Smoking in the Movies

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Assuring that smoking appears in movies has been a tobacco industry PR strategy to make sure smoking behavior remains in the mainstream of society, and to help preserve smoking's social acceptability. Tobacco industry documents indicate the extent to which the industry used this PR strategy. Some of those documents are below:

Tobacco industry documents about smoking in the movies

• List by year of movies for which product was supplied in connection with Charles Pomerantz and Andrew Varela.
• Skoal Urban Cowboy (U.S. Tobacco plan to recruit new dippers for Skoal brand smokeless tobacco by linking the brand to John Travolta and Charlie Daniels in the popular 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy.")
• Sylvester Stallone agreement to use Brown & Williamson products in his movies for $500,000
• We Are About to Go Into Production with the Motion Picture, "Run Sheep Run", A Suspense, Thriller, Set in Los Angeles. (RJR, 1972)
• Raleigh in Feature Films (Letter to Brown & Williamson marketing department exposing behind-the-scenes activities in which cigarette companies engaged to get their brands of cigarettes placed in major movies)
• Draft Speech for Hamish Maxwell, Marketing Meeting, 000624 (Speech by PM President c. 1983 about the need to preserve smoking in the movies as a way to aid the social acceptability of tobacco use.)
• Placement of cigarettes in movies "sheer fiction" Denial letter from Tobacco Institute to the Christian Science Monitor, 1989
• Trial testimony of Marvin E. Goldberg, Ph.D., December 3, 2002, Lucier v. Philip Morris Inc. (Testimony by marketing expert about how and why cigarette companies get their products placed in big-screen movies)
• "Movies" (undated R.J. Reynolds proposal about how to involve the brand Camel in the movies)
• Movie memo (1990, American Tobacco Co. - movies in which cigarettes were placed as "set dressing")
• Academy Amusement Corporation and "Snow White"

Sourcewatch resources

• Tobacco industry public relations strategies

External resources

• Timeline of smoking in the movies (1927-2009) by Smokefree Movies (University of California, San Francisco)