Smoke Free Movies

Big Tobacco and Hollywood

"Film is better than any commercial that has been run on television or in any magazine, because the audience is totally unaware of any sponsor involvement."

That's what Hollywood told Big Tobacco as far back as 1972. In a 1982 letter the public relations firm of Cunningham and Walsh outlined cigarette product placement opportunities to its client, Brown & Williamson:

"Recently there have been a number of high-visibility feature films in which one or more of the central characters smoke a particular brand of cigarettes. This has been happening because cigarette manufacturers have been paying for the exposure."

In 1983, Hamish Maxwell, president of Phillip Morris International (and later chairman of Philip Morris Companies, now Altria), highlighted the importance of smoking in the movies in a speech to his marketeers:

"Smoking is being positioned as an unfashionable, as well as unhealthy, custom. We must use every creative means at our disposal to reverse this destructive trend. I do feel heartened at the increasing number of occasions when I go to a movie and see a pack of cigarettes in the hands of the leading lady. This is in sharp contrast to the state of affairs just a few years ago when cigarettes rarely showed up on camera. We must continue to exploit read more