page_title: Lucky Strike
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lucky Strike / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Towers from Lucky Strike tobacco factories in Durham, NC
context_page_description: Lucky Strike is an American brand of cigarettes owned by the British American Tobacco group. Individual cigarettes of the brand are often referred to colloquially as "Luckies". Lucky Strike was the top-selling cigarette brand in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s.
context_section_description: The brand was first introduced by R.A. Patterson of Richmond, Virginia, in 1871 as cut plug and later a cigarette. In 1905, the company was acquired by the American Tobacco Company (ATC).
  In 1917, the brand debuted the slogan "It's Toasted" to tout the manufacturing method of toasting, rather than sun drying, the tobacco, a process claimed to improve the flavor of the product.
  In the late 1920s, the brand was sold as a route to thinness for women, one typical ad said, "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."  Sales of Lucky Strikes increased by more than 300% during the first year of the advertising campaign. In the early 1930s, Al Jolson was also paid to endorse the brand; he called Lucky Strike "the cigarette of the acting profession...the good old flavor of Luckies is as sweet and soothing as the best 'Mammy' song ever written." Sales went from 14 billion cigarettes in 1925 to 40 billion in 1930, making Lucky Strike the leading brand nationwide.
  Lucky Strike's association with radio music programs began during the 1920s on NBC. By 1928, the bandleader and vaudeville producer B. A. Rolfe was performing on radio and recording as "B.A. Rolfe and his Lucky Strike Orchestra" for Edison Records. In 1935, ATC began to sponsor Your Hit Parade, featuring North Carolina tobacco auctioneer Lee Aubrey "Speed" Riggs (later, another tobacco auctioneer from Lexington, Kentucky, F.E. Boone, was added). The weekly radio show's countdown catapulted the brand's success, remaining popular for 25 years. The shows capitalized on the tobacco auction theme and each ended with the signature phrase "Sold, American".
  In 1934, Edward Bernays was asked to deal with women's apparent reluctance to buy Lucky Strikes because their green and red package clashed with standard female fashions. When Bernays suggested changing the package to a neutral color,  George Washington Hill, head of the American Tobacco Company, refused, saying that he had already spent millions advertising the package. Bernays then endeavored to make green a fashionable color. The centerpiece of his efforts was the Green Ball, a social event at the Waldorf Astoria, hosted by Narcissa Cox Vanderlip. The pretext for the ball and its unnamed underwriter was that proceeds would go to charity. Famous society women would attend wearing green dresses. Manufacturers and retailers of clothing and accessories were advised of the excitement growing around the color green. Intellectuals were enlisted to give highbrow talks on the theme of green. Before the ball had actually taken place, newspapers and magazines (encouraged in various ways by Bernays's office) had latched on to the idea that green was all the rage.
  The company's advertising campaigns generally featured a theme that stressed the quality of the tobacco purchased at auction for use in making Lucky Strike cigarettes and claimed that the higher quality tobacco resulted in a cigarette with better flavor. American engaged in a series of advertisements using Hollywood actors as endorsers of Lucky Strike, including testimonials from Douglas Fairbanks, concerning the cigarette's flavor, often described as delicious due to the tobacco being toasted. In 1937-38, American Tobacco paid the equivalent of $3.8 million in 2019 USD to 16 Hollywood actors and actresses for their endorsement of Lucky Strike, the highest paid being Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper, who were each paid $10,000 (roughly $178,000 in 2019 USD). "Luckies" were the cigarette of choice for the famous smoker Bette Davis, who smoked them until the final years of her life (the New York Times noted the year of her death that she had switched them for Vantage filtered cigarettes).
  Beginning in the fall of 1944, Lucky Strike was also a sponsor of comedian Jack Benny's radio and TV show, The Jack Benny Program, which was also introduced as The Lucky Strike Program.
  The brand's signature dark-green pack was changed to white in 1942. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war", the company claimed the change was made because the copper u
caption: Lucky Strike factories in Durham, NC
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