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One thing I want to know is, is there a star who endorsed a cigarette brand and was a nonsmoker in real life?

In a series of ads he wrote for Bull Durham tobacco in 1925-26, Will Rogers freely admitted he did not use the product.

One thing I want to know is, is there a star who endorsed a cigarette brand and was a nonsmoker in real life?

In a series of ads he wrote for Bull Durham tobacco in 1925-26, Will Rogers freely admitted he did not use the product.

In the ad? You mean showing candor? That would be different.

In a series of ads he wrote for Bull Durham tobacco in 1925-26, Will Rogers freely admitted he did not use the product.

One thing I want to know is, is there a star who endorsed a cigarette brand and was a nonsmoker in real life?

In a series of ads he wrote for Bull Durham tobacco in 1925-26, Will Rogers freely admitted he did not use the product.

In the ad? You mean showing candor? That would be different.

That's correct -- not just once, but several times in the series. Here's the text of Will's first ad, which appeared in many popular magazines in January of 1925:

I know people are going to say,"What do you think of Will Rogers writing and endorsing 'Bull' Durham?" That's where you're wrong. I am not endorsing it. I never smoked any tobacco in my life, not even 'Bull' Durham.

If you want the real truth about why I signed up to write a lot of pieces for these people, it's because I love animals. Have you ever studied that picture of the bull carefully? . . . have you ever seen such a kind-looking animal? I thought this: -- certainly no one who cares about dumb creatures as they do would put out the best smoking tobacco possible -- so I said all right, I'll write your stuff. However, the money part of it didn't have much to do with it. That is, not very much.

Seriously, though, out where I come from, unless a male member of the population has got that 'Bull' Durham tag hanging from the shirt pocket, he's liable to be arrested for indecent exposure. And, you believe me, you can't sell those western hard-boiled eggs much and keep on selling them unless it's got class.

Guess maybe this non-smoking thing has sort of got me winging. Wonder if that's why things has turned out this way. Come to think of it, it may be a moral lesson to the youth of the country. The moral in my case being, if you want to grow up and know nothing but telling jokes and have people laughing at you all the time, don't smoke.

But who wants to go through life acting the fool?

Will Rogers (signed)

He certainly was no anti-tobacco moralist!

He certainly was no anti-tobacco moralist!

Praise God!

Love his line, "Prohibition cost us more than the War, but we got the war!"

CAROLE LOMBARD - SINGER

Here's a complete set of Player's Navy Cut Cigarette cards featuring Hollywood stars of the early '30s. Some of them are quite lovely.

Here's an odd assortment of Lucky Strike caricature cards, with some rather unusual suspects.

JOHN BUNNY and HUGHIE MACK

john bunny Union Leader Tri-Fold Store Display Sign.jpg (152.47 KiB) Viewed 582 times

The John Bunny one is great. Does anyone have a date on it?

Bob

Never heard of a product meant to be smoked OR chewed. Were there any stars man enough to promote Brown's Mule or Red Man? I doubt it, except for Beery & Bancroft, maybe.

ERNIE SMOKES CIGAR.jpg (175.25 KiB) Viewed 452 times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Kovacs#Death
"He may have lost control of the car while trying to light a cigar.
A photographer managed to arrive moments later,
and images of Kovacs in death appeared in newspapers
across the United States. An unlit cigar lay on the pavement,
inches from his outstretched arm."

Here's a jaw dropper:

Here's a jaw dropper

Whoa! Posed shot, one hopes.

As W.C. Fields cautions the kids in The Bank Dick after doing cigarette tricks for them: "Never smoked a cigarette myself until I was nine."

Speaking of kids and smoke, check out this bizarre late-1920s Norwegian commercial:

Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco (1943)
Frank Sinatra, Kay Kyser, Kenny Delmar, and L.A. "Speed" Riggs
CLICK ON LINK TO SEE PROMOTIONAL FILM
http://archive.org/details/lucky_strike_means_fine_tobacco

http://www.ncagr.gov/paffairs/aghall/riggs.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-02-05/news/mn-981_1_lucky-strike
February 05, 1987 OBITUARIES : Lee Aubrey (Speed) Riggs; Lucky Strike Spokesman
by BURT A. FOLKART | L. A. Times Staff Writer

"Lee Aubrey (Speed) Riggs, whose machine gun-like staccato chant become synonymous to radio listeners with "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco," died Sunday in Goldsboro, N.C., of congestive heart failure. He was 79. For more than three decades, he was the voice of Lucky Strike primarily on the old "Your Hit Parade" show. Interspersed around the top 15 songs of the week as the tension built toward the announcement of the week's No. 1 tune, Riggs would unleash a rapid-fire tobacco auction refrain that ended with "Sold . . . American." The American Tobacco Co. manufactured Lucky Strikes. The man who one day would be emulated by tobacco auctioneers across the land learned his craft while a boy by mimicking some of the chants he heard at the auctions he attended with his father, a tobacco farmer. He noticed that many of the auctioneers could not keep up with the increasing sales, and he developed a chant that allowed him to speak at the rate of 469 words per minute, believed to be the fastest in the world. At 18 he was fast enough to defeat five veteran auctioneers at a contest in his hometown of Goldsboro, earning him both the nickname "Speed" and a job with Lucky Strike. Farmers over the years had been known to truck their crops 300 and 400 miles just to have Riggs sell them. Lucky Strike paid Riggs a then-astounding $550 a week to do their radio commercials, more than many radio stars were earning. He also traveled the across country for Lucky Strike, giving interviews and speeches and raising about $218 million in auctions for charity. During World War II, he auctioned off $17 million worth of war bonds. "Your Hit Parade" went on the air in 1935 and ran through 1959. Riggs continued to be a spokesman and announcer for Lucky Strike until tobacco advertising was banned on radio and television in 1969. After the ban on commercials, Riggs moved to Fullerton in Orange County and set up "Your Community Fund," a nonprofit organization that provides training in furniture-making for youths with learning handicaps. Riggs returned to North Carolina in January, 1986."