Inside Story | Paramount

Film: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1937)
Studio: Paramount
Tobacco brand: Lucky Strike
Claudette Colbert served three cigarette companies while under contract to Paramount Pictures. This Lucky Strike ad plugs Paramount's 1937 film Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. While Paramount received free advertising, Colbert was paid $10,000 in advertising fees, worth more than $150,000 today. (American Tobacco agreements, 1937-8) Lucky Strike ads also plugged two other Paramount films starring Colbert in 1937: Maid of Salem and I Met Him in Paris. Paramount is now part of Viacom; American Tobacco merged into Reynolds American.

Image: SRITA

Film: Hong Kong (1952)
Studio: Paramount
Tobacco brand: Chesterfield
While Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild (1947-52), he also appeared in Chesterfield cigarette ads. In 1948, Reagan plugged Chesterfield and another Warner Bros. movie, The Voice of the Turtle. Actress Jane Wyman, married to Reagan at the time, is seen in her own Chesterfield ads.

Image: Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising