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"Chesterfield, Mrs. Smith?"

Time to own up. "The Fall of the House of Ashes?," a report in our July-August issue, cited medical historian Allan Brandt's studies of the tobacco industry's early efforts "to induce more women to smoke-and to smoke in public." We neglected to tell you that this magazine-then called the Harvard Alumni Bulletin-had a part in the nefarious business.

The first national ads to show women smoking broke in the late 1920s. The Bulletin's complicity began with the issue of January 8, 1932. A full-color ad on the back cover depicts a pink-cheeked young woman clutching skates and a pack of Camels. The text states that "women, because their throats are more delicate than men's, particularly appreciaterelief from the hot smoke of parched dry-as-dust tobacco, and are switching to Camels everywhere."

A pastoral fantasy of a seductive pastime.

Five more Camel ads ran that spring, showing women hikers, a nurse, a black-gloved traveler on an ocean liner. Liggett & Myers came on board in June with an ad that portrays "three more Chesterfield smokers"-a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, the picture of poise and good health-indulging on a beachfront patio.

The Bulletin had run cigarette ads before. Small ones for Mogul Egyptian Cigarettes began appearing in 1903 ("10 for 15 cents. Cork Tips or Plain. Save the Coupons."). A decade later Liggett & Myers was placing full-page ads for Fatimas ("No one better knows the good quality of Fatima than the college fellow-he started its popularity."). But these were plain old black-and-white ads. The Camel and Chesterfield campaigns of 1932 took the otherwise monochromatic Bulletin into the brave new world of four-color advertising. And of lively ladies who lit up in public.

The Camel ads began and ended in 1932. But Chesterfields helped see the Bulletin through the Depression. The 77 back-cover ads that ran from 1932 to 1939 represent the golden era of Bulletin cigarette advertising.

In 37 of these ads the smokers are exclusively female. Another 27 depict women and men achieving emotional intimacy with the aid of Chesterfields. The settings tend to involve outdoor activity, but the men wear coats and ties and don't look outdoorsy. In only eight of the ads are the smokers all male. These guys are real men: locomotive engineers, military types, jackhammer operators.

Some of the ladies are novice smokers. An old-style couple has an exchange in a horse-drawn carriage. She says, "I thank you-I thank you ever so much-but I couldn't even think about smoking a cigarette." He says, "Well, I understand, but they are so mild and taste so good that I thought you might not mind trying one while we are riding along out here." We're left to imagine the outcome.

"I really don't know if I should smoke," admits a sincere young woman in a fur wrap, "but my brothers and my sweetheart smoke, and it does give me a lot of pleasure. Women began to smoke, so they tell me, just about the time they began to vote, but that's hardly a reason for women smoking. I guess I just like to smoke, that's all."

The men who dreamed up these ads-and they had to be men-never ran out of fantasies. In 1935 a virginal female Santa has cartons of Chesterfields in her sleigh. Next year Santa's an aviatrix. "The catch of the season" is a coy angler with fly rod and cigarette. She's really hooked. So are her sisters who engage in archery, biking, figure skating, fox hunting, and sledding, cigarettes in hand.

Ocean liners are a favorite venue for romantic couples bound each to each by codependence on nicotine. Ahead are wedding bells and "a lifetime of pleasure." A groom in top hat offers his bride a smoke as the limousine leaves the church: "Chesterfield, Mrs. Smith?" "Yes, thank you, Mr. Smith."

By 1940, according to estimates by the U.S. Surgeon General's office, about 25 percent of women smoked, against 16 percent in 1929. How much blame must the Harvard Alumni Bulletin bear? Its audience was preponderantly male at the time, so perhaps not very much. In any case it won't happen again. Years ago the magazine's board of directors banned cigarette advertising from our pages. They've afforded a smoke-free environment ever since.

~ Primus IV

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