suit.

The ordeal left Selfridge determined to offer Londoners the freedom to shop.

At his store, there would be no floor walkers

and no pressure to buy.

You could come and browse at your leisure.

Here, for example, it's saying,

this is an invitation to the whole British public

and to visitors from overseas.

No cards of admission are required.

And are all welcome.

That the pleasures of shopping as well as those of sightseeing

begin from the opening hour.

In March 1909 opening day arrived.

Selfridges doors opened to surging crowds.

During the launch week

one-and-a-quarter-million people visited the store.

So that was absolutely huge.

From a city of four million people,

one in four Londoners came to have a look.

They were astonished by what they saw.

It was just huge.

It dwarfed everything else on Oxford Street at the time.

From a scale point of view

it's almost incomparable with anything else

other than an institutional building.

It's architecturally magnificent.

It's so solid.

Once inside the impact was even greater.

To this day, the Selfridges shopping environment

remains one of the store's calling cards.

When it first opened it was a revelation.

There were open vistas, fresh flowers, musicians playing,

and scent in the air.

And at last, goods were out to see and touch,

stacked high in every color.

Selfridge called his store an 'Aladdin's Cave'.

He took goods out from behind glass cabinet doors

and arranged them in displays so people could touch them.

He wanted everything to be tactile

and he felt that it should be an experience

that you would participate in.

There were hair salons, art galleries, restaurants

and a concierge to book you train or theater tickets.

Selfridges must have been a complete shock

to the average British customer.

It was almost a social center.

In fact Selfridge saw it as social center

as much as a shop.

He knew how to capture people's attention

in a very delightful way.

It was about delighting his audience.

It was an audience. It wasn't just about sales.

It was about the theater, the spectacle.

For London - shopping as a pastime was born.

And for its women, in particular, it meant freedom.

In Edwardian Britain it was generally considered improper

for a lady to go out without an escort.

But department stores provided a new, respectable destination.

Upper-class women in the early 20th century

would have to be chaperoned wherever they went.

However the big department stores at this time

really started to change that.

They became a space women could go to and feel safe

being out in public on their own or with another female friend, potentially.

Shopping for the first time becomes a real kind of leisure activity.

Selfridge's offering was particularly liberating for women,

in a very practical sense.

The matron of a respectable household starts to feel

that actually maybe it's okay to go out.

As long as there's somewhere I can go,

where if I need to go to the toilet I can

or, you know, you couldn't do that previously.

Amazingly, Selfridges was the first store to provide women's toilets.

Up until this point if you needed to go...

you had to go home.

You can't just, like, nip off to the toilet.

It kind of becomes a real ordeal

and Selfridges was one of the first public spaces

that had ladies' restrooms that women could use.

So it really was about creating an atmosphere

that women felt comfortable in.

At last, a lady could happily spend the day shopping,

which was definitely to Selfridges' advantage.

Because a well-dressed Edwardian lady

needed a vast range of clothes and accessories.

The avenues for department stores making money are really numerous.

Getting dressed in the Edwardian period was a very costly business indeed.

Women were changing their outfits sort of up to three times a day.

Now, we've got one petticoat here on our mannequin.

But depending on the particular style that was in fashion,

women could have worn up to seven or eight different layers of petticoats.

At this time, no clothes were pre-made.

A lady would chose fabrics and the store would make the dress to order.

You've got all of this lace - these amazing lace trimmings, which again you can see,

it really is conspicuous consumption.

All of this lace would have been made by hand.

So you can imagine the expense.

So you've also got a whole host of accessories

that go with these outfits.

Millinery especially was really, really big business.

They would choose feathers, you know, these artificial flowers.

They'd have sometimes whole stuffed birds, fake fruit.

It really became kind of, an enormous, almost sculptural

kind of walking art.

So, as well as the millinery,

you've also got the parasol as well.

They've got so many different areas,

so many different things they can sell to women,

from textiles, through to actually having the dresses made up themselves.

That's a huge, huge array.

But there was a problem.

The store had lots to sell, but too few customers.

The opening hype had died away and it was quiet.

Selfridge needed to bring the crowds back.

Today publicity stunts are commonplace.

At Selfridges, launch events are central to the store's marketing.

But in London in 1909 they were seen as tasteless.

Harry Gordon Selfridge changed all that.

Selfridge was one of the first people who made publicity stunts respectable.

He had an approach to marketing, to first of all draw the people in.

In July 1909, opportunity landed in his lap.

All England was talking of just one thing:

Frenchman Louis Bleriot had just completed the first flight

over the English Channel.

And Selfridge is there standing on the coast in Kent,

you know, ready to transport the aeroplane back.

Selfridge placed the history-making plane in the middle of the shop floor.

The effect was immediate.

It became like a museum or a sightseeing attraction.

It was a wonderful... it was an outing.

This time the crowds were here to stay and business took off.

Selfridges was modern, fashionable and popular.

That period, just before the First World War was a period

of enormous change and excitement in London.

These kind of beacons of modernity are arriving on the streets of London.

And one of those beacons of modernity was Selfridge's shop.

The store's modernist philosophy extended to its politics.

By 1910 the British suffragettes' campaign

for women's right to vote

was at its height.

Selfridge made his store's position clear.

Selfridge was a keen supporter of the suffragette movement.

He advertised in their newspapers.

He flew the flag above the shop.

He wrote articles defending their cause.

He also saw them as potential customers.

So he stocked goods in their colors - the colors of the suffrage movement

which were green for hope, purple for dignity,

and white for purity.

Selfridge's support for the suffragettes

made him popular with women shoppers.

And when the campaign turned violent

his stance protected his store.

In 1912 the suffragettes stepped up their campaign of militancy,

and they started burning public buildings,

they started spitting at policemen in the street

and they started smashing shop windows.

Selfridge benefited from his support for them.

They didn't smash his windows.

Selfridge's egalitarian, distinctly American ideals were paying dividends.

Obviously, in part, his support for women

was a calculated attempt to get customers in.

But he was an imaginative guy

who wanted to promote something that was different from everywhere else.

And, of course, in the end, it benefited the store to some extent.

Next, Selfridge challenged Britain's greatest divide of all - the class system.

In the early 1900s society was still clearly divided.

Even when shopping, the classes did not mix.

Selfridges was the first store in Britain

where every class shopped together.

Before Selfridge, high class people

shopped at high-class stores,

the upper middle class at upper-middle-class stores,

skilled workers different stores.

What Selfridge did was he said to the British people,

'We are open to the whole British public,

and everybody is welcome.'

The idea of appealing to all classes was openly sniffed at by his competitors.

But anyone with money to spend was welcome at Selfridges.

Selfridge was a totally self-made man,

so I think he appreciated the idea

that everyone had the potential to be

a wonderful profit-making customer for him.

Middle-class professions and their wives and children

had money for the first time and...

They wanted to be accepted and taken seriously.

One of Selfridge's strategies, to attract customers of every class,

was to introduce discounted products.

In 1910 Selfridges opened the 'Bargain Basement' -

a well-presented but price-led department.

It caused a sensation.

After a few years it was worth a quarter of all the sales within the store.

So, you know, that was... a pretty good idea.

Harry Selfridge also established the first, fixed, bi-annual sale.

It's now a worldwide retail tradition.

In 1910, the sales cemented Selfridges' position as a store that was open to all.

It was a very American way of viewing the world, you know.

The girl who comes in in a dirty dress, you know,

who is working as a shop assistant,

could be a movie star tomorrow.

Selfridge's egalitarian approach extended to his staff.

He treated them in a totally different way from his competitors.

Selfridge brought customer service to London

and transformed working in retail.

In Edwardian times, poor working conditions blighted British department stores.

Many households still had domestic servants

and shop staff were treated in much the same way.

They worked 12-hour days, they didn't have any rights whatsoever.

They worked six days a week.

They had no holidays to speak of. So it was pretty hard.

And like servants, shop staff lived in dormitories on site.

Just outside London is this small, old-fashioned department store

called Jacksons.

Founded in 1875, you can still see today

where the staff used to live above the store.

Now, sadly, all we've got here today is the carcass of what used to be there.

You've got to imagine this was very primitive accommodation.

You had one wash basin, you had simple beds.

It wasn't like a hotel or your own house.

It was very much you live here, you work here.

So it was the basics of everything.

So there might have been at least 60 members of staff up here,

all sharing a little partition between themselves.

But all sharing the same wash basin,

so you can imagine at night there would have been a queue to wash themselves.

Living at the department store meant living by their rules.

There was a curfew in the evening,

and on the shop floor, staff were docked pay

if they broke a list of management regulations.

Here at Jacksons we had some quite fair but strict fines.

All assistants are to have breakfasted before they start work at eight o'clock.

Fine for breach - sixpence.

All staff must at all times not gossip or lounge around in groups

or you will be fined threepence.

And my favorite: all staff must provide themselves

with tape measure, scissors and a pencil.

Without these he is useless.

Harry Selfridge established a new code of employment practice in Britain.

He did away with fines

and none of his staff lived on site.

Instead, they received better pay.

In return he demanded a new culture of customer service.

His big, big thing was, 'Don't push the sale, just give them customer service.'

Customer service was key and I think that's a very American thing still today,

that, you know, if you treat the customer right then they're gonna wanna buy.

Selfridge ran a tight ship.

He'd send the staff notes for improvements every morning.

And if he found any dust,

he'd pointedly write his initials in it with his finger.

Because he was very sparing with his praise -

he wasn't a gushing, effusive man at all -

when he did say, 'Well done,' it actually meant something.

Selfridge kept his distance,

and certainly never flirted or fraternized with staff.

He thoroughly disapproved of bringing sex into the workplace.

But unbeknownst to him, in later years,

a secret affair did develop.

And it involved someone close to him.

His son, Harry Selfridge Junior,

started work at the store.

Jennifer Selfridge is Harry Junior's daughter.

He fell in love...with a pretty girl in her 20s,

who was working at Selfridges.

And worked for a while in the toy department.

And they formed a relationship

Gordon Senior would not approve of.

In a strange contradiction to the egalitarian philosophy of his store,

Selfridge senior was incredibly snobbish

when it came to his own family.

He wanted his children to marry into the upper classes.

British society was very heavily-layered at that time,

as we all know.

Doubtless, he was expected to marry a woman...

an upper class English woman.

And Gordon Senior disapproved.

Selfridge Junior was so worried,

he kept his relationship under wraps -

hiding his pregnant girlfriend away,

while he lived in a London apartment.

At the store, Harry Gordon Selfridge's attitude

remained modern and progressive.

And in 1911, he took his greatest risk.

Having make-up and perfume near the front of the store

is an innovation that is now widespread.

But that was really introduced by Selfridge.

Harry Gordon Selfridge invented the ground floor

beauty and cosmetics department.

It is now the template for every department store.

Thanks to Harry Selfridge,

you walk into a department store

pretty much anywhere around the world

and you walk straight into Fragrance and Cosmetics.

But it was certainly not always the case.

In the Edwardian period, make-up was available and judiciously worn -

but it was not respectable.

At a department store, it was generally hidden away

on an upper floor.

But Selfridge spotted an emerging opportunity.

He liked the idea of perfumes near the front of the store.

He wanted to make a little bit of make-up

more respectable than it was.

Selfridge's brainstorm was to bring perfume and make-up

together right by the main entrance.

So the first thing that happens is your senses

are assaulted with wonderful smells, wonderful scent.

But the add on of colored make up...

it became not just acceptable,

it became desirable for young women

to wear colored cosmetics.

So he pulled everything together.

It was enormously popular.

Ground floor Cosmetics continues in Selfridges today

and it's one of the most lucrative departments.

Michael Sheridan owns an international retail design agency.

He believes Harry Selfridge' placement of cosmetics

is fundamental to department stores.

For me, it's very much the kind of candy

that draws people into big retail spaces.

It creates an enormous amount of theater

for people visiting department stores.

And therefore very clever that he recognized

that it should be one of the first things that you find

when you go into a store that's supposed to offer you everything.

Harry Selfridge's original ideas

have inspired modern retail psychology.

Today, stores use a variety of hidden techniques

to encourage the customer to buy.

According to Michael, at Selfridges,

they're trying to seed the denim department in customers' minds.

There's that wonderful display of hanging out the washing,

with continuous pairs of jeans -

sort of almost the laundry line with denim.

But also, probably not so noticeable,

are the planters at the bottoms and tops of the escalators.

The floral displays in them are actually made from denim.

So whether you're a very observant shopper

or you're a very unobservant shopper,

you're going to leave with the impression

that there's something going on to do with denim.

So, if in a week or so's time, you're thinking,

'Actually I do want a pair of jeans,'

chances are you'll be going back to Selfridges.

Back in 1914, Harry Selfridge's new ideas meant the store was booming.

But it was about need his retail genius more than ever.

In 1914, World War One began.

On the face of it, war and shopping shouldn't mix.

But in wartime London, life went on.

There's a sense that it's part of your patriotic duty

to carry on as usual and to continue going shopping.

That was a part of the way you were going to resist the enemy.

In fact, some London department stores

turned the war to their advantage.

Harrods had struck a deal to make British Army uniforms.

Selfridge made do with a contract for the French Army's underwear.

And, in store,

a cynical stunt helped the well-stocked pharmacy push its wares.

They had a demonstration where the store pharmacist

made mustard gas on the roof in 1915.

It must have been horrific because the smell

and the actual reality of it hitting home.

So mothers would rush to the chemist and buy gauze

to send out to their boys which was much needed.

As the last year of the war approached,

the store posted record annual profits.

By 1919, and the end of the war,

Selfridge had made so much money,

he could afford a lavish extension.

The construction doubled the size of the store,

creating the two-block site we see today.

It was ready for the explosion of the 1920s.

Selfridges today markets itself

as young and fashionable.

It dedicates more space than any other London store

to youth culture and trendy clothing.

That identity began in the 1920s.

The 1920s is the era of youth,

it's a time when young people stopped deferring to their elders.

After the catastrophe of the First World War,

they weren't going to be dictated to

by a bunch of crusty old men who'd caused so much trouble.

And so you get this sense of youth and vigor.

Harry Selfridge and his store were quick to embrace the new scene.

Not only did they stock dresses in the fashionable shorter length,

for the first time, they were pre-made

and ready to wear off the racks.

This dress is a kind of really typical style

for something that might have been worn in the mid-1920s.

Now, this is a huge departure from the styles

that were being worn just a decade earlier.

At their highest, dress hems came to just below the knee.

Now this is really the first time in women's fashion

that dresses were this short.

So you can imagine the kind of shock that it caused

when women were out in public wearing styles like this.

As new up-tempo music swept over from America,

Selfridge's lightweight dresses started to fly off the racks.

Women were dancing the black bottom, the Charleston,

you get all of these new dances being developed.

So sort of the dancing, the movement, is all reflected.

All of those changes are reflected in the style of dress you see here.

In London, there was a new breed of nightclubs

and risque entertainment.

Selfridge himself had always had a taste for nightlife,

gambling and occasionally, women.

When his beloved wife Rosalie died suddenly in 1918,

the 62-year-old became a familiar face in after-hours London.

When someone like Harry Selfridge comes along

and he starts going to these nightclubs

and mixing with these younger people,

even though he's an anomaly because he's so old,

he's accepted because he's got money to spend

and he loves being part of it, so why not?

Selfridge was the first retailer to become a celebrity himself.

And he harnessed that celebrity to his advantage,

parading his showbiz friends through the store.

So this birth of the cult of celebrity, if you want,

that didn't really exist in those days...

having Douglas Fairbanks come in, Charlie Chaplin come in.

These were huge, major international stars.

They came in and once they'd done whatever they were going to do,

they'd go up to his office and sign his window -

he had a corner window - with a diamond tipped pen

and sign their autograph on the window.

By now, the store itself was famous around the world.

In particular, it was known for its extraordinary windows.

The store has 21 plate-glass windows

running along Oxford Street.

The stylistic displays are central to the store's identity.

They invest huge resources into window dressing.

Every few months, in the early hours

and out of sight of the public,

a specialist team changes the entire strip in unison.

In the 1920s, the Selfridges windows were the largest

in the world and the designs were revolutionary.

Selfridge didn't just fill them with goods like other stores.

He filled them with stories - narratives, pictures.

He made them very attractive,

so that people imagined themselves in the store.

For the first time in London,

a store was not just selling products but a lifestyle.

And they took the unprecedented step

of lighting their displays after dark.

Selfridges was one of the first public places

to use mass electricity.

The store went on to debut

many of the greatest inventions of the 20th century.

It staged the first ever demonstration of television

and broadcast early radio.

Harry Selfridge ensured that the store was always as futuristic as possible.

Inside the store, there were other innovations.

There were nine elevators, this had not happened before

in British department stores.

At the Museum of London,

they've kept the ornate elevators from the 1920s.

This was really cutting-edge technology.

That was something that Selfridges offered

many of its visitors.

So for the first time,

many people would have gone into a lift in Selfridges.

It was a new experience for them.

The first thing that they did was look up at the ceiling,

because they couldn't quite believe they were going up.

Another novelty that Gordon Selfridge introduced

were female lift operators.

They were kitted out in beautiful white uniforms

with knickerbockers and beautiful white jackets.

And they would manually operate the lifts

for anyone who came into them.

This was quite unusual, to have women working in a lift.

Because it meant that very often,

women were in very close proximity to men,

in the same small space, and this was very unique.

This was something that wasn't really seen

as an acceptable practice previously.

The elevator operators reflect Selfridge's liberal, racier style.

At times, it put him at odds

with Britain's conservative elite

who disapproved of his risque approach to retail.

There was a lot of snobbishness about what was considered

the sort of vulgarity of Americans

and Selfridge really did fall into that,

he was a bit excessive by English standards.

And he did feel excluded.

Selfridge was desperate to break into the British upper classes.

But it was an obsession that was to cost his store dear.

Selfridge spared no expense

trying to make it as a British gentleman.

He used the store's healthy profits

to pay for astronomical personal expenses.

Money in America was usually enough

to give you kind of class status.

It wasn't as easy in Britain.

And he spent his money like water.

And he was extremely extravagant.

Selfridge rented Lord Lansdowne's grand house in London

and Highcliffe Castle on the coast.

And this never-before seen footage

shows him entertaining aboard his fully-crewed luxury steam yacht.

(Ship's horn)

Whilst profits were up,

the store could afford to support his expenditure.

But behind the scenes, a perfect storm was brewing.

It began with the Dolly Sisters.

They were identical twins.

They were extraordinary creatures.

They were petite when they grew up...

..beautiful... dark...exotic-looking.

By the late 1920s, the sisters were the most famous

cabaret and film stars in the world.

Their racy notoriety inspired the term 'Dolly Birds'.

And Harry Gordon Selfridge was absolutely besotted.

There would have been quite a large number

of very influential and famous men

that would have been throwing themselves at the Dolly Sisters at that time.

Selfridge was very persistent.

He wanted to spend time with them.

He thought they were great.

Selfridge had floated the store on the stock market

in 1926 and made a fortune.

He had access to a great deal of money...

and the Dollies were happy to spend it.

He was very generous,

gave them lots of different things.

And through him, they got into gambling.

One of the reasons why Selfridge and Jenny Dolly

liked each other's company so much was gambling.

Selfridge and the Dollies were regular faces at the card tables.

But behind the smiles,

Harry and Jenny were sliding towards a gambling addiction.

Selfridge bankrolled huge losses at the tables of French casinos

and then charged it to the store.

He would fund the gambling,

he would fund all the money.

And if she lost...he lost.

And if she won, she kept the money.

This is particularly interesting,

it's Harry Selfridge's account book.

And columns of figures of money that he's spent

on sometimes tiny, tiny things.

I mean, he even records magazines and newspapers.

And then much larger sums.

Seriously large.

Here's another entry for £1,200.

And these sums of money, the larger sums,

have no entry by the side of them.

It is safe, I think, to assume they are gaming debts.

£1,200 is $65,000 in today's money.

It's been estimated that she cost him about...

in the region of £200 million in contemporary money.

The extravagance couldn't last.

By the 1930s, the effects of the Great Depression

were being felt in London.

Selfridges, in particular, was beginning to struggle.

The other department stores had copied Harry's ideas

and the competitive advantage had been lost.

What's more, Selfridge had made a fatal business error

and over expanded.

By 1939, the store was in debt and hemorrhaging cash.

But Harry continued to fund his lifestyle and gambling

from the store coffers.

As a publicly limited company,

the board of Selfridges could call an extraordinary general meeting.

80-year-old Harry Gordon Selfridge was told to attend.

The company was in difficulties by the late 1930s.

And his personal debts had cost the company considerable money.

He had debts to the Inland Revenue, which were huge.

The Board of Selfridges told him he had to pay his debts or go.

Selfridge was demoted to honorary Chairman

and given a meager pension.

You can't go on forever but at that point,

in a move that was deeply ungracious and very badly handled,

they guaranteed to give him a pension

and stripped him of his job.

Eight months later, after he kept coming into the store,

the staff were embarrassed,

his secretary had no letters to send to anybody,

he would dictate them but there was no work for him to do.

By the end,

Selfridge almost became an embarrassment to the store.

Once they'd taken any managerial authority away from him,

they were quite quick to take away most of what he'd been left.

In 1940, the title of chairman was also withdrawn.

Selfridge was told he was no longer welcome at his beloved store.

But he couldn't let go.

He'd travel to Oxford Street every day,

simply to stand in the street

and stare up at the store he'd built.

People saw him, still in his rather smart clothes,

then no longer very appropriate.

Shabby, but kind of, you know,

morning suit and top hat, looking at Selfridges,

but really outside it, and neglected.

He used to count pennies at the bus stop by the Green Man pub,

to get on the bus from Putney and come to Oxford Street.

And in 1943, standing opposite,

looking incredibly threadbare,

he was arrested for being a vagrant.

Harry Gordon Selfridge died in 1947.

Despite all his success, he passed away penniless.

Finally he died and I think it was a very basic kind of funeral.

So it was a sad ending and he didn't pass on his wealth.

I don't think his children were particularly wealthy,

because there was no wealth to pass on.

Although Selfridge left no inheritance,

his granddaughter Jennifer holds no ill-feeling.

Well, I... I feel I have no problem with that at all.

I think my grandfather earned all that money,

and he also managed to spend all of it.

But there is a final extraordinary twist to the tale.

Jennifer, her siblings and her mother

were always kept hidden from Harry Gordon Selfridge.

This private home movie shows Jennifer's parents

happily together -

as they were for the rest of their lives.

Yet, incredibly, Harry Junior never felt able

to reveal his wife and family to his father.

Jennifer Selfridge never met her grandfather, Harry Gordon Selfridge.

The relationship and we, as four children,

were kept quiet, secret in a way.

Isn't that awful? Isn't that ridiculous?

It is absurd.

But it all worked out.

And I'm happy to be descended from him.

You know, he made something great, and it's still there.

You know, it's still there.

Selfridge's legacy is strong.

The store has survived 70 years since he passed.

In the Second World War, its deep basements were used

to stage secure communications between Churchill and Roosevelt.

And from the '50s to '90s, it continued to trade -

but it was no longer an industry leader,

changing ownership several times.

In 2003, it was finally taken back into private hands.

The Westons, a Canadian billionaire retail family,

have rejuvenated the store,

reinventing the Harry Gordon Selfridge formula of interior design and high fashion.

Under the Westons,

Selfridges is now posting record profits once again.

Thanks to Harry Gordon Selfridge,

the store still has pride of place on Oxford Street.

It stands today as testament to one American's lasting impact on Britain.

The Secret of Selfridges is out.

Harry's American dream is alive in the heart of London.

It has withstood two world wars, and there it is today,

full of life with flags flying.

And that personality, I believe,

is imbued in the building,

through the force of the personality

of the man who built it.

from viewers like you.

To learn more about Secrets of Selfridges,

please visit pbs.org

Secrets of Selfridges is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org

or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This program is also available

for download on iTunes.