MovieChat Forums > Housewife (1934) Discussion > Boy they smoked a lot in this movie!

Boy they smoked a lot in this movie!


I love classic movies and know there was smoking in them but, boy, some have a lot more than others!

'There’s a name for you ladies, but it’s not used - Outside a kennel! (Crystal Allen in The Women)'

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It was like that in all the old movies back then.
The Divine Genealogy Goddess

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It was like that in all the old movies back then.


I'll say it was!

If you think Housewife had a lot of smoking in it, you should check out M (1931) sometime. You can hardly see the actors for all the cigar/cigarette/pipe smoke in that one.

It's hard to believe in the 21st Century, but at one time, there were not only cigarette vending machines everywhere, but also, cigarette girls whose sole job it was to walk around clubs and other gathering spots selling cigarettes. If you watch enough old movies, you'll see lots of cigarette girls in them.

Anyway, if your film diet consists exclusively of pre-1960 movies, you don't really notice the smoking after a while because it's so commonplace. It's only when you compare old movies with the films of today (in which a character smoking is almost an event) that the contrast really stands out.

Of course, it wasn't until 1964 that the Surgeon General's report came out and it became popularly known that smoking was bad for you. Motion pictures date from the late 19th Century, so people had 70-odd years to "light up" in movies before it started to become frowned upon.

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Many people quit smoking after John Wayne ended up having lung cancer. I think that was around 1964 or 1965. He definitely quit smoking.

The Divine Genealogy Goddess

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In movies of the 1930s and '40s, shots of women lighting up cigarettes were often used as an instant "signal" to the audience that the female was liberated, modern, and sophisticated. Smoking was not seen as it is today.

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So many of the classic movies, the people drink & smoke in almost every scene. They must have been drunk all the time

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