When Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach wrote the music “Smoke Will get in Your Eyes,” tobacco smoke really acquired into much more locations, together with the throat, lungs and, certainly, the complete pulmonary system. In 1966 voluntary innocuous well being warnings with ambiguous messages began appearing on cigarette packages. By 1970 the federal government lit a match below the tobacco firms and mandated stricter warning labels.
Realizing the cachet of cigarettes was coming to an finish, in 1970 the celebrated publishing trade artwork director and grasp of all issues trendy, Harris Lewine (1921–2016), wrote, artwork directed and produced Good-Bye to All That, a paean to tobacco’s golden age(s). Designed by the late Alan Peckolick, the slender, paper-over-boards cowl was made to resemble the enduring Fortunate Strike “flat seventies” cigarette tin from the ’20s and ’30s on the entrance with, paradoxically, a Nineteen Seventies “Warning” label on the again. (The so-called “hazardous to your well being” discover prefigured extra vividly worded and illustrated warnings to come back.)
Metallic silver endpapers, an echo to the silver foil that lined the unique tins and packs, had been the crowning tip-of-the-hat to the times when smoke-filled rooms and lungs had been the peak of masculinity, quickly to be adopted by a feminine smoking revolution.
The primary citation within the ebook, designed within the method of the warning label, paradoxically units the tone: “For thy sake, tobacco, I’d do something however die” (Charles Lamb, 1830).
A combined message: Lewine knew the hazards of smoking however adored the graphic and promoting riches (or, somewhat, smoke and mirrors) the tobacco trade used to promote its wares. The ebook is stuffed with colour plates (beneath) of tobacco artwork and pictures of celebrities from stage and movie that promoted the addictive leaf to the general public.
You don’t need to be woke to know that butts are dangerous for you and the tobacco trade has accomplished all the pieces in its checking account to maintain income excessive and respiratory onerous. However talking of butts, Lewine’s ebook, like cigarettes, was packaged to entice. It nonetheless satisfies, too.
