This is an example of the way smoking was viewed "back then": not only elegant and sophisticated, but downright sexy. Bette Davis exemplified this weird behaviour (at least, that's how we see it now), but it did not stand out as unusual back then. Now people must smoke in back alleys, but I find the idea of it, let alone the foul stink, too dire for me to feel much sympathy.
Hell, I know all about addiction and battled it for years. BTW, just as an aside, I have 30 years of sobriety this month, but spent 15 years doing AA meetings almost daily, sometimes several a day. I'd be doing them now if any of them were "on". So I fully appreciate the harrowing nature of addiction and how ruthlessly it kills people. I am doing even more YouTube than usual during the pandemic, and one channel I watch is The Life and Sad Ending (cheery topic), capsule bios of celebrities who died young. Most don't make it much past 50, and most were of that sexy-cigarette generation and smoked three or four packs a day. Heart attack, stroke, COPD, many types of cancer. . .
We know better now, supposedly, but smoking didn't disappear from Western society. It transformed itself into vaping, which is still delivering nicotene to your lungs and ultimately will do every bit as much harm. Big Tobacco is doing better than ever, though - the Third World relies on cigarettes as a way of making life bearable in dire conditions, and the tobacco companies are delighted to supply them. I don't know if people try to stock up when they're over there - not unlike the pedophile tourism in Thailand and other places, in which people stock up on child abuse. But I digress. I made this little animation just for the heck of it.
