Hollywood 'paid fortune to smoke'

[n2doc]

Tobacco firms paid huge amounts for endorsements from the stars of Hollywood's "Golden Age".

Industry documents released following anti-smoking lawsuits reveal the extent of the relationship between tobacco and movie studios.

One firm paid more than $3m in today's money in one year to stars.

Researchers writing in the Tobacco Control journal said "classic" films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s still helped promote smoking today.


Virtually all of the biggest names of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were involved in paid cigarette promotion, according to the University of California at San Francisco researchers.
They obtained endorsement contracts signed at the times to help them calculate just how much money was involved.

more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7632963.stm

[salvorhardin]

1. Not very surprising, considering almost every other product in history used celebrity endorsements

What's interesting is how little the celebrities were paid, in light of the huge celebrity endorsement deals of today. The article notes that in 1937/38, the highest paid actors were only paid $146,583 in 2008 dollars. Considering most of the stars got much less (Fred MacMurray got $87,950, while Gloria Swanson only got $21,988), that $3 million spent by one company would easily have paid for 40 actors. That's a lot of influence for relatively little money.

I do wonder how many people the actors actually influenced directly to start smoking, or was it more that the tobacco companies were creating a "culture of smoking" (so to speak) where smoking was seen as integral to the culture of the 1930s-1960s? Also, I wonder what it might have been like if marijuana wasn't criminalized and we had become a nation of cannabis consumers where marijuana use was as much a part of everyday life as cigarettes or tobacco at the time. Would we have had Lauren Bacall extolling the virtues of Phillip-Morris Mary Janes brand joints?