Celebrity endorsements can be a tad tricky now, begging the questions of just what Bill Cosby was specifically using that Jell-o Pudding for and whether hot dog producers will have the temerity to approach Louis C K, Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner about reviving the "I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener" campaign.
That said, movie stars plugging smoooooooooooooth satisfying tobacco products goes back to the silent era. None other than swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was immortalized on Players cigarette cards.
Yes, even during the worst days of the Great Depression, there was serious dough-re-me in endorsing smokes. The health-conscious Mae West very likely never touched tobacco offscreen, but here she is, plugging Old Golds along with her latest flick, Belle Of The Nineties (1934).
Cigarette ads prove much less of a surprise with Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis.
This is for two reasons. One. . . ever seen Dino without a cigarette?
Two, the very Chesterfields Dean & Jerry are sounding off for were among the sponsors of The Colgate Comedy Hour, as well as their radio program. Smoke a pack of Chesterfields, then brush your teeth with Colgate Dental Creme!
This writer thinks the Kool Penguins are funny, if not necessarily in the Joe E. Lewis sense of the word. Fortunately, as far as we knew, the Kool Penguins did not perform in nightclubs, and did not - as far as we know - have run-ins with The Mob.
The little guys were big hits in print advertising.
The Kool Penguins even had their own theatrical animated commercials, contemporaneous with the terpsichorean tobacco ads that Oskar Fischinger was creating for Muratti Cigarettes. In this one, the penguins run and staff the Kool cigarettes plant in Kentucky and even the Statue Of Liberty smokes Kools.
One would think Bob Hope would not be caught dead endorsing anything as gnarly and unfashionable as cigars, but, like Martin & Lewis, he was prominent among the many comics to enthusiastically promote Chesterfield Cigarettes.
Lucille Ball endorsed Chesterfields, then switched to Phillip Morris when it joined the sponsors of I Love Lucy. That meant that Lucy would NOT "rather fight than switch."
The chain-smoking wheeling-dealing Sgt. Ernie Bilko was a natural for a show with a cigarette company as its chief sponsor.
So Phil Silvers, never to be outdone by Lucy & Desi or anyone, starred in a series of print ads for Camels. Both Phil and Ernie needed the cash for the next wager!
We thank the Phil Silvers Appreciation Society for posting a bunch of these ads.
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