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  Morse Code

  To become Number One, it was essential to show that GST products were more patriotic, more military, and altogether far more American than the competition. In desperation, the GST marketing team turned to less honorable methods.

  They started whisper campaigns suggesting that rival brands were far from patriotic. Lucky Strikes were whispered to be a favorite in Berlin, where they were called “Streichenheimers.” Chesterfields were likewise whispered to be popular with monocle-wearing Nazi generals, who smoked them in effeminate holders. Camels were whispered to be packed with secret poisons by Japanese agents. Alas for GST, no one believed a damn word of it.

  In a confidential memo, Horace Badcock suggested going further with the smear campaigns.

  Why not get the enemy to actually endorse some of our rivals? All we’d have to do is slip a few bucks to the Japs and Germans. Then when Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw-Haw are doing their propaganda broadcasts, they could just include some ads for Luckies and Camels. Have our Lisbon office look into this.

  But finally nothing came of his desperate idea.

  Meanwhile, the makers of Lucky Strike had hit on the clever notion of salting their radio ads with military-sounding Morse code messages. “L.S.M.F.T…. L.S.M.F.T.,” they beamed at their audience, over and over. For listeners deficient in Morse code, an announcer would translate this as, “Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.”

  GST considered jamming the Lucky Strike signal, but there seemed no practical way to do so. Besides, jamming might cause federal trouble. In one region, GST tried bribing radio stations to suppress the Lucky Strike blips and substitute a secret message from GST: “H.I.T.S…. H.I.T.S.” It was hoped that listeners who knew Morse code would get the real message.

  This campaign was a dismal flop. First of all, most radio stations wouldn’t take the bribe. Only one or two places ever bothered broadcasting the substitute dots and dashes.

  Even then, the message was lost, since almost no one understood Morse code but a few boy scouts. Alas, the scouts interpreted the endlessly repeating message as “S.H.I.T…. S.H.I.T.” One bright lad, believing he had intercepted a secret Nazi broadcast, phoned the FBI. The station, and General Snuff, had a lot of explaining to do.

  Nevertheless, GST played its part in the war. At that time, it was fashionable for company presidents to become honorary military officers. GST lobbied hard to get Horace Badcock made an honorary army general. At last, he was offered an honorary rank as a two-star general.

  Horace, was not pleased with the offer. A journalist described the stormy scene.

  “Two stars?” Badcock shouted. “Only two stars? Who do they think I am?”

  “But sir,” said an aide. “It’s more than Sarnoff.”

  “Who?”

  “David Sarnoff, the president of RCA. He has only one star.”

  Badcock seemed mollified. “So I’ll out-rank Sarnoff, will I? I’ll outrank RCA? Well, OK, I guess I can go along with this. We all have to make sacrifices for the war. Two stars, eh? I’ll drink to that.”

  GST lobbied even harder to get the War Department to include two Hits in every package of C rations. The company also paid for elaborate USO entertainments for the troops overseas, with commercial messages slipped in (“But seriously, fellas, one thing we’re fighting for is the right to light up a Hit. Am I right or am I right?”) Yet the cleverest GST promotional idea was the Wounded Soldier photo. It happened after Horace Badcock saw a newsreel of a medic offering a cigarette to a wounded GI. “By God, that’s not our brand!” he shouted, his mustache quivering with indignation. “Fix it! Fix it!”

  GST worked to fix it in every possible way. The company inundated medics and chaplains with free cartons of Hits. It paid handsome bounties to war photographers to bring home photos of wounded GIs smoking Hits.

  The photographers responded handsomely. Some went so far as to force cigarettes between the lips of unconscious soldiers. In one case, the photographer rushed up to a dying man on a stretcher, knocked the rival brand from his lips and substituted a Hit.

  The campaign culminated in a prizewinning photo. In grainy black and white, it shows a close-up of a soldier with a bandaged head lying on a stretcher. He is exhausted, but his spirit cannot be broken. He grins bravely as a medic holds a cigarette to his lips. The name printed on the cigarette, clearly visible, is HITS.

  Later it was learned that GST had doctored the photo, airbrushing a rival brand name out of the negative and painting in the letters HITS. The War Department learned of this dastardly act and denounced it as “conduct unbecoming a tobacco firm.” Horace Badcock was promptly demoted to one star.

  One of GST’s More Controversial War Photos (1945)

  Filtered Dreams

  By the end of the war, Horace Badcock’s single star was in the ascendant. GST profits were up, the company was expanding, and America was about to enter a new “atomic age,” an era of peace, plenty, limitless prosperity, and of course constant smoking.

  Unaccountably, the company’s sales then began sinking rapidly. The problem seemed to be Horace. Years of drinking – he still indulged in antifreeze – had affected his mind. His decisions, always arbitrary, became ever more bizarrely eccentric. For example, he refused to allow the company to advertise on television.

  “It’s a passing fad,” he insisted. “The public will forget all about so-called television in a couple of years. It’ll be forgotten, a thing of the past. Like zeppelins. Like underwear.”

  “Underwear, sir?” asked an aide.

  “Didn’t I just say forget underwear? And forget television! And for God’s sake, stop talking about zeppelins. And what does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?

  Horace’s memos became vague and wandering. In them, he proposed strange impractical schemes. For example, on learning that postwar Germans were using cigarettes for a black market currency, he wrote:

  Why can’t we ship some fake cigarettes to Germany? Just paint sticks of wood white and put them in our packs. Since they’re not going to smoke them anyway, we can make a fortune out of nothing!

  Horace worried about communists in the unions (even though GST had no unions). During the McCarthy hearings, he wrote the following memo:

  I think we should take the red off our Hits packages. Change it to green or something. Red is a little too close to communism. Don’t want to give people the wrong idea.

  Once we have green packs, we can start a rumor that Lucky Strikes, with their red packs, are part of a commie plot to kill Americans. They put poison in them, to destroy the minds of clean American boys. But our packs are green because we’re Irish, we have the luck of the Irish, like Joe McCarthy, like Lucky Strikes. We’re luckier than Lucky Strikes!

  It was not until the 1950s that Horace – now dying – deigned to look at television. What he saw filled him with gloom. Here was program after program, all sponsored by rival brands. His was a cry of despair:

  My God, what’s happening? Lucky Strikes are sponsoring something called Your Hit Parade – practically using our brand name, Hits! Chesterfields have Arthur Godfrey, and Philip Morris have I Love Lucy. Everybody’s got a piece of the action but us! And now look at this! A dancing – a dancing pack of Old Golds!

  Very well. If they want a television commercial, I will give them a television commercial they’ll never forget.

  Horace dismissed all suggestions from the ad agency, and from his own advertising department. Instead, he locked himself away in his office for several months and worked. His seclusion gave rise to rumors – it was said that his fingernails were a foot long, that he saved his urine in jars, that he lived on nothing but antifreeze and cigarettes.

  Finally he emerged, looking haggard but cheerful.

  “They want a television commercial?” he said again. “I will give them a television commercial they’ll never forget.”

  He bought time on all networks for a single live commercial. He used this time to make a personal appearance,
accompanied by his son, his son’s wife, and his baby grandson.

  HORACE: I hope you don’t mind me bringing along my family. They’re going to help me prove something important. This is my son Woody, his wife Mary, and my grandson, Dwight. We’re here to prove to you once and for all time that cigarettes are not, repeat NOT harmful. I’ve just been reading a study by some so-called scientist. He shaved the backs of some mice, and painted them with cigarette tar. Did you read that study, Woody?

  WOODY: Yes, Dad. He says the mice developed tumors.

  HORACE: Rubbish! We’re going to prove it’s rubbish, right here and now. We’re going to perform a little demonstration of our own. I’ve got a glass of cigarette tar here, and a brush. Instead of a mouse, we’ll be using my baby grandson. Mary, is that OK with you?

  MARY: Sure, Dad. I know you would-n’t do anything to harm little Dwight.

  WOODY: Here he is, Dad.

  HORACE: That’s right. I would never harm a loved one to prove a scientific point. What I am going to prove is that you CANNOT cause a tumor with cigarette tar. Now I’m going to paint his head. He’s already bald, so no need to shave him! (Dips brush and paints it over baby’s head. The baby giggles.) Does that tickle?

  This surreal commercial angered and upset some viewers. Others thought it proved something. In any case, it did nothing for GST’s slumping sales. Horace seemed to give up on life. He spent his last year sitting before the television, sipping antifreeze and muttering.

  Elwood Badcock

  The company meanwhile was turned over to Horace’s son, Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock, a brash young man with a crewcut, a bow tie, and radical new ideas. He began with a massive TV campaign. Next came the problem of medical research. Since 1950, there had been an unceasing barrage of medical studies linking smoking to lung cancer.

  The medical boys are hot on our trail, and we need to act fast. We need to move forward with our new cigarette, Castlereagh – or I guess we’re spelling it Castleray – but the important thing about it is its new filter.

  It’s not just a filter. It’s the patented Neutrichron(r) filter with White Chlorophyll 90. Guaranteed to clean all harmful particles from its smoke, just as Neutrichron cleans the air after nuclear bomb tests. Probably no one is going to believe it, but you have to respond somehow. You have to fight lab research with lab research. Our white coats against their white coats.

  Anyway, the Neutrichron filter looks like a winner. It has a secret ingredient – asbestos! How can we lose?

  A famous TV ad for Castleray showed a silver-haired man dressed as a white-coated doctor in his laboratory surrounded by microscopes and retorts. He wore a speculum on his head and a stethoscope around his neck – the miter and stole of a bishop in the High Church of Medical Science. This man perched on the edge of a lab table and took from the pocket of his white coat a white pack of Castlerays.

  Now and then one of my patients asks me if they should cut down their smoking. I tell them, don’t cut down, just switch. Switch to Castlerays. Castlerays with the pure white Neutrichron filter. I smoke them myself. I like the patented protection of Neutrichron that guards your throat without taking away the taste.

  DON’T CUT DOWN, JUST SWITCH became a catch phrase for that year. But filters, Woody saw, were only a stop-gap measure. In the long run, GST must become more than a tobacco company. With some foresight, he suggested diversifying into food:

  If we don’t, we may be in trouble. The current medical concerns about smoking could be only the tip of an iceberg – a very large iceberg. Tobacco companies could become the target of a long-term campaign of government harassment. As soon as we add filters, the government could ask for something else: tar reduction, say, or Poison labels. We might even be forbidden to advertise on radio and television.

  To prevent these kinds of injuries, we must diversify into food, adding a second string to our bow. Whatever happens to tobacco, food always has a future.

  Within a year, GST plunged wholeheartedly into the food markets, acquiring cake mixes, cereals, bakeries, and canneries. GST would eventually own thousands of well-known brands, including Jeeter Peanut Butter, Fruitricious cereals, Kubla Khan cake mixes, Dolphin tuna, and of course Bentley nuts.

  Castro’s Cigar

  President John F. Kennedy had won the 1960 Presidential election by a narrow margin. He needed the help of tobacco state legislators to put through his ambitious program. At the same time, he was aware the public was calling for a government study of tobacco and health problems.

  There had already been such a study in Britain (the Royal College of Physicians’ Report). When asked about it at a press conference, Kennedy said,

  That matter is sensitive enough and the stock market is in sufficient difficulty without my giving you an answer which is not based on complete information, which I don’t have, and, therefore, perhaps I will be glad to respond to that question in more detail next week.

  In the case of GST, the President’s dilemma was even more perplexing, because of his acquaintance with Woody Badcock. Woody considered himself a personal friend of Kennedy’s. Indeed, when Cuba became a problem, it was Woody who suggested a way for the CIA to eliminate Fidel Castro. As Woody explained,

  I told Jack what we needed was to slip Castro an exploding cigar. The idea tickled him. We had quite a laugh, picturing that little bearded creep blowing himself up with a stogie like a cartoon cat. So I put my best lab boys to work on it, and we designed and built a prototype to CIA specifications. It worked like this: You first arm the thing by removing the cigar band. Then when you light it up, Bang! It worked like a charm. Blew up a lot of watermelons, had a hell of a good time.

  We delivered it and the CIA managed to smuggle it into Cuba and into Castro’s private humidor. Unfortunately, it never went off. Turns out that Castro liked to smoke cigars without removing the band.

  The CIA had another plan, to get Castro to visit an obscure street in Havana, and there drop a large weight marked “1 TON” on his head. But by then, I guess Jack lost interest. He didn’t even tell me, just stopped returning my calls. Finally a couple of CIA types came around to say, forget all about the project, “it never happened.” Yeah, right.

  Jack and I were never close again. Maybe he was embarrassed or something.

  I guess he had a really full schedule. There was the trouble with Marilyn, and then the Bay of Pigs, and then he had to make this trip to Dallas. You know, I can’t help but think, if we’d sent Fidel that exploding cheroot, Jack would still be alive today. Anyway, it was a hell of a funny idea.

  The 1960s brought other changes, including the end of doctor ads. For a time, there was the false hope of legal pot (along with everyone else, GST spent the decade madly scrambling after trademark names like Aztec Mellow).

  There was also a return to Western ads. A new series showed a hard-bitten cowpoke with a leathery face – a man who valued freedom, a man who went his own way – squatting by the campfire to light his filter-tip Castlerays with a branding iron.

  Freedom was the watchword. This was no longer a time for consulting authorities or taking orders. White-haired doctors were no longer respected. Young smokers wanted to follow a romantic rebel into new territory. Everybody wanted to be Lenny Bruce, or Jimi Hendrix, or at least Steve McQueen on a motorcycle.

  All this would continue into the era of health warnings.

  Hazardous to Your Health

  Health warnings began to appear in the later 1970s, and with them came advertising restrictions. It was almost necessary to pretend that cigarettes weren’t cigarettes at all. “Lights” appeared, and herbal cigarettes.

  Dwight Badcock

  Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock retired in 1975, handing the torch to his son, Dwight. Dwight Badcock was a bashful-looking young man who seemed almost hiding from the world behind masses of hair, heavy sideburns, and a mustache. He was the first Badcock who did not smoke. But he was every inch a Badcock from his platform shoes on up to his display of hair (one j
ournalist referred to it as a “hirsute of happiness”).

  Make no mistake, we are at war with the government. Call me crazy, but I feel we’re going to win this war. Maybe not today. Maybe not next year. But let us bide our time. In the long run, we are going to win the hearts and minds of the people. The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind!

  Biding its time, the company continued to diversify into food. It already owned a range of cereals, cake mixes, and cookies. Now the company name was changed to GST Foods, as it began buying up fast food franchises: the lucrative Little Dorrit, the surprisingly successful Mister Bagel, the elegant Pizza Jardin, and the down-home good profits of GFC (formerly Grannie’s Fried Catfish).

  Another change was the introduction of menthol. Dwight came from that generation who knows that menthol cigarettes go well with marijuana. His new menthol brand, Tubular Bells, was meant to take market share away from Kools and Salems. It became a cult classic, but never really achieved significant market share.

  In the 1980s, tobacco came under even more government pressure. TV and radio commercials vanished. Even billboards and magazine ads were forced (by industry agreements) to display government warning labels.