The Cigarette Book: The History and Culture of Smoking

360 Pages·2010·15.58 MB·English

by  Chris Harrald

The Cigarette Book
The History and Culture of Smoking
Chris Harrald
Fletcher Watkins
Copyright © 2010 by Chris Harrald and Fletcher Watkins
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harrald, Chris.
The cigarette book: the history and culture of smoking / Chris Harrald and
Fletcher Watkins.
p. cm.
9781616080730
1. Smoking--Social aspects. 2. Tobacco--Social aspects. 3. Cigarettes. I. Watkins,
Fletcher. II. Title.
GT3020.H33 2010
394.1’4--dc22
2010022148
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Acknowledgements
For permission to use copyright material, grateful acknowledgement is made to
the following: For material from Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis, to Orion
Publishing; for extracts from her writing, to Beryl Bainbridge and to Johnson &
Alcock; for extracts from her writing, to Lynn Barber; for the extract from My
Last Breath (1982) by Luis Buñuel, published by Jonathan Cape, to the Random
House Group Ltd; for the extract from Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other
Interesting Things (2008) by Marcel Danesi, to Palgrave Macmillan; for the
extract from The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996) by Roddy Doyle,
published by Jonathan Cape, to the Random House Group Ltd; for the extract
from The Philanthropist (1970) by Christopher Hampton, to Faber and Faber;
for ‘Be prepared’, to Tom Lehrer; for the extract from Memoirs of an Infantry
Officer (1930), to the Estate of Siegfried Sassoon; for the extract from his article
on journalism and smoking, to Ian Jack; for the extract from The Singing
Detective (1986) by Dennis Potter, to Faber and Faber; for extracts from The
Butt (2008) and other cigarette-related writing, to Will Self; for material from
Kenneth Tynan: A Life (2003) by Dominic Shellard, to Yale University Press; for
‘Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)’ and ‘So round, so firm, so fully
packed’ by Merle Travis, to Warner Chappell; for extracts from The Road Home
(2007) by Rose Tremain, to the William Morris Agency.
Every effort has been made to trace or contact copyright holders. The
publisher will be pleased to make good in future editions or reprints any
omissions or corrections brought to their attention.
Thanks also for their help to David Hewson and Suzanne Fisher, and to David
Fabricant and Chris Mullen for assistance with images.
One day the last cigarette on earth will be smoked. One final puff will be sent
heaven-bound, leaving a lingering, evanescent smokering. Then nothing but
pure, clear space. The perfection of a safe and rational universe.
And the wise of this world will rejoice.
Because logic demands that mankind is rid of this pernicious poison.
Wasn’t that well-known logician Adolf Hitler the most virulent opponent of
cigarette smoking in the last century? Logic also tells us cigarettes are bad for
our health … hence perhaps the diseased visions of Pablo Picasso who smoked
cigarettes until his death at the age of ninety-two.
No, this is sophistry. All smokers know that cigarettes are dangerous. Each
one is a dance with death – and the defiant smoker will say that therein lies its
charm.
So each puff is an existential gesture, an assertion of choice and life in the
face of death. They would mock the warning on the packet that Smoking Causes
Fatal Diseases with the rejoinder that life causes fatal diseases. No, these too are
silly actuarial calculations masquerading as philosophy.
The truth is that cigarettes are pleasurable. It’s a strange pleasure but a
pleasure nonetheless. There is no other reason for this devotion to the illogical
absurdity of the cigarette. Kissed as ever by the corrective of pain but a pleasure
nonetheless.
A pleasure in the choreography of smoking the cigarette, pleasure in the
aesthetics of the packaging, pleasure in all the cultural resonances of the
cigarette over the last century. In novels, in art, in films, in sex, in politics, in
war. The ubiquity of the cigarette is astounding.
But soon it will be no more.
So this book is a simple valediction, a miscellany of curios and soon-to-be-
lost facts before that perfect tube of delight is plucked from the smiling face of
the earth.
A
Aardvark
The UK cigarette advertising restrictions that came in during the 1970s drove
advertising agencies to new heights of ingenuity. In a 1983 poster, Winston’s
agency, J. Walter Thompson, showed a surprised public an unusual piece of
taxidermy. The headline read:
We’re not allowed to tell you anything about Winston cigarettes, so
here’s a stuffed aardvark.
The same campaign showed a Chinese cooking implement forcefully
embedded in a chocolate cake. This time the line was:
We’re not allowed to tell you anything about Winston cigarettes, so
here’s a wok in the Black Forest.
This was advertising surrealism fighting back against government censorship.
For the two triumphant examples of this See Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut.
Adieux
On 1 January 1971, at 11.59 p.m., on the Johnny Carson Show and the Merv
Griffin Show, the Marlboro cowboys rode across TV screens and into the sunset,
the last cigarette commercial to be shown in the US. The date had been extended
a day to allow the television networks one last cash windfall from cigarette
advertising in New Year’s Day football games.
CBS and ABC networks said the ban resulted in a 50 per cent drop in
advertising revenue. Lost revenue is independently estimated at $220m. Under
the Fairness Doctrine, anti-smoking advertising was also removed from the air.
Johnny Carson (1925 – 75) often had a cigarette in his hand during early years
of the show. He stopped smoking on air as the deleterious effects of smoking
became known. He died of emphysema, following a massive heart attack
brought on by his chain-smoking.
The last televised cigarette ad in the UK ran on 31 July 1965. It was a 60-
second commercial for Rothman International. The televisionadvertising ban
came into effect the following day, 1 August. By the following year, cigarette
consumption had surged to 6 billion cigarettes.
Tara Parker-Pope, Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry, New York, 2001
Advertising
Cigarettes are inseparably intertwined with advertising and are the most
spectacular proof of its efficacy. Across the world cigarette companies have
made their advertising agencies rich, while the advertising agencies have made
the cigarette companies even richer.
It is with the launch of Camel in 1913, and R. J. Reynolds’s singleminded
high-budget plugging of the brand that the idea of an ‘advertising campaign’ was
born. The word ‘campaign’ with its implications of battles and war was highly
appropriate to the fierce competition that was soon to consume the tobacco
companies.
It could be said that, however successful the advertising, much of it amounted
to no more than hyperbole and ingenious suggestion. Yet there is a profound skill
in playing with words in a way that catches people’s imaginations.
‘It’s toasted,’ claimed Lucky, to enormous effect, splendidly ignoring the fact
that so was the tobacco of every other brand. George J. Whelan, a leading
distributor of tobacco products in the 1920s, and former cigarette manufacturer,
observed: ‘There is no secret about cigarette making. Anyone can analyze a
Camel and manufacture it.’ But that wasn’t the point. ‘The users would say it
was not the same.’ Such is the power of advertising.
‘The public must be given ideas as to what it should like, and it
is quite surprising sometimes how the public is sold on what
might look [. . .] like the brainchild of a demented person . . . ’
An analyst writing in Advertising and Selling in 1936 observed:
You know a large part of the public doesn’t really know what it