My recent post, Cigarette commercials! reminds me of something interesting. As part of the pitch, Winston talks about their exclusive “Filter Blend.” It was implied that the company had discovered just the right mixture of leaves to produce a smooth, satisfying taste. They also mention the pure white filter, but don’t imply that the filter has any health benefits; they leave it up to the users to assume that they were smoking a more-healthful cigarette. Remember, this followed the era when cigarette ads in big-format magazines like Life portrayed medical doctors who recommended particular brands for their mildness. One brand’s motto was Not a cough in a carload! (You knew they were doctors because they had white coats, and on their foreheads wore those little round mirrors with a hole in the middle that they used to look up your nose or something.)While I was in the Navy, I got to know a man whose family had been in the tobacco business for generations. He told me the cigarette filter was invented for only one purpose: to enable tobacco companies to use lower grades of leaf. The filters removed most of the harshness that had previously forced the growers to sell their inferior tobacco overseas. (If you’ve ever smoked a French cigarette, you’ll know what I mean!)
When I was on the USS Enterprise during the early 1960s, everybody smoked. You didn’t necessarily have to have a cigarette in your mouth, just breathe the air in any part of the ship where smoking was allowed. I don’t know how the Navy deals with smokers now, but I read once that on at least one submarine the Captain makes smokers get into a very cramped, poorly ventilated part of the boat and only at really inconvenient times. He orders them to hang by their toes upside-down while he has the boat go through loop-de-loops making the smokers’ heads bang repeatedly against the bulkhead (wall, in Navy-speak). Then they have to eat the butts before he lets them out to take a sanitizing shower then go to bed without supper or their blankys.
Or something like that.
2 comments:
I like that poster! The cigarette is obviously "photoshopped" onto his face.
I wish I could read the text above and below the intriguing words: "The Voice of the Turtle."
Was it Reagan who said "I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV"?
I was told by someone who should know that when actors were on contract to a studio, their contract included the right of the studio to sell the actor’s image for product promotion. The actors got little or nothing for their services.
That cigarette was obviously pasted into his mouth; it just looks too fake. Even though lit, where’s the smoke?
Under his signature, it says Starring in "The Voice of the Turtle" A Warner Bros. Production
He was president of the Screen Actors Guild, or maybe he just played president!
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