[Ads-l] just "just a cigar, kiddo" 1946

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Oct 31 17:11:13 UTC 2019


> On Oct 31, 2019, at 12:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> Apparently, an advertisement campaign taught consumers that L.S.M.F.T.
> stood for Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.
> 
> Well known into the 1960s.
> 
> JL

Yes, and at least less violent than Herbert Tareyton’s “I’d rather fight than switch” campaign, as in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4jTCU7SsEw
> 
> On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 11:53 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Stephen Goranson wrote:
>>> It is widely agreed that Freud did not write "sometimes a cigar is just
>>> a cigar," even though the psychoanalyst and writer Allen Wheelis in
>>> 1950 wrote that Freud had done. But Freud did influence comedians,
>>> some of them Jewish--Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, maybe George
>>> Burns and others--who did joke about cigars, sometimes in a
>>> Freudian-aware manner.
>>> Maybe (or maybe not) Wheelis was aware of such jokes and
>>> presumed an explicit source for them.
>>> 
>>> On 1 February 1946, the Desert Sun [CA; Elephind] p. 1 col. a:
>>> 
>>> On the radio he [Jack Benny, and his writers are also mentioned]
>>> says L.S.M.F.T., but off the air he says J.A.C.K. And that doesn't
>>> mean his first name. It stands for "Just a Cigar, Kiddo."
>> 
>> Apparently, an advertisement campaign taught consumers that L.S.M.F.T.
>> stood for Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. So J.A.C.K. might be a
>> sardonic response to the advertisement.
>> Garson
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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