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

[Inkstainedwretch]

There was a 1938 anti-smoking Looney Toons cartoon starring Porky Pig that warned of the dangers of smoking, titled "Wholly Smoke." Of course, it warned not to smoke when you were young, not that it was dangerous to adults, but back then it was pretty unusual to see even that much of an anti-smoking message.

 

[BlueTrain]

Interesting comments. I can only imagine a television production that takes about a week to do before it's time to do the next episode. And some of them are filmed (or taped, I guess) before a live audience.

My son works in Hollywood, though not for any major studio and not in front of the camera. He does a lot of different things, probably anything he can find to do. He informs me that film is sometimes still used, even though the result is transferred to digital (or something like that). The outfits he's worked for do have dealings with the major studios from time to time but I don't recall in what connections, maybe just for props or something. I suppose he thought there was no business like show business.

 

[Edward]

Personally, I enjoy smoking premium cigars. I know that puts me on the outs with this crowd.

I started off by smoking the occasional cigar, but they got so expensive for a decent one in the end, and I have a profound fondness for the paraphanalia of a pipe, the skill in getting and keeping itg lit, and so on. I guess it's the same psychology behind it as is the reason I prefer to shave with a DE safetyh razor over a modern cartridge. A nice, aromatic cgiar can be a joy close to a pipe, though.

Oh, and the tobacco companies were once busily marketing to kids. Maybe they still are, but when I was a kid, there were two kinds of candy cigarettes. One kind was rather like Life Savers, thin tubes of minty candy with a little red coloring at one end to simulate the lit cigarette the grownups had. The other was really cool: "Camels," thin tubes of milk chocolate, sized about like the true Camels, within a thin paper cylinder. They really looked like the real unlit cigarettes. I wish I could find some today.

I don't recall them ever having 'real' tobacco labels in the UK, but I do recall until some time in the eighties being able to buy the little whitec stick ones with red ends, labelled 'sweetie cigarettes', or 'candy cigarettes'. Ironically, given that by 1980 Superman was being used to promote an anti-smoking message, usually with DC comic heroes on them. There was the little cigarette card to collect in them and everything. They never went out of production - just switched the label to 'candy sticks' and stopped painting the ends red. The chocolate ones I remember last seeing on Guernsey in 1991.... not in the UK sicne the late 70s. The other variation was the same as the chocolate ones - full size, fake cigarettes (though again, never 'real' cigarette brands, just fake ones) - but bubble gum in the middle. Often think now if I could still get them it would be a great way to carry gum: a ciggie tin full of those...

It's fair enough, really, that that sort of thing is gone now, though it seems funny looking back how innocent we were with it. We loved playing sweetie cigarettes, or using a Cadbury's Fudge to imitate a cigar (we were the A-Team generation, after all), but we'd never haved dreamed of trying "real smoking". Middled class kids, us, and very few of us had parents who actually smoked. I don't think either of mine ever did.

There was a 1938 anti-smoking Looney Toons cartoon starring Porky Pig that warned of the dangers of smoking, titled "Wholly Smoke." Of course, it warned not to smoke when you were young, not that it was dangerous to adults, but back then it was pretty unusual to see even that much of an anti-smoking message.

Is that the same one I remember which had a couple of kids or some sort (Porky?) being tempted in to the tobacconist's shop, the "Nick O'Teen" character (long before a character of the same name was used in a Superman-based anti-smoking campaign circa 1980), and a wheezing old man-pipe character repeating the refrain "Little Boys shouldn't smoke tobacky."? Or am I thinking of a Silly Symphony that didn't have familiar characters in it?

 

[scotrace]

As children, we played "cigarette tag," in which the person who was "it" tried to tag you before you quickly squatted and called out the name of a cigarette brand. No brand could be called out twice, and even as kids, we knew enough brand names to keep playing several rounds. Eventually, you ran out of brands and had to just flee the tagger.
There was also a version we called "cereal tag," with breakfast cereal brand names used instead. With cereal tag, you got arguments, though. Does "oatmeal" qualify? Stop the game and sort it out before proceeding.

 

[green papaya]

I like the smell of cigars & pipe tobacco, but never smoked myself , the aroma does have a relaxing smell , almost like the pleasant smell of fresh brewed coffee when you go to the coffee shop.

 

[MikeKardec]

I suppose he thought there was no business like show business.

There is no business like show business! At it's best it's amazing and you get to work with some amazingly talented people. In the crafts (sets, makeup, sound, camera) it's nearly a pure meritocracy with significant competition, the cream rises to the top. At it's worst, dealing with the people who are in the executive positions and the agents and some producers, it is like having to do business with a pack of highly privileged and permanently pissed off eight year old girls. There's a horror movie plot hiding in there but I'm not going to write it!

I too love the smell of fresh tobacco smoke, cigarettes and some pipe tobacco ... for about 90 seconds. After that first whiff, it gets disgusting very quickly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Is that the same one I remember which had a couple of kids or some sort (Porky?) being tempted in to the tobacconist's shop, the "Nick O'Teen" character (long before a character of the same name was used in a Superman-based anti-smoking campaign circa 1980), and a wheezing old man-pipe character repeating the refrain "Little Boys shouldn't smoke tobacky."? Or am I thinking of a Silly Symphony that didn't have familiar characters in it?

That's the one. For some unfathomable reason the print shown by our local station was dubbed in Spanish, and they ran it for years without making any effort to get a different copy. "No fumar!"

That cartoon also includes a jazzy bit where a pipe-cleaner man sticks his head into the stem of a pipe and emerges covered with soot, the better to do an impersonation of Cab Calloway, while four burnt-out matchsticks offer hot harmony licks a la the Mills Brothers.

 

[Frunobulax]

That's the one. For some unfathomable reason the print shown by our local station was dubbed in Spanish, and they ran it for years without making any effort to get a different copy. "No fumar!"

That cartoon also includes a jazzy bit where a pipe-cleaner man sticks his head into the stem of a pipe and emerges covered with soot, the better to do an impersonation of Cab Calloway, while four burnt-out matchsticks offer hot harmony licks a la the Mills Brothers.

Spanish Porky Pig? I'd like to see that.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[Edward]

That's the one. For some unfathomable reason the print shown by our local station was dubbed in Spanish, and they ran it for years without making any effort to get a different copy. "No fumar!"

That cartoon also includes a jazzy bit where a pipe-cleaner man sticks his head into the stem of a pipe and emerges covered with soot, the better to do an impersonation of Cab Calloway, while four burnt-out matchsticks offer hot harmony licks a la the Mills Brothers.

I remember watching it when I was about six - the early eighties, BBC2, 6pm - the only one of the three channels in that slot not showing the news... Always used to be something like this as an introit often to an old episode of Doctor Who, or something like King Kong. A lot of my tastes developed then from avoiding the news!

 

[BlueTrain]

I seem to recall in the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," that the chauffeur comes in one cold morning after the maid had died with cups of coffee from Krispy Kreme (or some other recognizable place) and it seemed very natural, although given the time frame of the movie it may have been anachronistic. I don't know when Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Donuts opened for business. It surprises me that the movie is 28 years old now. Where does the time go?

I thought the movie was excellent in showing how complicated race relations are in the South, as they are in reality everywhere in the world.

A few times I have noticed unexpected words or expressions in old movies, terms that I didn't think were as old as they were. The only one I can think of was from a movie made in 1944. One character asks another, "How was your weekend?" Although I suppose the idea of the weekend was already current by then, it was still surprising.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Spanish Porky Pig? I'd like to see that.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

What made it even more hilarious was that Porky's voice was dubbed in a rich, deep baritone voice. The print was one of those "colorized" versions -- not by computer, but by laborers in a Korean sweatshop carelessly tracing the images from an original black-and-white print on a rotoscope and then repainting the resulting cels in violent, tasteless colors. So meticulous was their work that you'd even see frames flick by with flies mashed under the platen of the animation camera. Given such attention to detail, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that a Spanish print ended up in Bangor, Maine.

 

[Fading Fast]

I seem to recall in the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," that the chauffeur comes in one cold morning after the maid had died with cups of coffee from Krispy Kreme (or some other recognizable place) and it seemed very natural, although given the time frame of the movie it may have been anachronistic. I don't know when Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Donuts opened for business. It surprises me that the movie is 28 years old now. Where does the time go?

I thought the movie was excellent in showing how complicated race relations are in the South, as they are in reality everywhere in the world.

A few times I have noticed unexpected words or expressions in old movies, terms that I didn't think were as old as they were. The only one I can think of was from a movie made in 1944. One character asks another, "How was your weekend?" Although I suppose the idea of the weekend was already current by then, it was still surprising.

Agreed, hard to believe "DMD" is 28 years old.

The best product placements are the ones that - like you noted with the Krispy Kremes - feel organic. When it's so obviously a product placement, it, IMHO, works against the product as it turns you off. But the contrary and, clearly, prevailing view is that any product notice is valuable.

As to the term "weekend," it was never handled better than in this scene from "Downton Abbey:"

 

[BlueTrain]

Whenever I see the word "organic" on food packaging, I always thing, "Well, that just means it contains no petroleum products."

I've since learned otherwise.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Organic: It was grown in poop.

 

[Frunobulax]

I seem to recall in the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," that the chauffeur comes in one cold morning after the maid had died with cups of coffee from Krispy Kreme (or some other recognizable place) and it seemed very natural, although given the time frame of the movie it may have been anachronistic. I don't know when Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Donuts opened for business. It surprises me that the movie is 28 years old now. Where does the time go?

I thought the movie was excellent in showing how complicated race relations are in the South, as they are in reality everywhere in the world.

A few times I have noticed unexpected words or expressions in old movies, terms that I didn't think were as old as they were. The only one I can think of was from a movie made in 1944. One character asks another, "How was your weekend?" Although I suppose the idea of the weekend was already current by then, it was still surprising.

I think "Cheers" is the first TV show I remember where brand names of beer - and possibly liquor - were called out. Before that, characters just drank out of cans marked "Beer." And then there's Morley cigarettes, the TV brand that has shown up in everything from The Twilight Zone to The Walking Dead.

http://www.metv.com/stories/the-fas...garettes-the-favorite-fake-brand-of-hollywood

It also seems that many shows also feature the same blue and white disposable coffee cups when characters are seen drinking. They seem ubiquitous on police procedurals.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Organic: It was grown in poop.

The Amish figgered that one out long ago.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Boys already have their product placement plans drawn up for the distant future.

 

[BlueTrain]

A few weeks ago someone died who was known for those big red plastic cups that are used for beer at sports stadiums. If I ever wanted to be remembered for something, it wouldn't be for red plastic cups.

 

[Doctor Strange]

They're not just "ubiquitous in police procedurals" as a fake brand. The Greek coffee cup is a legitimate NYC tradition, used for decades!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthora

http://www.nycoffeecup.com/

 

[Frunobulax]

They're not just "ubiquitous in police procedurals" as a fake brand. The Greek coffee cup is a legitimate NYC tradition, used for decades!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthora

http://www.nycoffeecup.com/

Thanks. My search for the pic led me to that explanation. Now I get it.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.