Life — August 18, 1927 — page 35: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a **cigarette advertisement**, not political satire. It features the Maharaja de Kapurthala, an actual Indian royal figure, endorsing Melachrino Turkish cigarettes as a luxury product favored by "the aristocracy of the world." The ad uses imperial-era marketing tactics: displaying a non-Western ruler as testimony to product prestige, suggesting that royalty and nobility worldwide—both American elites and European nobility—smoke these cigarettes. A handwritten endorsement from "Jagat Jit Singh, Maharajah of Kapurthala" appears on the right. **For modern readers**: This represents early 20th-century advertising's casual exploitation of colonial-era imagery and real foreign dignitaries to market products as globally elite and exclusive. The prominent placement of an Indian maharaja's portrait was meant to signal sophistication and worldwide appeal rather than to mock him, though the power dynamics of such endorsements would be scrutinized today.