Saturday, October 23, 2010

Advertisements with a Licence To Kill



The first James Bond was Sean Connery who was a smoker in film and in advertisement, this Chesterfield King ad insinuates that smokers make good bicyclists. He must have come in last.



Though slightly off topic, Sean Connery's connection to Jim Beam's advertisement is just another notch in the hard boiled lifestyle of a spy. The Bond image has always been attached to vice and was thus sold to the public with an international playboy lifestyle.





Sean Connery must have been Jim Beam's top model throughout the sixties.



George Lazenby also dipped into selling alcohol with this Kronenbourg advertisement, which also encourages a smoke as form of relaxing.





George Lazenby became the European Marlboro Man for a short period in the late 60s early 70s.









Sir Roger Moore smokes Lark cigarettes for one of their commercials. Though he claims Tony Curtis persuaded him to quit around '71 or '72,Yet Moore can be seen smoking cigarettes in Gold (1974), Sunday Lovers (1980) and during an archival interview of For Your Eyes Only (1981).



Throughout the years Moore seems to have transferred to mostly smoking cigars, but I suspect he fell back to cigarettes in the early 80s.







Keeping up Bondian tradition, Timothy Dalton also made a Lark commercial that featured him performing Bond like action inspired by Octopussy (1983). It's kind of cool to see just a little more James Bond action from an actor who only performed in two films. Timothy Dalton made a real point to make his Bond a smoker on the big screen (a tradition put to rest after his departure).



Pierce Brosnon made his James Bond a non smoker, though he himself didn't object to modeling for a Lark cigarette ad. Like Moore, Pierce seems to have adopted cigars throughout the years.