How come most of the Bond girls didn't smoke in the old days?

ironpony

Basically when you watch the older entries, a lot of them didn't accept for ones in FRWL, TB, OP, and TSWLM, and DAF, but that's not most of them really, which I find strange, for a time when it was much more common.

Did the filmmakers or Fleming usually not like Bond girls smoking perhaps?

Napoleon Plural

Good point I think it is on record that either Bond or Fleming wasn't fond of women smokers, didn't 'approve' or something. That said, not sure there are many films of the time where women are smoking, not sure it was that sophisticated in the 60s not like the 40s.

caractacus potts

yet in the book Bond picks up Domino at the tobacconists,
then there is a full chapter where she shares her fantasies about her "Hero", the sailor on the Players cigarette package.

I could understand of not wanting the feeling of licking an ashtray, but given how much Bond smokes in fiction and Fleming smokes in real life, how could either of them have tasted anything when they kissed a girl?
The nicotine stained teeth would probably be part of the attraction!

btw I never knew what sailor she was talking about when I read that chapter before. I realise I was always imagining a slightly different cigarette related character.

the Players man does look much more respectable. That completely changes my understanding of that chapter!

superado

I regularly watch movies from the 50’s and 60’s (and of course the decades before and after), both US and European and in them women consistently smoked as “matter-of-factly.” Audrey Hepburn immediately comes to mind and she was pretty mainstream.

As for the early Bond movies, didn’t the villainesses smoke, like Helga Brandt, Fiona Volpe and Rosa Klebb? Perhaps it’s characterization in which smoking was the privilege of men and bad girls? Didn’t some Bond girls smoke, like Tiffany Case and any of the Piz Gloria allergy patients? Sorry, short of rewatching, I’m drawing from memory.

ggl007

"Got a light?" https://www.google.com/search?q=classic+actress+smoking&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwja7aviv7DbAhXEPhQKHZikC_QQ_AUICigB&biw=1920&bih=966

superado

ggl007 wrote:

"Got a light?" https://www.google.com/search?q=classic+actress+smoking&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwja7aviv7DbAhXEPhQKHZikC_QQ_AUICigB&biw=1920&bih=966

.

Stop it! My name is Superado and I’m a smoker. It’s been three days since my last cigarette...and I just finished a rather large meal!

Barbel

Now remember, Moneypenny, cancel my appointments this afternoon.
Yes, Ma'am, but 007 will be here soon.
Crap- here, hide this quick! I want to read him his latest health report.

Barbel

superado wrote:

As for the early Bond movies, didn’t the villainesses smoke, like Helga Brandt, Fiona Volpe and Rosa Klebb?

Fiona:

I couldn't find a pic of Rosa smoking, but no problem finding Lotte Lenya doing so:

superado

Barbel wrote:

superado wrote:

As for the early Bond movies, didn’t the villainesses smoke, like Helga Brandt, Fiona Volpe and Rosa Klebb?

Fiona:

I couldn't find a pic of Rosa smoking, but no problem finding Lotte Lenya doing so:

Thanks, Barbel. In those times, I think non-smokers among actressess were more the exception. IMO, smoking would have looked natural for Rosa Klebb in that scene in which she interviews Tatania, just as Helga Brandt would have been fittingly cool and sinister with a ciggie in hand in that scene in which Bond is tied up...despite her ideals of a healthy chest!

ironpony

Thunderball had 3 smoking women which was unusual because You Only Live Twice, had Bond bed four women and not one of them did, nor did any of the three in Goldfinger, nor did any of the three in Dr. No.

One of the patients at Piz Gloria did, but Tracy didn't, for a main Bond girl.

Jellyfish

caractacus potts wrote:

I didn't know Donald Sutherland was a sailor.

Gassy Man

I don't know about European women, but you don't see a lot of American women with cigarettes in those days, either, or at least you don't see them lighting up as frequently.

This may stem from the earlier periods where a cigarette was seen as phallic, and it was vulgar for a women to have one. That's one reason why flappers in the 1920 took to cigarettes as an expression of their freedom, sexual and otherwise.

For man, using a cigarette was masculine. My father said he started mostly because that's what all the tough guys did in the movies. But women were meant to be feminine and delicate. The exceptions were "crazy" women (and cigarettes are associated with mental illness), "loose" women, women under stress, and those with values outside the mainstream. No, this is not an absolute by any means. But in mainstream American culture, it was quite common in the 1950s and 1960s.

Gassy Man

Here's some discussion of the issue:

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Cigarettes-and-Suffragettes

ironpony

Okay thanks, but I see a lot of women smoking in American movies from the same time period. I thought maybe it had to do with the an early birth of feminism, and the women wanting to be more equal and not delicate, but it is in older movies.

But the fact that it's less in James Bond seems strange, especially since the women character seem non-delicate, such as Honey Rider, Pussy Galore, Tracy, etc.

Gassy Man

You can see them, but it's still not as common as a man. One thing to remember, too, is that cigarettes were routinely marketed to men. It wasn't really until the 1970s that the manufacturers tried hard to brand them for women.

ironpony

Oh okay, thanks. It seems to me that every movie I have seen from the 50s on onward, the number of women smoking in the movies, is the same as men, accept for quite a few of the Bonds, which I find peculiar.

Thunderpussy

Psychologists also claim that smoking represent suckling on your Mother's Nipple.
So take from that what you will.

always shaken

Thunderpussy wrote:

Psychologists also claim that smoking represent suckling on your Mother's Nipple.
So take from that what you will.

So that's why I smoke a church warden pipe

ironpony

But since smoking was associated with 'loose' women, wouldn't that apply to most Bond girls, since most Bond girls sleep with Bond right away, and thus suggesting they are easy, or 'loose', or at least loose in the sense that they are easy for Bond to get right away?

caractacus potts

ironpony have you read Fleming? some of those ladies weren't so "easy".

I don't buy this revisionist talk where classic Hollywood actresses didn't smoke.
For example, if you wanna be Bogie's dame you don't just smoke, you gotta look hella-cool while youre doing it

Matt S

Women certainly smoked a lot in the Golden Age of film. Mothers and housewives on American television rarely smoked, with Lucille Ball being an exception, and even she stopped doing it on television by the late 1950s. Only the female bad guys would smoke.

Gassy Man

No one is saying they didn't. Just not as much as the men did. And less than people might remember.

superado

If there was a serious trend of smoking becoming taboo for women during the 50s and 60s, the behavior would have been nearly totally shunned and diminished...but it wasn't, even among the female personalities of the era that weren't necessary from the bad girl mold, but who had either wholesome or glamorous images:

Lucille Ball


Mary Tyler Moore


Elizabeth Montgomery


Doris Day


Jackie Kennedy


Mia Farrow


Debbie Reynolds


Suzanne Pleshette


Barbara Bain

Chriscoop

Perhaps it's just down to opportunity and if the scene required an actress to smoke along with the character. Tiffany Case smoked in DAF, as did Dominoe and Fiona Volpe in TB, in a lot of scenes it's just not possible to smoke.
I suppose you should also look to the directors sensibilities on the matter, in the UK women smoking in the 50s and 60s was more frowned upon than in the US but everyone associated continental Europeans with smoking, particularly the French, it's almost a stereotype French men wear berets and French women smoke..... Usually with a cigarette holder.

Mr Snow

caractacus potts wrote:

ironpony have you read Fleming? some of those ladies weren't so "easy".

I don't buy this revisionist talk where classic Hollywood actresses didn't smoke.
For example, if you wanna be Bogie's dame you don't just smoke, you gotta look hella-cool while youre doing it

I think Lauren Bacall would have been a seriously fantastic Bond villain. I can easily picture her in the same vein as Fiona Volpe or Helga Brandt.

Gassy Man

superado wrote:

If there was a serious trend of smoking becoming taboo for women during the 50s and 60s, the behavior would have been nearly totally shunned and diminished...but it wasn't, even among the female personalities of the era that weren't necessary from the bad girl mold, but who had either wholesome or glamorous images:

Lucille Ball


Mary Tyler Moore


Elizabeth Montgomery


Doris Day


Jackie Kennedy


Mia Farrow


Debbie Reynolds


Suzanne Pleshette


Barbara Bain

This is like posting photos of a handful of African American actors from the time period to argue that there were just as many African Americans acting as whites.

No one is arguing that there weren't women who smoked. It just wasn't as common for them as the men. When women did smoke, it was usually as an expression of character -- deviance, sexual promiscuity, mental illness, etc. -- at least in the U.S. On some occasions, that wasn't the case, of course, but it was more common than not. If a woman smoked, there was a particular symbolic purpose. Deviance, by the way, could be expressed in usurping a man's power, in effect, becoming a man.

Of course, that began to change in the 1960s, as women became more empowered, entered the workforce in greater numbers, wore miniskirts and the like to express their independence.

This article deals with some of the concepts. Note when it brings up women and smoking, it's either in a sexual context or to show deviance/villainy:

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/08/movies/film-history-is-written-in-smoke.html

Men, on the other hand, were given a broader sweep, which is another reason it was more common. Sure, it could be sexual or deviant, but it was also a sign of good ol' American masculinity to have a cigarette. Thus, heroes or villains could just as easily light up. Interestingly, though, male villains often had a peculiarity to their smoking. They might, for instance, use a cigarette holder, which gave them a more fey quality in the eyes of American audiences (even if FDR did much the same as a sign of his affluence).

Gassy Man

This article deals with a lot of the roots of assigning moral value to women using cigarettes. It notes that the late 1920s and 1930s were a period when marketers began to see women as viable customers, coinciding with the emergence of flappers and the like who flouted convention. But notice, too, it doesn't discuss cigarette companies heavily marketing cigarettes to women again until the 1980s:

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/9/1/3

Even this Wikipedia entry notes the social restrictions on women regarding cigarettes and that even by 1965, only a third of U.S. women indulged, and it wasn't until 1968 that an actual brand aimed exclusively at women was created:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_smoking#1920s%E2%80%931940s

So, women did use cigarettes, but it was still considered socially questionable vis a vis men, which would explain why women don't seem to use cigarettes as much in the movies as their male counterparts, and if they did, for specific reasons.

superado

Gassy Man wrote:

superado wrote:

If there was a serious trend of smoking becoming taboo for women during the 50s and 60s, the behavior would have been nearly totally shunned and diminished...but it wasn't, even among the female personalities of the era that weren't necessary from the bad girl mold, but who had either wholesome or glamorous images:

Lucille Ball


Mary Tyler Moore


Elizabeth Montgomery


Doris Day


Jackie Kennedy


Mia Farrow


Debbie Reynolds


Suzanne Pleshette


Barbara Bain

This is like posting photos of a handful of African American actors from the time period to argue that there were just as many African Americans acting as whites.

No one is arguing that there weren't women who smoked. It just wasn't as common for them as the men. When women did smoke, it was usually as an expression of character -- deviance, sexual promiscuity, mental illness, etc. -- at least in the U.S. On some occasions, that wasn't the case, of course, but it was more common than not. If a woman smoked, there was a particular symbolic purpose. Deviance, by the way, could be expressed in usurping a man's power, in effect, becoming a man.

Of course, that began to change in the 1960s, as women became more empowered, entered the workforce in greater numbers, wore miniskirts and the like to express their independence.

This article deals with some of the concepts. Note when it brings up women and smoking, it's either in a sexual context or to show deviance/villainy:

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/08/movies/film-history-is-written-in-smoke.html

Men, on the other hand, were given a broader sweep, which is another reason it was more common. Sure, it could be sexual or deviant, but it was also a sign of good ol' American masculinity to have a cigarette. Thus, heroes or villains could just as easily light up. Interestingly, though, male villains often had a peculiarity to their smoking. They might, for instance, use a cigarette holder, which gave them a more fey quality in the eyes of American audiences (even if FDR did much the same as a sign of his affluence).

You know what they say how the quality of an argument degrades once Hitler/Nazism is brought up, or when someone throws in the race card! 8-) If I attempted to tip the argument by rigging my examples, I should not have found that many.

Gassy Man wrote:

I don't know about European women, but you don't see a lot of American women with cigarettes in those days, either, or at least you don't see them lighting up as frequently.

This may stem from the earlier periods where a cigarette was seen as phallic, and it was vulgar for a women to have one. That's one reason why flappers in the 1920 took to cigarettes as an expression of their freedom, sexual and otherwise.

For man, using a cigarette was masculine. My father said he started mostly because that's what all the tough guys did in the movies. But women were meant to be feminine and delicate. The exceptions were "crazy" women (and cigarettes are associated with mental illness), "loose" women, women under stress, and those with values outside the mainstream. No, this is not an absolute by any means. But in mainstream American culture, it was quite common in the 1950s and 1960s.

Gassy Man wrote:

No one is arguing that there weren't women who smoked. It just wasn't as common for them as the men.

Your above statement is not true, because based on everything else you said, your argument isn’t just about frequency and proportions between men and women who smoked on screen. By going with your pretty sweeping statements and generalizations, the photos I posted show they are not true. Sexual deviancy, villainy for dramatic effect? Because of the abandonment of the old Hays Code for movies, most of the examples I used were specifically from television, the content of which was held to a more stringent moral standard imposed by product sponsors, yet there were instances for the female leads of TV shows lighting up and not necessarily for dramatic effect or anything linked to villainy or repressed yearnings for male genitalia…that’s just ridiculous. If you want to make such statements, you should really back it up with something more than anecdotal stories or online articles that you could just have easily handpicked from the many other Google results that do not support your argument.

Gassy Man

[Deleted by Barbel.]

superado

[Deleted by Barbel.]

Barbel

That's enough- take it to PMs if you have to.