Product placement has ruined almost as many movies as Michael Bay. But if you think clumsy plugs for watches and cars are bad, at least they’re not killing you.

A new paper in the journal Tobacco Control reveals just how strong the links were between the cigarette industry and Hollywood. We’re talking strong like a Marlboro here (you can make up your own joke about leaving you with just as much of a bad taste).

Stanton Glantz, of the Center for Tobacco control Research and Education in San Francisco, and his colleagues have been wading through tobacco industry documents to work out how much companies paid to get endorsements from movie stars. Even though some presumably big money contracts like Cary Grant’s were missing they still toted up $218,750 between 1937 and 38, just for Lucky Strikes.

Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford got $10,000 each (worth about $150,000 in today’s money).

“The presumption promoted by those who oppose rating future smoking ‘R’ is that mainstream motion pictures are an art form into which social agendas should not intrude,” write Glantz et al.

“The pattern of close cooperation between the film and tobacco industries, from the advent of sound in 1927 to the transfer of tobacco sponsorship to television starting in the late 1940s and the re-emergence of film–tobacco deals after tobacco adverts were barred from television in the 1970s, suggests instead that the motion picture industry was always ready to cater to the tobacco industry’s commercial agenda.”

You may notice some current movies come with a disclaimer along the lines of ‘The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption.’ So that’s alright then.

Hollywood ‘paid fortune to smoke’ – BBC

Stars Paid Huge Sums To Light Up – Sky

Endorsement deals of ‘golden age’ actors revealed: Hollywood stars paid thousands to promote smoking – Daily Mail