I’ve noticed that a lot of clip art and photography in the print advertising of the 1950s features men smoking pipes. No, this isn’t selection bias involving exposure to Church of the Subgenius art.
Question: was pipe smoking really ubiquitous in the 1950s?
Smoking in general was…and smoking pipes was something young adult males learned was to be distinguished in some way. I can remember my uncles in Vermont smoking their pipes on the back porch. I loved the smell then and still do, and occasionally I’ll have a poke myself when the urge strikes.
I can’t be the only one who misread this.
Heh, well - I didn’t mean it to sound that way. 
I collect an enormous amount of advertising ephemera for my online gallery, and have viewed or own in books maybe 20,000+ adverts from the 1900’s through 1960 or so.
I can’t give you a statistical survey, but there does seem to be a dramatic up tick in the preponderance of pipes in adverts, very often from about the 1945-1960 time range (tapering off fairly quickly by 1960). Ironically, pipe and pipe accessory adverts are not overly common (like “Yellow-Bole” and such), but the pipes tend to appear in adverts that show signs of what I would call “established middle-age luxury.” The males smoking the pipes tend to be age 30-50, have dark hair, dimpled jaw, are often shown with alcohol, are frequently in a bathrobe (not smoking jacket), often are shown with family members (including children aged 4-12), and often have that big, shit-eating grin so well-known from “Bob” of the Church of the Subgenius.
The whole schtick is “you got out of the War, you got your 3-bedroom bungalow, you got your 2.5 kids, you got your Buick, now it’s time for a distinguished smoke, while you implicitly hawk some product to nameless millions reading this issue of The Saturday Evening Post.”
I know the type of ads that you are talking about.
The pipe was part of the whole educated, vaguely upper-class image that these ads used. Sort of a college professor/sherlock-holmesy/rich uncle harry authority figure, but still friendly.
The pipe smoker is pushing the product, right?
A little bit later on, in the '60s, you’d also see it as a hip bachelor accessory. Hugh Hefer smoked a pipe.
By the '70s, only old guys or college dorks trying to look pseudo-British smoked that kind of pipe.
All previous answers are accurate, but there was also the “beatnik” element, for whom pipe smoking was one of the affectations. I was a teen beatnik-wannabee at the time, and I dabbled in pipe-smoking, for no other reason than to look “hip.”
My father smoked a pipe until he was about… 29 (1973). One of our neighbour’s father did too. The rest settled for cigarettes.
But you have to remember, that when those guys were grown ups, they were much more grown up than we are. Pipes… and… looking grown up… smoking… pipes… and… so forth…
[I guess he came to a point when he said: Oh, fuck it, I aint one of them! I’m **29** for gossake! - what am I doin smoking pipe and everything?!*]
Around here, a few years ago there was again a “beatnik” resurgence of people smoking the kretek (Indonesian clove) cigarettes. I don’t know if they still do it; I know very few smokers IRL now.
It also showed up in 50’s comic strips. In the Dennis the Menace strip, both Dennis’s dad Henry Mitchell and grumpy neighbor Mr. Wilson were pipe smokers.
So was Will Eisner’s John Law.
Good thread elmwood.
I remember when I was a very little kid my Mother telling my Dad on a couple of different occassions how distinguished he would look if he smoked a pipe.
I also remember my Pop telling her she was nuts, and that he wasn’t going to start stinking up the place by smoking (my Dad never smoked). This was in the early/mid 60’s, before most people really grasped how bad smoking was for you.
Anyway, this memory makes me think that at the time smoking a pipe must have seemed distinguished and debonair. Unless Ma knew something nobody else did and was trying to bump him off early.
Playboy debuted in 1953. The original name for the magazine was Stag Party (but was changed before the magazine ever hit the stands), and IIRC, the original stag mascot (an athropomorphic deer) smoked a pipe.
There was a certain type of sophisticated man in the 1950s who affected an “English” look. He smoked a pipe, wore tweeds and a black turtleneck, drove an MG and had a goatee or vandyke beard. To complete the ensemble, he owned a hi-fi and listened to Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck.
That’s me! Me!
I smoked an English pipe, or tried to. I thought about wearing tweeds, wore a mock turtleneck (the real one was too claustrophobic), drove my friend’s MG once, and hoped to be able someday to afford a real hi-fi like my neighbors, but I did listen to Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck like all the hepcats!
As I said, just like me!
Former pipe smoker, here. Started age 20 in college (circa 1969, so after the 1950s/early 60s milieu so aptly described above) and stopped at age 40, now 18 years ago because my young son asked me to.
I suspect I was caught up in the same it-gives-you-a-distinguished-air meme, but i also genuinely enjoyed it. Smoked a vanilla blend (Captain Black was my standard) and enjoyed all the fussing and fiddling - pipe cleaners and reaming tools, and “breaking in” a new pipe. Had everything from corncobs to meerschaums and some very nice briars.
I once read an explanation for the association of pipe smoking with intellect that said that when a pipe-smoker was asked a question, they’d assume a thoughtful look, get our the tobacco pouch, fill the pipe, tamp it just so and light it. Then they would answer, having gained perhaps a minute to think on the question in the process of firing up the pipe. The theory was that the questioner somehow wouldn’t count the time fussing with the pipe against the smoker, as they would if the responder just stared at them for a minute without answering.
I quit cold turkey, but I had dreams about smoking for months. I suspect pipe smoking is even more addicting than cigarettes. By the time I quit, I was going through a pouch a day.
I am very glad to have quit, but I understand the attraction.
Dear Goddess…let me tell you about the British Car Club at my high school, made up of some of the biggest losers you would ever meet. All of which drove clapped-out oil-belching held-together-by-duct-tape Triumphs, MGs, and Austin-Healeys. And worst of all, they had their own…well…ensemble, of which pipes were a key part.
I tell you, nothing screams “future husband material” like a pimply-faced scraggly-looking 17 year-old wearing a Salvation Army tweed coat over a “Supertramp” concert shirt and blue jeans with holes in them (don’t forget used wingtip lace-up shoes, with no laces…odd…but then for two years or so my high school went through an insane fad where all the boys wore their high-top shoes with no laces in them), a $2 drugstore pipe in the front pocket, a fake silver-plastic hip-flask filled with Pepsi, and an “MG” belt buckle and belt made from a faded and oil-stained seatbelt. They would gather together in groups, waving their unlit pipes at each other*, speaking in fake English accents, use the word “bloody” a lot, and talk about things like “I say, old bean, have you heard the latest about Chuck and Di?”
In the cruel caste system of high school, they were below the untouchables.
Huh. I was a wee lad during the Beat-era, but I don’t remember pipes being particularly associated with beatniks. I do remember cigarettes, particularly in a holder.
There’s so much more you can do with a pipe than the opportunities afforded by a mere cigarette will allow.
In addition to tamping down the tobacco from time to time you can keep on relighting the pipe, even when it hasn’t gone out. When it has finally expired, or not as the case may be, you can poke around the inside the bowl with a knife and then examine your findings with an air of feigned interest. Or you can tap it against your heel and let the detritus fall upon the ground (not recommended inside the house). As if this wasn’t enough excitement the pipe can be taken apart, cleaned and then reassembled ad nauseam, preferably in the presence of a small child who keeps asking you what you are doing and who will be impressed by your expertise in pipe demolition and reconstruction.
A pipe is also a useful prop to employ when emphasising a point in a debate. If you are up against someone with a particularly persuasive argument just put your own point of view and then jab the business end of your pipe in his direction. If your opponent has no pipe he’s toast.
There’s just no coming back from a strategically placed pipe jab.
On what planet was your high school located?
Wasn’t tobacco though.
