Smoke 'em if You Got 'em.

AuthorGehring, Wes D.
PositionREEL WORLD - Cigarette advertising in Old Hollywood

LATELY, MY RESEARCH has me buried in mainstream newspaper and magazine articles from the late 1920s to the early 1940s--and what really jumps out are the elaborate cigarette ads involving movie stars, something unthinkable today. Old-time cinema long has taken it on the chin--perhaps rightfully--for getting people hooked on cigarettes. For instance, there still seems to be some sort of chic trench coat noir aura about a cigarette dangling from Humphrey Bogart's lips. Indeed, the American Film Institute picked Bogie as the 20th century's No. 1 male movie star.

Oddly enough, arguably the two most-iconic cigarette movies both occurred in 1942. The first to open was Bette Davis' ultimate worldly romance, "Now, Voyager," which closes with her former lover (Paul Henreid) lighting two cigarettes, and then with stylistic eroticism, taking one from his lips and passing it to her. A month later, cigarettes helped add sacrificial passion to Bogie's repertoire in "Casablanca," with Henreid part of a wartime triangle involving Ingrid Bergman. Two years later, Bogart and his wife-to-be Lauren Bacall made their first movie together, the smoking-filled adventure, 'To Have and Have Not."

As a personal addendum, the two movie posters in my first dorm room had a macho tobacco connection. One was the image from "Gone With the Wind" (1939), with Clark Gable's Rhett Butler at a poker table, a small cigar clenched in his teeth. The second poster was of Sean Connery as James Bond at a high-stakes gaming table in "Dr. No" (1962), just as his cigarette is lit. Gable was considered Hollywood's "King" during its golden age. Moreover, Connery was Bond--the Bond.

The print cigarette endorsements I kept encountering often were so long and detailed that the copy further belied what one always assumed--the validation represented well-paid ghosting. For instance, a 1937 New York Times Lucky Strike testimonial from Spencer Tracy stated, "'Captains Courageous,' my new MGM picture, runs about two hours, but if all the film taken were shown, it would run three solid days and nights. Many scenes were taken on the open ocean. Naturally, raising my voice PUT A STRAIN on my throat. In one scene I had to yell for most of two days. Yet, I could always take a Lucky without worrying about my throat.... Maybe it's a better tobacco. Well, anyway, I like them plenty, and so do most other people around MGM."

In another 1937 Lucky ad, Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favorite actress...

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