Did they try to promote Smoking in old movies? they sure smoked a lot

BlueTrain · Feb 11, 2017

If present trends continue, OSHA will become history within the next couple of years. But trends never do continue, do they?

I worked on a tobacco farm one summer and I know about tar. It comes off on your hands when handling the leaves and it is real tar. But it's 100% organic, guaranteed!

Fading Fast · Feb 12, 2017

LizzieMaine said:
All cigarettes sold in the US today are required to be "self extinguishing" as a fire-preventative measure, which adds another layer to the mystery ingredient list. I strongly recommend Richard Kluge's utterly damning hundred-year history of the tobacco industry, "Ashes to Ashes" for full documentation of the substances that are added to cigarettes to make them palatable, to suppress the natural tendency of the lungs to reject smoke, and to make them even more addictive than they are naturally. Big Tobacco isn't just an industry of poisoners, they are, and have been for the past century, deliberate and willful poisoners.

I agree with all this ⇧, but would add, it's interesting that all (as far as I know, but for sure, almost all) the major executives, owners, senior managers of these companies smoked - and smoked a lot and encouraged their families and adult children to smoke, at least up until the '70s / '80s. It supports the argument that the biggest lies we believe are the ones we tell ourselves.

LizzieMaine · Feb 12, 2017

Middle-aged people in the sixties and seventies wrung their hands and rent their garments and lamented the crisis of drug addiction, and demanded of their gods to know WHY -- as they fumbled for another Pall Mall.

MisterCairo · Feb 12, 2017

LizzieMaine said:
Middle-aged people in the sixties and seventies wrung their hands and rent their garments and lamented the crisis of drug addiction, and demanded of their gods to know WHY -- as they fumbled for another Pall Mall.

My father smoked at least a pack a day of Rothman's of Pall Mall (known in Canada as "Rot-Mans") until he quit cold turkey - at age 80.

He'd started smoking at 15.

He lived until just before his 88th birthday, which says more about his iron constitution that it did about the dangers of smoking!

LizzieMaine · Feb 12, 2017

My aunt was like that -- she worked on the docks breathing in tapioca dust, smoked like Gehenna itself, and lived to be 92. My grandmother, on the other hand, had her first heart attack from smoking at the age of 35.

My grandfather was the most pathetic example of what tobacco addiction can do. He'd been a stocky, strapping man, a semipro athlete in his youth, and by the end of his life he weighed less than 80 pounds. And as he lay dying in an oxygen tent, he was demanding that someone bring him his pipe for one last smoke. The day he died, my mother -- who had been a manic smoker her whole adult life -- threw her last half-carton of butts into the dump and has never touched another one in the thirty-six years since.

BlueTrain · Feb 12, 2017

"The biggest lies we believe are the ones we tell ourselves." That's a line worth of Will Rogers. All reason goes out the window when you start believing your own propaganda.

AdeeC · Feb 14, 2017

The Nazi's were aware of the dangers of smoking and tried to police it hard with not much success especially after the war started. German soldiers were rationed to only six sticks a day per man. Non smokers were no doubt very popular with their smoking comrades. Alas better to die young for the fatherland than in cancerous old age. Smoking dangers were no big deal then when something like a bad tooth, ingrown toenails or childbirth amongst 100's of other causes killed the young and healthy with monotonous regularity. Warning a young smoker then that smoking could kill them in 30 or so years would not have gotten much traction. Life was tough then and tobacco helped many cope with stresses and deprivations modern people rarely if ever experience

I recall one story that explorer Ernest Shackleton wrote in his diary that only the barest essential supplies were to be taken after being shipwrecked in Antarctica and that included all the tobacco rations. He and all of his crew survived about 8 months exposed to the harshest weather imaginable with no shelter on a diet of blubber and tobacco. No doubt the nicotine would have helped relieve the stress and tension of their dire situation as it has helped soldiers and many of those who work in the dirtiest physically and mentally punishing jobs cope with their lot in life.

Inkstainedwretch · Feb 14, 2017

Coincidentally with AdeeC's post above, I just watched "Triumph of the Will" in its entirety. I've seen it many times before, but it struck me for the first time that in the whole thing you see nobody smoking. It was shot in 1934, at the height of the tobacco habit, when Europeans perhaps smoked even more heavily than Americans, yet I didn't see a single cigarette, cigar or pipe. Hitler was famously a nonsmoker and nondrinker, and I wonder if there was an order in Nuremberg that there was to be no public smoking during the Party rally because Leni Riefenstahl would be filming there. Ironic that the Nazis should set us such a good example.

Edward · Feb 14, 2017

belfastboy said:
Back to the issue of smoking....I have been watching a lot of British TV series (and some European)on Netflix recently. Most of it brilliantly written, acted and produced. But it is stunning how much smoking goes on. It is modern in its context as they have to smoke outside but stunning in the regularity of it all.

There's also a strong class-bias to it (the invidious English class system gets its claws in everywhere!). The working classes and the less well off are, statistically speaking, signficantly more likely to be smokers, as I recall. This inevitably comes across in their portrayal onscreen. We're currently watching the BBC's excellent mini-series about the 2008 disappearance of Shannon Matthews, and there's significantly more smoking in that than you'd see were it set among the middle classes rather than on a council estate.

Fading Fast said:
Agreed and I often though the same thing on "Mad Men." Do all these actors smoke or do they just do it for the role? If just for the role, I bet some get hooked on it.

As noted above, it's all herbal, no adictive ingredient. Of course, if they're non-smokers in real life, most of them also probably don't inhale.

For "Mad Men," I got it - it's history and they smoked. But for "The Man in the High Castle," heck, it's alternate history and Hitler hated smoking - why not lift the smoking out, reference it to Hitler's preference and move on without it?

It would be interesting to see if they deal with that at a later stage. The Nazis taking on Big Tobacco..... that woulsd be something to see!

BlueTrain · Feb 14, 2017

They grow tobacco in Germany? It's surprising enough to know that it is grown in Massachusetts.

AdeeC · Feb 14, 2017

The only so called state that has tried to ban smoking is Islamic State. I believe they chop heads for a second or third offence. Hermit kingdom Bhutan has tried but now just have tough restrictions.

LizzieMaine · Feb 15, 2017

Inkstainedwretch said:
Hitler was famously a nonsmoker and nondrinker, and I wonder if there was an order in Nuremberg that there was to be no public smoking during the Party rally because Leni Riefenstahl would be filming there. Ironic that the Nazis should set us such a good example.

Goebbels was a cigarette fiend, and was under constant pressure not to let his boss see him indulging. He also was not above sneaking around behind Hitler's back and assuring the tobacco industry that the Party really wasn't its enemy. He went to great lengths to keep the cheap, adulterated tobacco flowing to the German smoking public, even during the height of the war.

AdeeC · Feb 15, 2017

A quote from the book Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death, regarding shortages and their impact on morale during the war.
BY T Thacker
"He was more concerned by beer and tobacco shortages, and spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about how to best ration these commodities. By November 1943 he was forced to refer these issues to Hitler, who recommended weakening the beer but not making it public. Goebbels noted that 'as a non beer drinker' Hitler was mistaken here, and that it would be better to tell the truth. When Hitler suggested similarly that the quality of cigarettes be lowered so more could be produced, Goebbels had to tell him that the cigarettes available were already so awful that this was not advisable. Goebbels was a heavy smoker, and already had reservations about the anti-smoking policies of certain branches of the party and state. He was convinced that during wartime it was more important to make tobacco freely available to the German public, and to soldiers at the front. He was painfully aware that tobacco consumption had risen since the start of the war, but that since 1941 production had fallen significantly. By the Autumn of 1941 a quarter of overall production was going directly to the armed forces, and long queues outside tobacconists were to be seen all over Germany. Hitler had agreed with Goebbels that issues that were not of immediate importance for the conduct of the war, like the anti-smoking campaign, and more importantly, the earlier campaign against churches, should be postponed."

Stanley Doble · Feb 15, 2017

Ronnie the Rivetter, Rosie the Rivetter's gay co worker, can't build a battleship without his Chesterfields.

Inkstainedwretch · Feb 15, 2017

LizzieMaine said:
Goebbels was a cigarette fiend, and was under constant pressure not to let his boss see him indulging. He also was not above sneaking around behind Hitler's back and assuring the tobacco industry that the Party really wasn't its enemy. He went to great lengths to keep the cheap, adulterated tobacco flowing to the German smoking public, even during the height of the war.

Luckily, Turkey was a German ally and I believe most of Germany's tobacco was Turkish.

In both World Wars the British government considered two commodities to be of absolute necessity to soldier morale: tea and tobacco. At the outset of WWII the British government tried to buy up the whole world's tea harvest so they would be sure to have enough to see their military and civilians through what might be a six-to-ten year war, with a blockade of the Isles. As for tobacco, they thought it an absolute necessity for soldiers to bear the nervous strain of endless battle.

belfastboy · Feb 15, 2017

Edward said:
There's also a strong class-bias to it (the invidious English class system gets its claws in everywhere!). The working classes and the less well off are, statistically speaking, signficantly more likely to be smokers, as I recall. This inevitably comes across in their portrayal onscreen. We're currently watching the BBC's excellent mini-series about the 2008 disappearance of Shannon Matthews, and there's significantly more smoking in that than you'd see were it set among the middle classes rather than on a council estate.

As noted above, it's all herbal, no adictive ingredient. Of course, if they're non-smokers in real life, most of them also probably don't inhale.

It would be interesting to see if they deal with that at a later stage. The Nazis taking on Big Tobacco..... that woulsd be something to see!

My wife and I play a game....as we watch the TV and observe the smokers I can tell who is a smoker and who is not based on how heartily they inhale, if at all!

Did they try to promote Smoking in old movies? they sure smoked a lot

BlueTrain

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Fading Fast

LizzieMaine

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up

LizzieMaine

BlueTrain

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AdeeC

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Inkstainedwretch

One Too Many

Edward

BlueTrain

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AdeeC

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LizzieMaine

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Stanley Doble

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One Too Many

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