Smoke Gets in Your Lens

In noir films, almost everyone smokes, and almost all the time. By modern standards this is excess verging on parody. But no one at the time saw it that way. At least half the population was smoking and the other half were second-hand smoking without complaint. In fact, smoking gradually increased during the 1950s and hit its peak in the mid-60s. Women were puffing almost as much as men. Film noir was reflecting reality. If you were that proverbial alien from another planet who watched only film noir to learn about humans, you would conclude smoking was normal and ubiquitous, and not to smoke was considered odd. Often, when declining a cigarette, characters had to hold up their hand and proclaim, “I don’t smoke.”

Film critics can wax poetic describing the action: “Smoking became a symbol of existential despair, a psychological and emotional crutch used to prop up a character's mortal showing, an ambient prop, a burning menace, just simply an extension of hot and cancerous pain, jacketed in the reflective silo of the slim white tune, the mini phallic and the cool expression of one's doubting humanity.” ~ Classic Film Noir. Smoking in Film Noir Volume 1

The major studios implemented a voluntary ban on explicit product placement within films in 1931 to avoid potential lawsuits - part of a wider "clean-up-the industry" campaign by studios to stave off government censorhip. Bad enough to show characters smoking and drinking themelves to an early grave, don't suggest which brands to buy.

"Actor Robert Mitchem buys smokes from Jackie Knight at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood"

This is did not prevent a lucrtive collusion between tobacco companies and studio stars, but it was off camera, in print. Promotion of specific brands timed to a movie premiere was common, such as releasing "candid" publicity photos of Robert Mitchem at the relaease of Out of the Past. The movie audience logically assumed that the cigarette they saw dangling from the character's lip wasa Phillip Morris.

A cigarette brand name hardly ever appears in noir films. The major exception is Chesterfields in A Gun For Hire, made in 1942 when the company was supplying American service men with millions of free smokes. In fact, look closely at the puffers in film noir and you will notice distinct efforts, verging on sleights of hand, to conceal any name on the packs that characters are constantly handling. The only thing you know for sure is everyone drags on non-filters; sometimes you see a smoker pick a piece of tobacco from the tip of their tongue after lighting up. As a former addict of the pure leaf, this is a familiar behavior.

Top 10 best-selling cigarette brands in 1952:

• Camel (plain) - 26.5%

•  Lucky Strike (plain) - 18.6%

• Chesterfield (plain) - 14.4%

• Pall Mall -  (king-size, plain) - 10.8%

• Philip Morris (plain) - 9.2%

• Old Gold (plain) - 6.0%

• Herbert Tareyton (king-size, plain) - 3.2%

• Chesterfield (king-size, plain) - 2.8%

• Raleigh (plain) - 2.1%

• Viceroy (filter) - 0.7% 

The other staple vice of film noir is alchohol. Gulping, like puffing, is nonstop, and as with smoking, brands are almost always concealed. Pabst Beer, one of the first companies to agressively market product placement in films through so-called "expolitation agents," managed to break through briefly in the early 1950s.

The mean, alcoholic mother of John Garfield in He Ran All The Way grips her favorite slug.

Pabst appears in Impact and He Ran All The Way. But it's ultimate placement came during a long climax in The Human Jungle where a burlesque dance (Jan Sterling) who knows too much is chased by the villainous Swados (Chuck Connners) through a sprawling Pabst bottle packing plant filled with logoed delivery trucks and in-your-face Pabst signage. The only product that appears as often as cigarettes and alcohol in film noir is the automobile - a product too big to shroud.