Evening star., 1947-10-26
Every Little
Smoke Ring
Has Meaning
By Harold Heffernon
HOLLYWOOD.

HOLLYWOOD.
Regardless of what you think OF
the sentiments expressed by that
Smoke smoke smoke that ciga-
rette" ditty, there's a fair sized con-
tingent of Hollywood actors who
have reason to look kindly toward
the little white pellets. Cigars and
pipes also win their film proponents
There's a good, smart, CONNER
cial reason for this. Smoke rings
have figured strongly in the careers
of many filmites. Some have drawn
initial attention to themselves by a
certain peculiar manner about their
smoking. Others have diverted at
tention from bad acting by the way
they light fag, take long drag or
flick an ash. Smoking is almost as
much an art as acting, these folks
believe.
Ginger Rogers might never have
been noticed on the screen except
for a firtatious manner of saying, in
her first picture, one of the early
gold digger series, Cigarette me, big
boy"
What would movie gangsters do
without chain smoking through an
ominous underworld sequence? The
emphatic manner in which these
tough-uglies stamp out cigarette.
either on floor or ash tray, has a
sinister meaning all its own, too.
The master cigarette emoter, of
course. is Paul Henreid. His calm
and efficient lighting of two of them
one for Bette Davis-in Nov
Voyager," provoked a world wide
feminine uproar, and anguished
just as many males. Nevertheless,
it started a new fad which was more
burlesqued than any smoking touch
in history.
Cigars for Laughs.
Groucho Marx without his cigar
would be practically undressed, and
Broadway's star, Bobby Clark, al
ways can get a laugh by punctuating
sentences with the shift of his stogie
from one side of the mouth to the
other.
Ned Sparks is in the same cate
CORY as Groucho. A cigar always
has been his chief stock in trade
for those dead-pan facial express
sions, and without weed sticking
up in one corner of his mouth Ned
would be helpless--and admits as
hi 1,1
done more than any of his tricks
to convulse audiences.
These cigar smokers are all on
the slapstick side, but tops in
decorous putting of the weed, ma
turally, is Charles Coburn. Coburn,
skilled in father, politician and
elderly character portrayals, seldom
finds scenario which fails to make
him A cigar chain smoker, That's
because Coburn knows a thing or
three about making a cheroot
almost human. He caresses it
turns admiring eyes upon it and
flicks an ash as though he were
loathe to see it depart. The trade
journal of the cigar business paid
handsome tribute to Mr.. Coburn
few years ago by calling him
Americas s "most understanding cigar
smoker
Girls Smoke, Too.
Latest arrivals on the smoke
scene are Veronica Lake and Joan
Caulfeld. In their new picture,
The Sainted Sisters" they smoke
cigars! Lady-size. panatelas. In
the roles of confidence women who
find romance and reform in a New
England village of the early 19OO's,
the two follow the female fashion
of the era by putting small stogies.
AS with most nicotine sequences,
the Lake-Caulfield episode was
designed for laughs. While the
mere glimpse of two be-bustled
lassies smoking cigars is mirth-
provoking. the stogies play an i'm
portant part in the plot. One of
their cigars, nonchalantly tossed
into some straw in the back of a
blackboard, starts fire which bolts
the horses and jolts the girls out
of the vehicle.
Just why the act of smoking on
the screen should be so funny is
not clear, but it has been used in