Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was.

When smoking really took off in North America, I don't know, but it was no doubt pretty darned early. Tobacco, after all, was one of the first cash crops ever grown in North America.  You can't eat it, and you can't smoke it all yourself, so it was grown for money.  That makes it a bit of a unique crop in some ways, for the early history of the country, although it wasn't the only crop grown for cash.

Children of tenant farmer, working tobacco, circa 1916.

Tobacco actually fueled the early slave trade in the US more than cotton.  At the time of the Revolution, slavery was an economic institution in the South because of tobacco, not because of cotton.  It was partially for that reason that the founders were willing to put up with the horrific evil of slavery, as they presumed that it would decrease in a tobacco farming industry which would become increasingly the province of smaller farmers and demand increasingly fewer chained laborers.  Of course, they were wrong, but that shows that the time, smoking the continent up was already a pretty big deal.

I don't have a clue what percentage of the population smoked, or used tobacco in some other fashion, but by the late 19th Century, it was (still) pretty darned common.  Maybe a majority of men smoked.  They didn't all smoke cigarettes, however.  Indeed, most didn't. Cigarettes were somewhat uncommon. Cigars and Pipes were the norm for smokers at the time.

Banjo playing Union artillerymen during the Civil War.  Contrary to what people might generally expect, this pipe looks surprisingly 1950ish.

Civil War era cavalryman with rather long pipe.

Cigars became an increasingly big deal as time passed, and by the early 20th Century they were a pretty big deal.  In the first decade and a half of the 20th Century, it was really the cigar, not the cigarette, that dominated tobacco consumption.

Cigar workers.  Only children, that kid in the middle isn't smoking that cigar as a prop.

Criminal defendant Daisy Grace being escorted to court. She'd be found innocent of drugging and shooting her husband.  The officers in this pre World War One photo wear the classic summertime detectives outfit of the era, boaters and suits.  The officer on the left found it consistent with his duties to be packing a stogie.

Cigarettes weren't a big deal in this era.  They existed, to be sure, but most smokers opted for cigars, if they were going to light up.  What the appeal of cigarettes was at the time I don't know, but it basically seems to be that they were convenient under the circumstances, or that they were regarded as a bit edgy.

The captain is well dressed, and holding a cigarette that's burned right down to the end.  Why he's smoking a cigarette, and not a cigar, in this pre World War One photograph, is not apparent.

 "Cigarette Girl", that is a girl offering cigarettes for sale, prior to World War One.  Women in this time period did not smoke, and particularly did not smoke cigarettes, unless they wanted to be considered rather risque or avant garde.

 Women may not have smoked much, but they were exploited a great deal, in early cigarette advertisements.  Already sort of edgy, manufacturers appealed to men via women.  Women smokers weren't aimed at, but male ones were, through advertisements of this type..  As an aside, it's unlikely that anyone ever adopted such an unlikely hat in the history of hats.

 What exactly the appeal of this advertisement is, I'm not sure. This is a European advertisement for a brand that I've never heard of. How smoking cigarettes in Europe compares with the US, I have not a clue.

 Cigarettes very early on associated themselves with Turkey and Arabia.  Whether or not the Arabs were every big cigarette smokers I don't know, but of course the Turks are associated with water pipes.  This advertisement uniquely associates itself with "ambition."

It was World War One that really got cigarettes rolling in the United States.  Up until that time, they were relatively uncommon, but the war made them common. Easy to smoke and carry, they were also provided to troops by the manufacturers.  In a situation in which death was always seconds away, cigarettes apparently provided some small relief from a grim situation, at least until that situation revisited itself in  the rise of cancer some 20 years later, which was demonstratively indicated in medical statistics.

Cigarettes head for No Man's Land.

World War One brought cigarettes into the North American mainstream in force.  Thousands, probably millions, of men who would have only smoked the occasional cigar or pipe were pretty dedicated cigarette smokers by the end of World War One. And the Jazz Age of the 1920s only expanded it.  As it expanded, it expanded not only in the male segment of the population, but the female as well.  Starting off as a species of protest, the addictive cigarette crossed over to the female population pretty quickly.

Advertisements like this pre World War One cigarette advertisement were probably originally aimed at men, but by the 1920s they also came to symbolize youth in the Jazz Age. Women joined men as smokers.

By the 1930s, smoking cigarettes was really in.  Everybody was smoking.  A habit that had been male dominated, and centered on a means of conveyance that was somewhat impractical, pipes and cigars, had become common and convenient.  Everyone, male and female, smoked. The 1930s was Tobacco Road. 

By World War Two, this was even more the case.  Cigarettes were even included in C Rations.  But for the fact that the Germans were also smoking it up, and even smoking vile Russian cigarettes, the Allies could probably have been smelled coming over the seas long before the invasion fleet was visible on D-Day.

 Maybe "some smoke", but asbestosis, a fatal disease amongst those exposed to asbestos, is not only a problem that's pronounced amongst those who served in the Navy (where asbestos lining was common in ships) but it's much more pronounced amongst those who smoked.

 Women not only ferried aircraft in World War Two, they were dedicated smokers by the 1940s as well.

 The chance that a person might get shot by the Germans or the Japanese no doubt made concerns about smoking comparatively small to soldiers or, as depicted here, Marines.  As for the "T"Zone, well. . .

 They've "got what it takes", no doubt, but no doubt many later wished that it hadn't included cigarettes.

 During World War Two "Lucky Strike" "went to war" and it package became green.,

All of which, I suppose, just goes to say that by the 1940s people were smoking everywhere.  Every house, every restaurant, every bar, and every office.  It was smokey.

I wonder how many people appreciate that now? Everything must have smelled like smoke. 

My parents didn't smoke.  Neither one.  That was pretty rare really, in their era.  I've never been a smoker either.  I guess that's always made me a bit sensitive to smoke, but I well remember an era when smoke in restaurants was very common.  My parents didn't smoke, but we had ashtrays at home, in case they had a party or gathering, as it would just be expected that people who were invited would smoke.  My kids are so unfamiliar with ashtrays that recently one of them, upon seeing one of the old ones from my folk's house, had to ask what it was.  They'd be surprised to learn that in grade school art one of the project we did was to make a pottery ashtray.

And in the 1980s, when I was a National Guardsmen, smoking amongst solders was extremely common. I well remember hearing the command "smoke 'em if you got 'em."  Certain Army classrooms, while I was in the Guard, were filled with vast quantities of smoke.  The aircraft I flew over to Korea on, in the mid 1980s, was so full of tobacco smoke that it looked like it was on fire, when we looked back down the plane. This was just the norm of the times.  When I first was practicing law, we had one secretary who routinely smoked in her office, as well as a lawyer who did the same.  One lawyer smoked cigars if he was approaching a trial.

Well, no more.  Now, there's no more smoking in office buildings.  No more smoking in cars either.  And even bars are often smoke free, based on the rare occasions when I happen to go in one.  The air smells like, well. . . air, most of the time.  

I don't mean to condemn anyone for smoking in years past.  But, man, what a change.  Now, it's hard to watch something like Double Indemnity and not think; "geez, everything must have reeked of smoke."