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Smoke, Memory

Last Sunday's New York Times' City section featured a moving cover story titled, "Speak, Memory," In which author Lily Koppel recounted the tale of a long-lost diary of one Florence Wolfson, who had begun the diary when she turned 14 in 1930.

When I found Ms. Wolfson (now Howitt) lived in my neighborhood, I called for an interview. Ms. Howitt graciously said to come on over.

In her living room were her daughter Valerie and the author of the piece, Ms. Koppel. They were openly surprised when they found that my visit had been instigated by but 6 words in the story, a quote from Ms. Howitt's diary:

“My first cigarette, Jan. 12, 1930.”

I wanted to see if I could gain further insight into why she had started, and how and why she had stopped.

I was quite lucky to find myself discussing the climate of women's smoking with 3 generations of highly intelligent women.

Ms. Howitt is a gregarious 90 with blonde hair, who, comfortably scrunched in her easy chair, was quick to smile and laugh. Valerie also had blonde hair and an easy-going manner. A retired attorney, she was very helpful in rephrasing my sometimes awkward questions.

Ms. Koppel looks fresh out of high school and is strikingly beautiful, though part of that may be the clear-eyed intelligence that has helped her build an impressive journalistic career in the years since she graduated from Barnard. Think a young, broad-faced Liv Ullman.

Unfortunately for my research (though fortunately for the women), none of them seriously took up smoking--mostly, they said, because all 3 found it difficult to inhale.

Ms. Howitt said that in the '30s, "you had to learn to inhale," and she could never master it. But for several years, she would hold the cigarette -- sometimes in a holder--and puff, feeling thereby very glamorous. "It was a sign of worldliness," and she felt "so cool and sophisticated." Then one day she asked herself what she was getting out of it, and stopped.

Ms. Howitt described the day she came home and found the toilet bowl full of cigarettes. "That wasn't me," Valerie said, "Karen (Valerie's sister) smoked a bit, and all her friends smoked." Ms. Howitt's husband was an oral surgeon, and gave the two teens a lecture about what he'd seen, and the effects of smoking. (Mr. Howitt, 95, sat outside during our talk, warming himself.)

Asked if she remembered any ads of the day, Ms. Howitt said she remembered Lucky Strike advertising, as well as, specifically, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel."

She struggled for the L.S.M.F.T. acronym ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco"), which I helped her with; I have no doubt it would have come back to her eventually. With regards for the "Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet" campaign, I had to prod her just a bit with the first phrase, but then she well remembered the rest--and added that several of her friends had complained about gaining weight when quitting smoking.

As opposed to the days of the robber barons, or today, Ms. Howitt said that in those days, and in the 50s, she had no reason to distrust corporate communications in general. Not that she paid real attention to such matters, but she would not have been suspicious if she'd seen a business' communication such as the 1954 "Frank Statement."

All three women felt movies were extremely powerful in glamorizing smoking, though Ms Koppel felt there was much less movie smoking now--in contrast to recent Dartmouth studies.

In fine, though this anecdotal evidence is nothing ground-shaking, I find it interesting--what with last week's release of "Screen-Out," the fight with the MPAA over parent advisory labels, and finally, Carrie Nye's death Friday*--that though a person can remember advertisers' taglines three-quarters of a century later, all three women seemed to agree that it was the movies and their stars that carried the most powerful and lasting images of smoking glamour.

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*Dick Cavett, on his wife's death from lung cancer: "She tried to quit a couple of times [but smoking] became part of her early persona; perhaps based on Tallulah Bankhead or Marlene Dietrich."

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LINKS:

Speak, Memory by Lily Koppel

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/nyregion/thecity/16diar.html

Screen-Out PR: =Depiction of Smoking in Movies Remains High

http://www.tobacco.org/news/228259.html

Carrie Nye, 69; Versatile Actress, Wife of Dick Cavett

http://http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-nye18jul18,1,2376869.story

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