Movie Business and Big Tobacco Were Bosom Buddies? No!
When James Dean puffed a cigarette in Rebel Without a Cause in a gesture that many came to regard as the ultimate symbol of super masculinity and manliness, when Bette Davis and Paul Henreid lighted two cigarettes simultaneously in the 1939 film Now, Voyager, it was all premeditated, according to a study by Dr. Stanley Glantz of the journal Tobacco Control.
“One justification for smoking in the movies is the fact that there was a lot of smoking in the golden age of Hollywood, and that smoking on-screen is part of the art of making films, something used from the beginning to create mood and develop character, and you see these iconic old movies being cited over and over again. These old documents blow away that myth and show that it was not artistry but big business, involving huge amounts of money.”
Glantz and his team studied nearly 200 actors’ contracts and uncovered that far from being a candid act, smoking in the movies was part of a direct dalliance that movie studios and cigarette-manufacturers. The former
“negotiated cigarette ad deals, insisted on publicity for themselves and their latest films, and directly benefited from millions of dollars in tobacco advertising in newspapers, magazines, and nationwide radio campaigns”.
And this product placement worked like no other, prompting over 200,000 of America’s youths to adapt smoking each year, according to Dr. Glantz’s study.
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