Smoking in movies rooted in studio-era deals

The Hollywood A-listers of the 1930s and 1940s helped pave the way for smoking in the movies that continues today, according to a study of endorsement contracts between the studios and tobacco companies and advertisements from that era.

Researchers at Stanford and at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UC San Francisco examined records from the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and the Jackler advertising collection at Stanford. During the '30s and '40s, two-thirds of the top 50 box office stars in Hollywood endorsed tobacco brands for advertising purposes and were paid a lot to do so, the study found. In return for the paid testimonials of their stars, the major studies benefited from ads for their movies in lucrative "cross over" deals, paid for by the tobacco companies, the research shows. Actors Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey, Joan Crawford, John Wayne, Bette Davis and Betty Grable all appeared in advertisements for such brands as Lucky Strike, Old Gold, Chesterfield and Camel.

Movie industry executives claim the right of artistic freedom and often say that smoking is part of character development or the need to create a realistic scene. But the exploration of the early studio-era contracts suggests that smoking in the movies was a mutually beneficial business deal with effects that linger today, said Dr. Stanton Glantz, the lead author of the paper, which is published today in the journal Tobacco Control.

"People say smoking is part of filmmaking. It creates characters and mood. But our paper showed this was all business. Some of the people in those ads didn't even smoke. But one side effect it had was it completely embedded smoking into the culture of Hollywood. This cultural connection drives smoking in film," he said.

Research, including a new report from the National Cancer Institute, indicates that smoking in movies influences children and teens to smoke. "It is the most important stimulus for youth smoking -- even more powerful that cigarette advertising," said Glantz. Public health officials have implored the Motion Picture Assn. of America to identify smoking in the movies just as it would violence or bad language and apply tougher ratings to those movies. But in an interview with The Times, Glantz said the MPAA's actions so far have had little effect. Movies with smoking should be treated similarly to those that use a common, vulgar obscenity and should earn an R rating, he said. Removing smoking in movies accessible to children and teens would reduce youth smoking by 50%, said Glantz, a professor of medicine at UCSF.

For more information on the studio-era smoking deals, see the Stanford smoking advertising archives.

  -- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Courtesy of Stanford University

Comments

[Mach Stelmacher]

Even Mike '60 Minutes' Wallace endorsed smoking at one time. All the more fitting
the sense of moral outrage at the industry's cover-up of its ill side effects. Even Hollywood was a 4th stooge and duped. (Did not Wayne eventually contract throat cancer?)

So how long till James Bond quips while offing a bad guy who smokes?

"oh-h you nasty dude, you".

[Arye Michael Bender]

The story is not clear. Were the studios themselves paid to keep their stars smoking on camera, or were individual deals with individual actors struck for personal endorsements. Personal endorsement is not newss, but studio deals would be.

[Brad Edwards]

I have a collection of these Hollywood actors ads for tobacco. And would love to work with someone interested in really exploring this for a book...

[NC Bob]

Why we'll always need proofreaders, not just spelling checkers:

the major studies benefited from ads
s/b
the major studios benefited from ads

[Robin]

Wow, interesting example of early viral advertising!

[Xenu]

Any celeb who smokes in sight of kids is kwazee and without conscience, and dat's a fact.

Put 'em out.

[Steven Douglas]

Dr. Stanton Glantz, the lead author of the paper, said: "People say smoking is part of filmmaking. It creates characters and mood. But our paper showed this was all business. Some of the people in those ads didn't even smoke..."

Okay, let's examine the above-cited piece of red herring stupidity, because as a screenwriter and a smoker, I am dumbfounded. What is it with so-called experts and their blatant logical fallacies that they use in support of their own papers?

Let's remove the misleading segue sentence: "People say smoking is part of filmmaking ... some of the people in those ads didn't even smoke..."

See the red herring? Glantz attacks smoking in Hollywood filmmaking by referencing ADS that used some Hollywood actors of that era, as if they were one and the same.

News Flash, Glantz: Smoking IS often a part of film making, and character development...and REALITY dictates that smoking is a fact of life long before Hollywood glamorized it, and even made it larger than it was. That's not even disputable. Glantz could have said, "But our paper reveals the business side of the equation as well." But no, instead he says it's "all business", as if showing the business side somehow canceled everything else.

Sell it to the unthinking. If you're a rabid anti-smoker, you'll probably find no fallacy at all in Glanze's comment. To all such I recommend that you take a badly needed smoke break.

[TBT]

Yeah, right!

So Hollywood is to blame smoking? No, the person who smokes the cigarette is to blame for smoking. I do not buy into the 'I am a weak willed follower and cannot control my own behavior' nonsense. The warnings, by the Surgeon General, that cigarettes are dangerous began 44 years ago, I was 10 at the time, so no one my age or younger has no excuse.

[jessica]

I agree with TBT. I am so sick of other people blaming their bad decisions on other people. It is no ones fault you don't teach your kids that smoking is bad. The media is not to blame for your kids having sex, cursing, doing drugs or even smoking. It is the parent's fault for not being involved enough in the kids life, setting a good example for the child or letting them know what's good/bad or real/fake.

Parents need to stop blaming other people for their lack of parenting.

[Josh]

Yeah, well, I was ten too when the Surgeon General's report came out, but I wasn't as all-fired smart as TBT. Guess I should blame my ten-year-old self for not seeing through the propaganda and trying smoking like my mom, dad, and the dashing spies and detectives on television, and for getting addicted for many years to a drug more addictive than crack and Heroin -- a little detail that the tobacco companies er forgot to mention.

Oh, but I forgot, it's just a matter of will power, let's not have any of this newfangled science about upregulation of receptors. Which is why studies show that kids report that they can't stop after smoking for only a few days or weeks, and adults smoke through tracheotomies.

That being said, the fact that the studios were once paid to place tobacco products doesn't mean that they are now -- they aren't, by agreement. Tobacco use is part of society and for that reason it's part of art. I don't want to see kids making the same mistake I did, but neither do I want to see the sort of censorship that takes an acitvity that can be observed merely by walking down the street and banishes it from the screen. If we really want to ban something, it should be the glamorous and therfore misleading images in tobacco ads -- the ones that show young, beautiful people smoking happily with no portrayal of the consequences. In films, tobacco use should not be glamorized as it once was, but neither should it be hidden: It's a part of life.

[Flunky Carter]

NC Bob!

You caught a typographical error! Congratulations.

Here, now go to your favorite lolcat website and have yourself an OCD Fit... or rather a CDO fit (alphabetical, like it should be.)

Myek.

Great article BTW! Oops, I mean by the way.

[Paul Stravinsky]

NC Bob; We'll need our proofreaders to be thorough too...

""It is the most important stimulus for youth smoking -- even more powerful that cigarette advertising,""

Besides that, this article is not surprising, or even alarming.

If only all naysayers learned equally from such scientific progress.

[gene]

Filmmakers should be free to use cliches, sure. Everyone can't be expected to be an artist.

And people do smoke; but the character development aspect of smoking is totally askew, reflecting tobacco advertising more than reality, consisting in most cases of painfully hack cliches, ie, "Oooo, he's a rebel--he smokes!"

But the reality is:

--smokers tend to be poorly educated;

--40% of cigarettes are sold to the mentally ill;

--very recent research shows "risk-taking" cigarette smokers also make poor risk-involved decisions in other areas.

Writers who smoke like to puff themselves up and promote their own sorry addiction as something cool. If your writing is to reflect reality and not cliches that appeal to your own self-image, then your most of your character-based smokers would be dull, poorly educated and mentally unstable. Certainly not your smart, cool hero--or even villain.

These blind, unthinking clip-art cliches function as attractive ads, especially for kids. This is indisputable by science and common sense. Even Sherry Lansing, on PBS' great Warner Bros. bio, said yes, movies DO influence people and their behavior--and filmmakers DO need to consider the effects of their work.

[TBT]

Josh, I am sorry, but that is not a valid point. Yes, some people are prone to addiction.

My parents, my aunt, my uncle and my grandfather smoked. Alcoholism runs in my family. My parents were abusive drunks. When I was leaving to register for 11th grade my father told me to get job and start paying him rent. But all of that did not force me to smoke, to drink heavily or to be abusive. Yes, I was so inclined, but by the time I was 22 I realized that I had nobody but myself to blame for my situation, after all I had been on my own for five years, so I changed course. Go ahead blame your parents, the tobacco companies or Hollywood if that makes you feel better. I chose to blame myself. I chose to change.

[Douglas]

I started smoking when I was 12. This was a number of years before the Surgeon General's report yet we knew, even in 1958 that smoking was no good for your health. A very old nickname for cigarettes was "coffin nails". We didn't really need to be told. It wasn't the actors and celebrities; it was your peers, your older siblings, your parents that influenced you the most. But, in the end, you chose to smoke and continue to smoke. The addiction to nicotine is not that strong but the habit of smoking is incredibly difficult to break. This is because it is ingrained in social activity. It becomes a part of who and what you are. But you can quit, you can choose not to smoke. For me, it was a matter of deciding who was in charge, me or the cigarette. It was not easy, there is no magic pill, but you can do it if you decide at your core to do so. You started it your habit. No one put that cigarette in your mouth, you did. And you can stop.

[Dr. Steve Hansen]

It's time for the movie folks to quit being in creepy cahoots with the greatest cause of preventable human suffering. We all know now the right thing to do. We can fix this quickly.