Sharing a Cigarette During the Tour de France, ca. 1927

During the Tour de France in 1927, a captivating moment was captured as two cyclists shared a cigarette amidst the grueling race. At a time when the race was known for its extreme physical endurance and challenging terrain, the image of these athletes casually taking a break to smoke highlighted a stark contrast to the modern image of sports professionalism. Back then, cyclists were not the well-conditioned, highly trained athletes we think of today, but often worked with fewer resources and a less scientific approach to training.

The cigarette break served as a small, humanizing moment in the midst of the grueling competition. The riders, caught between moments of exhaustion and the fleeting respite, were sharing a brief pause from the intense race. The casualness with which they lit up during such an intense event shows how much the culture of competitive sports has changed over the years, with the focus now on optimal health and performance.

This iconic photograph from the 1927 Tour de France is a reminder of the past and how far the sport has evolved. It symbolizes a different era in cycling, one where athletes could share a smoke as easily as they shared the road. Today, the Tour de France is synonymous with elite athleticism, but this picture offers a rare glimpse into a time when the race was less about perfection and more about sheer will and grit, with moments of levity in between the fierce competition.

Women With Cigarettes: Icons of Mid-Century Cool

In the mid-20th century, the image of a woman with a cigarette was often portrayed as the pinnacle of cinematic glamour and social rebellion. During this era, particularly the 1940s and ’50s, cigarettes were transformed into a sophisticated accessory, frequently seen in the hands of Hollywood starlets and chic urbanites alike.

Beyond the haze of smoke, these images captured a significant cultural shift, a symbol of independence and the “femme fatale” mystique. Whether held with gloved hands in a grand ballroom or shared during a quiet moment in a jazz club, the cigarette served as a prop that emphasized poise and a bold, modern attitude.

These vintage photos offer a fascinating, albeit complex, glimpse into the evolving identity of women and the stylized aesthetics of a bygone era.

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In the 1950s, Hospital Patients Can Buy Cigarettes Right From Their Beds

In the 1950s, selling cigarettes in hospitals was a routine, accepted practice, with staff often wheeling carts directly to patient bedsides to sell packs or cartons alongside snacks and magazines. Smoking was widely allowed in hospital rooms, waiting areas, and nurses’ stations, as tobacco was not yet widely recognized as a major health risk.

Patients could purchase cigarettes from carts without leaving their beds. Smoking was common in hospitals, with some doctors even permitting or recommending it, mistakenly believing it could soothe patients. Popular unfiltered brands like Camels, Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, and Philip Morris were common.

Nurses and doctors often smoked in nursing stations, during reports, and while on duty. This practice reflects a period when tobacco was integrated into daily life and, in some cases, marketed as a health aid. This era preceded the widespread awareness of the dangers of smoking and the subsequent Surgeon General’s warnings.

35 Advertising Posters For Cigarette and Cigar in the Early 20th Century

In the early 20th century, advertising posters for cigarettes and cigars emerged as a dominant art form, blending commercial interest with the aesthetic movements of the time, such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Unlike the text-heavy ads of the previous century, these posters relied on bold visual storytelling and vibrant color lithography to capture the public's imagination.

Tobacco companies hired renowned illustrators to create iconic imagery that associated smoking with prestige and luxury. For cigars, posters often featured tropical landscapes or regal figures to emphasize the “exotic” and premium nature of the tobacco. Meanwhile, cigarette posters began to shift toward lifestyle branding, depicting the “New Woman” or the “Sophisticated Gentleman” to make smoking appear as an essential accessory for modern life.

These posters were not just advertisements, they were powerful cultural artifacts that utilized psychological triggers, such as social belonging, health claims, and romanticism, to cement tobacco’s place in the daily routine of the early 1900s.

Manufacture de cigares C. Müller & Co, Payerne, Switzerland, circa 1900

Cigarettes Saphir, circa 1900s

Cigarillos Paris, Fides, 1900

Los Cigarrillos Paris son los mejores, circa 1900s

Murad, The Turkish Cigarette, 1900

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In 1948, Mr. Cig, the Mascot, Handed Out Free Cigarettes to Patients at Hospitals in England

In the 1940s, a promotional campaign featured a human-sized cigarette mascot known as “Mr. Cig” or “Mr. Cigarette” who visited hospital patients. During this era, tobacco companies, including Philip Morris and Camel, distributed free cigarettes and promotional materials to patients in an effort to normalize smoking and associate it with positive concepts like glamour and recovery. These visits occurred when smoking was widely accepted and even seen as a way to calm nerves or help with stress, long before the link between smoking and health issues was fully understood and publicized.

This practice declined after the 1960s as scientific evidence mounted, showing the harmful effects of smoking, leading to major public health campaigns against smoking and its ban in many places.

26 Amazing Photos of Shelley Duvall Holding a Cigarette

Shelley Duvall (July 7, 1949 – July 11, 2024) was known to be a smoker, having started on the set of Thieves Like Us (1974). She continued to smoke throughout her career and even became known for her on-screen smoking, particularly during her role in The Shining (1980). There are numerous photos and even mentions of her smoking habits from that period.

Like many actors of that era, smoking was both a personal habit and often part of on-screen roles, reflecting the norms of the time. According to Shelley Duvall Archive, she’s tried to quit many times, but it must be said that a cigarette dangling between her long fingernails arguably became her motif on screen and even off. A pack of Parliaments were Shelley’s favorite brand in her later years.

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23 Amazing Vintage Portraits of People Smoking in the Photo Booths

Photo booths have been in the zeitgeist since the late 1800s. The earliest photo booth patent was filed in 1888 by William Pope and Edward Poole in Baltimore, but there is no known record of a working version. The first-ever working photo booth was made by French inventor T.E. Enjalbert in March 1889 and was presented later that same year at the World’s Fair in Paris. He named it the “Apparatus for Automatic Photography”. A similar machine was patented only a year later in America by photographer Mathew Steffens. These earlier versions were not as impressive as they thought they would be as they still required a lot of manpower and were not as efficient as they intended them to be.

After money has been inserted in the machine, multiple customers can enter the booth and pose for a set number of exposures. Some common options include the ability to alter lighting and backdrops while the newest versions offer features such as cameras from a variety of angles, fans, seats, and blue screen effects. Some establishments even offer costumes and wigs for customers to borrow.

Once the pictures have been taken, the customers select the pictures that they wish to keep and customize them using a touch screen or pen-sensitive screen. The touch screen then displays a vast array of options such as virtual stamps, pictures, clip art, colorful backdrops, borders, and pens that can be superimposed on the photographs.

Features that can be found in some sticker machines are customizing the beauty of the customers such as brightening the pictures, making the eyes sparkle more, changing the hair, bringing a more reddish color to the lips, and fixing any blemishes by having them blurred. Other features include cutting out the original background and replacing it with a different background. Certain backgrounds may be chosen so when the machine prints out the picture, the final sticker will be shiny with sparkles.

Finally, the number and size of the pictures to be printed are chosen, and the pictures print out on a glossy full-color 10 × 15 cm sheet to be cut up and divided among the group of customers. Some photo booths also allow the pictures to be sent to customers' mobile phones. Other photo places have a scanner and laptop at the cashier's desk for customers to scan and copy their original picture before they cut and divide the pictures amongst their group.

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Interesting Posters of Cigarette Ads in the 19th Century

Cigarette advertising in the 19th century was influenced by the Industrial Revolution, which made mass production possible and led to cigarettes becoming more affordable. Ads used illustrations, often depicting exotic or glamorous imagery, to suggest sophistication and luxury.

While initially targeted at the upper class, advertising began to reach a broader audience as production increased. Most early ads targeted men, associating smoking with masculinity, adventure, and status. Brands also began developing distinct identities, sometimes using royal or foreign imagery to enhance prestige.

Here below is a set of interesting posters that shows cigarette ads in the 19th century.

El Prínciple de Gales, Key West Cigars, 1871

Turkish cross-cut cigarettes, 1880

Allen & Ginter, Fans of the Period, 1885

American eagle, chew American eagle fine cut, smoke eagle cavendish, 1885

Sweet Violet Cigarettes, Globe Tobacco Co., 1886

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Man Putting Gas in His Car While Smoking a Cigar, ca. 1940s

In the bustling era of the 1940s, a snapshot of daily life captures a scene that speaks volumes about the character and spirit of the time. A man stands at a gas station, a place that was as much a hub of community chatter as it was a pit stop for fuel. He’s dressed in a well-worn suit, the kind that spoke of modest success and practical elegance. His hands, steady and sure, are engaged in a task both routine and crucial: filling his car’s tank.

The car itself is a gleaming symbol of post-war optimism, its polished chrome and streamlined curves reflecting the era's excitement and newfound prosperity. As the gas pump clicks steadily, the man’s other hand holds a cigar, its smoke curling upward in lazy, contemplative wisps. The cigar, a mark of his personal indulgence and a small rebellion against the strictures of the day, adds a touch of sophistication and casual defiance to the scene.

It’s an era when the world was recovering from the upheavals of war and embracing the conveniences of modern life. Gasoline stations were more than just places to refuel; they were social hotspots where people exchanged news, stories, and the occasional joke. The act of fueling up was intertwined with the broader tapestry of life, reflecting both the simplicity and the small luxuries that defined the era.

The man’s presence at the pump, with his cigar and his car, paints a vivid picture of the 1940s—a decade of change and transition. It’s a moment frozen in time, capturing the essence of an age when the mundane and the extraordinary coexisted in the daily routines of people striving to rebuild and enjoy the fruits of peace.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Advertising for Phillip Morris in the 1950s

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz we’re both lifelong smokers. Phillip Morris sponsored the I Love Lucy and promoted cigarettes regularly in commercials and print ads (and even on their show).

It is indeed shocking by today’s standards that two of the most trusted faces in America advertised deadly tobacco – but so many people smoked that to participate in advertising to have them consider another brand did not seem wrong, and people usually didn’t make the decision to smoke because of advertising, or so it seemed.

During the 1950s, it was common for TV shows to have direct sponsorships from companies, and I Love Lucy was sponsored by Philip Morris. As a result, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appeared in several commercials and promotional materials endorsing the brand. These advertisements often featured them in character as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, leveraging their popularity to promote the cigarettes.

The campaigns were typical of the era, with glamorous images of the stars holding or smoking Philip Morris cigarettes, accompanied by slogans and taglines that emphasized the quality of the product. Despite the shift in public perception of smoking over the decades, these ads are a part of the history of early television and the celebrity endorsement culture of the time.

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The Story of Barack Obama and a Group of His Friends Called the “Choom Gang”

While in high school at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Barack Obama began associating with a group of boys who loved basketball and good times, called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning “to smoke marijuana.”

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama never tried to say he didn’t inhale. In his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father,” Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke “in a white classmate’s sparkling new van,” he would smoke “in the dorm room of some brother” and he would smoke “on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids.” He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere.

As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.

Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of “roof hits”: when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.

When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,” explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

Although Obama himself wrote that he and his pot smoking buddies were a “club of disaffection,” that’s not really true. In fact, most members of the Choom Gang were decent students and athletes who went on to successful and productive lawyers, writers and businessmen. One notable exception was Ray, the group’s pot dealer who, known for his ability “to score quality bud,” would years later be killed by a scorned gay lover armed with a ball-peen hammer.

Obama himself managed to be a pretty good student despite all the pot smoking and unconventional study habits. He told his Choom Gang mates that the trick was if you put the textbook under your pillow the night before you would perform better on an exam.

Hawaii of the early 1970s was something of a pot-smoking Mecca. It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakalolo were readily available.

Obama’s pal Mark Bendix had a Volkswagen microbus known as the “Choomwagon.” They would often drive up Honolulu’s Mount Tantalus where they parked turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some “sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds” and washed it down with “green bottled beer” (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl). No shouting, no violence, no fights; they even cleaned up their beer bottles.

Of course, smoking, drinking and driving on mountain roads could also be a little dangerous. Especially the night they tried drag racing. According to one anecdote, the Choomwagon and a Toyota in which Obama was riding raced to the top of Mount Tantalus, and the Toyota rolled off the road. The Choomwagon’s passengers found the future president staggering on the road and “laughing so hard he could barely stand up.”

In his senior yearbook, Obama expressed his gratitude: “Thanks Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times.”

“CUT IT OUT YOU FOOL” – Anti-Smoking Sign Outside of Zion, Illinois, ca. 1920s

Road sign in field, stating that: “No Gentleman Will Use Tobacco in This City,” and “Cut It Out You Fool.” These photos were taken outside of Zion, Illinois from the early 1920s, at a time when smoking was generally considered healthy.

It wasn’t marketed as healthy until the late 1930s and 1940s. Alternatively tobacco wasn’t considered necessarily unhealthy either, just more “gross” and smelly and largely considered a novelty item. Before the marketing campaigns of the 1940s, the ads and marketing was mostly just artsy logos with brands behind them, mostly aimed at poorer folks until the turn of the century when ads began depicting wealthy men and Gibson girls smoking.

No claims of health benefits specifically, just mostly about good flavors and racist depictions for humor purposes. Cigarettes became more popular around the American Civil War, which led to an increase in “tar lung” occurrences as the years went on. Studies had been done on lung cancer and its causes since the 1700s which is when the first case was properly documented. Lung cancer was studied intensely on any reported cases because it was so rare. But German scientists in the 1910s began linking tobacco field workers and lung tumors with one another, assuming that tobacco dust was the culprit- and eventually looking into smoked tobacco. But it was considered inconclusive until the 1920s when more cases began showing up in cigarette smokers around the globe and there was a growing interest in this when scientists took a larger interest in tobacco users and did so by using animal testing vs tobacco juice and fumes (poor animals).

It was a confirmed link in men by the 1940s and 1950s but cigarette and tobacco companies fought hard against these claims and misguidedly used doctor endorsements to claim health benefits and the filter was introduced. So it was known to some degree that it was harmful by WWI, but the exact side effects not widely known.

Vintage Portraits of Film Stars on Cigarette Cards From the 1920s

Pictures of silent film stars of the 1920s on a series of 50 cigarette cards. Typically of this kind of card, the print quality varies from card to card on the originals and is not great on any of them, but they mostly seem to have originated in well lit star portraits supplied by the studios.

The 1920s movie goers experience was largely dominated by silent movies but saw the introduction of synchronized sound.

In the 1920s movie stars were really stars – with huge salaries, the fashions and activities of the Hollywood greats roared around the world and 100,000 people would gather in cities all over the world, including such diverse cities as London and Moscow, to greet Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks when they toured Europe.

Early silent movies were often accompanied by live piano or organ music and provided enormous entertainment value to audiences captivated by the experience of watching moving pictures on the silver screen. Although they had been previous attempts to introduce sound, it wasn’t until 1923 that a synchronized sound track was photographically recorded and printed on to the side of the strip of motion picture film and made it on to a commercially distributed movie. It would still be seven long years before talking pictures gained total supremacy and finally replaced the silent film era.

The first movie theaters were called Nickelodeons, and were very basic compared the luxurious picture palaces that followed but what an aura of excitement, of laughter, fun and tears surrounded them! Before the introduction of movie soundtracks, movies were often accompanied by scripted music from a piano. Pearl White was the damsel in distress, Francis X. Bushman had lots of adoring female admirers, Theda Bara wrecked homes, Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle and Mack Sennett set crazy standards, never to be improved on, and a collection of beautiful ladies adorned the screen. The male and female movie stars were idolized world-wide by adoring fans who could never get enough of them.

The production of The Jazz Singer in 1927 did much to change the industry's perception of talking pictures. The technology had advanced little in the previous five years, but the production was the first feature length talking picture to feature a star singer and actor, Al Jolson, speaking and singing on screen. The huge demand for The Jazz Singer was unexpected, and caused other studios to begin to produce sound films of their own to capitalize on what at the time they saw as a fad.

By 1927 Hollywood had become the center of movie-making in the U.S. with 85% of U.S. movie production occurring in or around Hollywood. Good weather and a wide variety of scenic locations were factors in its success. Whole new industries grew in conjunction with the movie business including zoos and animal supply companies, costume suppliers, and casting agencies. The huge output of U.S. movie studios overwhelmed film production in other countries causing problems with France in particular.

The 1920s represented the era of greatest film output in the US movie market. An average of 800 films were produced annually. Although developments in color and sound were still at the experimental stage, a strong demand for movies, and the opportunity to make money, encouraged studios to produce “talkies” for commercial release.

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Found Photographs Capture the Unexpected Role Cigarettes Play in Chinese Weddings in the 1980s and 1990s

Cigarettes played an unexpected role in Chinese weddings in the 1980s and 1990s. As a token of appreciation, it is customary for the bride to light a cigarette for each and every man invited. The bride and the groom are then invited to play some cigarette-smoking games of an unprecedented ingenuousness.

These photos come from the Beijing Silvermine project, an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing by the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin.

Sauvin has been collecting photographs taken by ordinary Chinese since 2009, when he discovered a garbage dump on the outskirts of Beijing that housed bulks of discarded 35mm. negatives, ready to be processed to extract silver nitrate. He bought the negatives by the kilo and started an archival project, Beijing Silvermine, which now houses an estimate 500,000 negatives. The photographs, shot between 1985 to the early 2000s, when digital replaced analog, offer a surprisingly intimate glance at Chinese lives against the backdrop of the country’s vast social changes.

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