Life, 1927-12-22 · page 2 of 36
Life — December 22, 1927 — page 2: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **Lucky Strike cigarette advertisement**, not political satire. The page endorses the brand by featuring: 1. **Willard Mack** (identified in the circular portrait) — a noted author, producer, and actor of the early 20th century — providing a celebrity testimonial claiming Lucky Strikes cause "No Throat Irritation—No Cough." 2. **The "It's Toasted" claim** — Lucky Strike's distinctive marketing slogan, emphasizing a special tobacco-processing method supposedly reducing harshness. 3. **A conversation scene** showing Mack discussing cigarettes with his manager, Benedict Sterns, presented as a casual endorsement. The advertisement exploits Mack's theatrical credibility to market cigarettes as throat-safe, a now-ironic health claim given modern tobacco science. This represents early-20th-century advertising's use of celebrity endorsements for tobacco products — practices now prohibited.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Yes, Willard Mack is right, Luckies are best,” says Paul Berlenbach Popular pugilist tells his mana- ger, Benedict Sterns, that Lucky Strikes are the finest cigarettes. You, too, will find that LUCKY STRIKES give the greatest pleasure —Mild and Mellow, the finest ciga- rettes you ever smoked. Made of the choicest tobaccos, properly aged and blended with great skill, and " . Willard Mack, there is an extra process—“IT’S Noted Author, Producer and Actor, TOASTED”—no harshness, not “xeppteopsesnsivsnenartecuremiae a bit of bite. i “It’s toasted” ‘ht be annoying to me in my work Wad fix comicbooks.com