From Snuff to Dancing Cigarettes (00:52)

The P. Lorillard Tobacco Company is the nation’s oldest continuous manufacturer of tobacco products. It began in a snuff mill on land that is now part of the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. Pierre Lorillard is said to have been New York’s first millionaire. By the 20th century Old Gold cigarettes, Lorillard’s flagship brand, was a leading sponsor of radio and a major advertiser in magazines and newspapers. Old Gold’s popularity peaked in the early-1950s with the advent of television and such Lorillard-sponsored programs as “Chance of a Lifetime.” Old Gold’s slogan, “For a TREAT instead of a TREATMENT…” was Lorillard’s way of downplaying reports in medical journals beginning in the late-1940s that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer.