Like Father, Like Son

Smoking as a Family Tradition

Buy Here For Father’s Day June 15th – Dad Always Buys Chesterfield

In-Store Advertisement
Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Company
Circa 1950

Looking for a great Father’s Day gift? How about giving Dad a carton of cigarettes? That may sound like a sick joke, but before the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was published in 1964, tobacco companies made just such advertising appeals. This exhibition features ads, cigar labels, and a greeting card that play on the bond between fathers and sons and the association of smoking with manliness.

I could well have been that freckle-faced little boy on the sign handing a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes to his dad. My father, who had been a high school athlete, became hooked on Chesterfields as a medical student. This was decades before we knew that smoking caused heart disease. As a result of his ever-present cigarette, he suffered a heart attack before he was 50 and died at 60.

Throughout the 20th century and to the present day, millions of fathers have died from heart disease, emphysema, and lung cancer due to smoking, even as the tobacco industry denied that cigarettes could even cause a cough. Meanwhile, cigarettes were advertised on billboards in almost every sports arena and stadium, as well as day and night on TV and radio until banned from the airwaves in 1971, and from then increasingly in newspapers and magazines and at entertainment venues.

Whether in the form of cigarettes, cigars, or spitting tobacco, nicotine is a frequently fatal addiction that the tobacco industry has always downplayed. As if we hadn’t learned the lessons of history, today e-cigarette makers are reeling in a new generation of addicts under the guise that these devices may be safer than cigarettes. Notice that these companies haven’t pulled a single pack of their cigarette brands off the shelves. This is an industry that desperately wants to keep us hooked on nicotine in any form, because it is hooked on making money by addicting others.

Alan Blum, MD
Director
The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
ablum@ua.edu

Exhibit Key

Dr. Blum introduces ‘Like Father, Like Son,’ dedicated to Leon Blum, MD and Gerald Leon Wallace, MD [photos below]. (1:33)

Saturday Evening Post When Your Son Starts Smoking

1918-06-16 - The Saturday Evening Post - Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Co - A daddy he can brag about

1950 Marlboro Baby Ad Gee Dad You Always Get the Best

1951-06-23 - Colliers - Advertisment - Marlboro - I should say not!

1925-09-26 - The Illustrated London News - Advertisement - Player's Nevy Cut Tobacco & Cigarettes - Daddy's Favourite

1946 - Advertisement - Liggett & Meyers - Chesterfiled - Happy Birthday Dad

n.d. - William Shuok - I wouldn't smoke cause Dad says

n.d. - Ligett & Meyers - When a Cigarette Menas a lot

To my Husband on Father's Day - Card - Crystal Card - Cover

To my Husband on Father's Day - Card - Crystal Card - Inside

Happy Birthday to My Dad - Card - Rustcraft - Cover

Happy Birthday to My Dad - Card - Rustcraft - Inside

Happy Birthday Son - Card - Art Guild - Cover

Happy Birthday Son - Card - Art Guild - Inside

Give Dad His Favorite Smoke - Advertisement - Prince Albert - Circa 1950s

Give Dad a Present He's Sure to Enjoy - Advertisement - Camel - Circa 1950s

Give Dad a Carton on Father's Day - Advertisement - Camel - Circa 1940s

For Father's Day Give Mild Kentcuky Club - Advertisement - Mail Pouch Tobacco - Circa 1950s

Father's Day is a Pain in the Neck - Advertisement - Yello-Bole Pipes - Circa 1950

Ever Notice A Man who Enjoys Cigars Enjoys Life - Advertisement - Cigar Institute of America - Circa 1960s

Dutch Masters for Dad - Advertisement - Dutch Masters - Circa 1960s

Dads May Differ - Advertisement - Ronson - Circa 1950s

1964-06-16 - Look - Philips Cigars - Mickey Mantle - Great Glove, Son!

“I’m in a battle I don’t want to lose at all.”

Public Service Announcement
American Cancer Society
1968

This poignant, pioneering public service announcement (PSA) was regularly shown on TV from 1968 to 1971. In 1967, after failing to get New York City television station CBS to air anti-smoking messages, attorney John Banzhaf III filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to apply the Fairness Doctrine that required TV networks to provide free air time to opposing views on matters of public controversy. He argued that since the ubiquitous cigarette commercials were broadcasting only pro-smoking messages, TV stations should be required to run anti-smoking messages. The FCC agreed, and the decision was upheld in federal court.

The ad features actor William Talman, best known for his role as district attorney Hamilton Burger, who was always getting outsmarted by criminal defense attorney Perry Mason, played by Raymond Burr, in the TV courtroom drama “Perry Mason,” which ran from 1957 to 1966. In the decade before he became a TV star, Talman frequently played film noir roles in which he was often seen smoking a cigarette.

In the ad, Talman introduces us to wife and children before revealing his battle with lung cancer. “So take some advice about smoking and losing from someone who’s been doing both for years,” he concludes, looking directly at the viewer, “If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, quit. Don’t be a loser.”

This and other anti-smoking advertisements on TV had such an immediate impact on the public that the tobacco industry soon announced it would remove all of its cigarette commercials from TV if Congress gave it an exemption from anti-trust law violations. The last cigarette ad on US television appeared on January 1, 1971. But this also meant that TV stations no longer had to broadcast anti-smoking messages to meet the requirements of the Fairness Doctrine. As a result, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of anti-smoking PSAs and a leveling off of the rate of decline in smoking.

Former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, on giving up cigarettes for his son

“Until 1975 Joseph A. Califano Jr. smoked as many as three packs of cigarettes a day, but he kicked the habit at the request of his then 11-year-oid son, Joe. Mr. Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, recounted this today while outlining the Federal Government’s new antismoking proposals.

“Mr. Califano said that his son had ‘told me that the best birthday present I could give him would be to stop smoking.’ He added: ‘I set about then to give up cigarettes. And the best present I could give Joe turned out to be one of the hardest things I have ever tried to do.’”

New York Times
January 12, 1978

“It was September, and I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He said, ‘I want you to stop smoking.’ ‘No, seriously,’ I said. ‘What do you want for your birthday and for Christmas?’ And he repeated that wish.

“Joe’s now a surgical oncologist and director of the Head and Neck Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego.”

Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
Personal communication, June 13, 2019

With great appreciation to my son Leon Blum, whom I dragged to countless protest demonstrations at sports and arts events sponsored by the tobacco industry. The cigarette companies testily denied that they were aiming at kids and once accused me of posing my children in front of their billboards for photographs to prove otherwise. Leon is now the beloved dad of Evan and Hannah.

The exhibition also honors the late DJ Wilson, a wonderful father and a brilliant journalist who broke many stories on the tobacco industry as the medical reporter for The Houston Post