Newly released industry documents show tobacco firms paid huge amounts for endorsements from the stars of Hollywood’s “Golden Age”.
The 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.
Classic films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s still helped promote smoking today, according to researchers writing in the Tobacco Control journal.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco said virtually all of the biggest names of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were involved in paid cigarette promotion.
They obtained endorsement contracts signed at the times to help them calculate just how much money was involved.
Stars prepared to endorse tobacco included Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, John Wayne, Bette Davis and Betty Grable, researchers said.
Deals dated from the start of the “talkie” era, with “Jazz Singer” star Al Jolson signing testimonials stating that the “Lucky Strike” brand was “the cigarette of the acting profession”.
“The good old flavor of Luckies is as sweet and soothing as the best ‘Mammy’ song ever written,” he wrote.
Researchers uncovered a list of payments for a single year in the late 1930s detailing how much American Tobacco, the makers of Lucky Strike, paid certain stars.
Leading ladies Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy were handed $10,000, equivalent to just under $150,000 in today’s money, to endorse the brand, as were Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Robert Taylor.
The annual price of paying actors all together was $3.2m in 2008 terms.
Tobacco firms would, in some cases, pay movie studios to create radio shows that featured their stars’ endorsements.
American Tobacco paid Warner Brothers the equivalent of $13.7m for 1937’s “Your Hollywood Parade”, and sponsored The Jack Benny Show from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s””featuring stars such as Lauren Bacall giving carefully scripted testimonials.
Lead researcher Professor Stanton Glantz, said that the effects of the millions poured into Hollywood by “Big Tobacco” could still be felt today, despite a recent self-imposed ban on promotion within films.
Smoking imagery in films can influence younger people to start smoking, researchers say.
“As in the 1930s, nothing today prevents the global tobacco industry from influencing the film industry in any number of ways,” the report said.
“Classic” films with smoking scenes, such as “Casablanca” and “Now, Voyager”, and glamorous publicity images helped to “perpetuate public tolerance” of on-screen smoking, they said.
While smoking imagery could not be “outlawed completely”, there is an argument for clearer warnings before films, according to UK anti-smoking group ASH.
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