Entertainment For Lively Minds
Cigarette Holders. What happened to them?
The humble cigarette holder. The item that could make the suburban upwardly mobile housewife into a alluring Audrey Hepburn, a foxy Joan Collins or a brassy Bet Lynch. Terry-Thomas looked the uber cad with a cigarette holder. All would be cads and "nice" villains used them.
I don't think I've seen one in use for 20 odd years. As an aside to being a little bit of a fashion prop, they also had a bit of a use as they kept ones fingers from reeking of tobacco and filtered out much of the tar. My Mum used one in the 70's and they were incredibly well designed objects. Tortoiseshell colours, slim, elegant - certainly added more to the smokers armoury than a pipe cleaner and snuff.
So, young people still smoke (albeit in dwindling numbers - good thing etc) so why the utter decimation of the cigarette holder? It looked cool and had a use without being overly tricky to use.
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Surely Tarby...
...couldn't have stolen *all* of them?*
(* Implausible as it may seem, he was caught stealing one of Terry-Thomas's diamond-encrusted efforts in the 50s. Hard to imagine someone taking such a thing casually down to the local pawn shop, isn't? 'Hello Mr Tarbuck - ah, one of T-T's cast-offs I see...')
We watched a couple of episode of The Avengers recently
When a character appeared with a cigarette holder Megan (14) first asked what it was and then what it was for. Beyond saying that it stopped people's fingers from getting nicotine stained I was stumped.
Good question
The last famous person synonymous with the fag holder was Marje Proops. I can't think of any one else in at least the past 30 years who's been seen with one.
Is it because they were mainly used as a filter, and now all cigarettes have filters?
They've clearly gone the way of pipes.
My boss uses one...short one, not the Hepburn model
(I hate that. I hate when the response fits in the subject line.)
Bet Lynch
from Coronation Street?
They always looked a bit poncey
didn't they? In the days when I used to smoke I also recall that they always stank of stale tobacco too.
don't you recall....
that YOU always stank of stale tobacco too ?
I always blamed it
on the holder.
Not sure about filtering out the tar
But avoiding nicotine-stained fingers sounds plausible.
I'm sure they did...
My Mum's ones, you used see the black tar collect at the base by the filter. When the tar became claggy and blocked the throughput of the smoke, that was the time to change to a new one. She used scare the life out me and my brother by saying (correctly) that black tar is what collects in your lungs when you smoke. Not sure of the impact - my brother smokes 20 a day, I never have and Mum stopped on New Years Eve 1999!
The thing with filters
In the old days, cigarettes were untipped; following the acceptance of cigarettes as a cause of lung cancer, the adoption of filters by manufacturers implied a healthier alternative.
This wasn't really the case – pre-filters, cancers of the mouth and throat had been more common. When filters came in, smokers simply inhaled more deeply to deliver the same amount of nicotine, with a concomitant rise in lung cancer.
Gloria Swanson
Had a particularly odd cigarette holder in Sunset Blvd - a wiry contraption that might have been fashioned from a pair of old spectacles. Were these popular in Norma Desmonde's '20s heyday? Picture attached:
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo0759fKsW1qazanuo1_500.jpg
I had* a cigarette holder...
...and used it on occasion. I thought I look sophisticated, quirky and slightly mysterious, when obviously I looked like a complete and utter fool.
I also used to smoke cigars occasionally. I thought (with the elfin haircut I used to have) that it made me look interestingly mannish. In fact, it made me look like a fat lesbian from an Agatha Christie novel.
*still have it, unused except for the odd fancy dress use.
TMFTL
Didn't do as well as
Noddy Holder............
I'll get my coat.
I was watching some old ITV wrestling the other day...
...(Men and Movies, channel 228 if you're interested) and Kent Walton had one.
Now that's classy.
Romance
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