The 1950s had a very specific idea of what a woman was supposed to look like. She was immaculately dressed, her hair was perfectly set, and her lips were painted red. She kept a clean home, raised her children, and supported her husband. That was the image plastered across magazines, television sets, and advertising billboards from coast to coast. But underneath that tidy surface, something else was happening. Women were entering the workforce in growing numbers. They were earning their own money, spending their own time, and making their own choices. One of those choices, for millions of women across the Western world, was lighting up a cigarette.
American screen star Lauren Bacall smoking, sits thoughtfully at the piano for the film ‘Young Man With A Horn,’ 1950.
Tobacco companies had been targeting female consumers since the 1920s, and by the 1950s they had refined their approach to a sharp edge. Ads in women’s magazines showed elegantly dressed models holding cigarettes with long, slender fingers. The message was consistent: smoking was sophisticated, attractive, and modern. Some campaigns went further, suggesting that cigarettes helped women stay slim by suppressing appetite. These weren’t subtle hints — they were direct selling points aimed at women who felt pressure to maintain a certain figure.
Bette Davis smoking in a scene from ‘Payment on Demand,’ 1950.Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich share a cigarette in ‘Stage Fright,’ directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1950.
Hollywood was doing its own kind of advertising. Film after film featured leading women with a cigarette in hand, and the biggest names in the industry made smoking look effortless and glamorous. Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, and Gloria Swanson all appeared on screen with cigarettes as naturally as they wore their costumes. These weren’t background details — they were character tools, signals of confidence, authority, or allure. Audiences watched and absorbed the image.
American actress Gloria Swanson smoking a cigarette, circa 1950.
Lauren Bacall smoking as she plays piano in ‘Young Man with a Horn,’ California, 1950.
Filtered cigarettes became the product of choice for many women during this decade. They were marketed as cleaner and more refined than unfiltered varieties — a “ladylike” alternative. Brands designed slim cigarettes specifically for female consumers, and the accessories that went with them followed the same logic. Cigarette cases came in pastel enamel. Lighters were slim and jewel-like. Holders made the act of smoking into a kind of performance. The cigarette wasn’t just a cigarette; it was a fashion statement.
A theatre chorus girl smoking a cigarette in an elegant holder, 1954.Model Bonnie Sharie uses a long cigarette holder with an unusual wine glass attachment, circa 1955.
Marilyn Monroe brought the same quality to smoking that she brought to everything else — an offhand magnetism that made it seem completely natural. On the set of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” in 1954 and backstage at Broadway theaters, she was photographed with cigarettes as casually as she was photographed with anything else. She wasn’t posing for tobacco ads; she was simply living, and cameras caught it.
Marilyn Monroe smoking a cigarette on the set of “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” 1954.Marilyn Monroe smoking a cigarette backstage at a Broadway Theater in New York, 1954.
The habit crossed every social boundary. It was found in the dressing rooms of chorus girls and in the private boxes of royalty. Princess Margaret, a regular smoker throughout her life, was photographed at the Olympic Horse Trials at Badminton in October 1955, watching the competition with a cigarette while Queen Elizabeth II held a camera nearby. In Rome, Italian nobility lit cigarettes for one another on sun-drenched terraces. In Newcastle and New York, ordinary women smoked on street corners and park benches.
Queen Elizabeth II holding a camera at the Olympic Horse Trials at Badminton, whilst Princess Margaret sits behind her, smoking a cigarette and watching the action. Also in the group is Group Captain Peter Townsend (left). 13th October 1955.
On a terrace, Italian baroness Francesca Ricasoli lighting a cigarette to Italian artist, princess Giuliana Corsini, 1950s.
At international film festivals, the cigarette was practically a uniform. Italian actresses Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Silvana Pampanini, and Lorella De Luca were all photographed smoking at various festivals throughout the decade. French actresses Anouk Aimée and Jeanne Moreau, Swedish actress Anita Ekberg — the list goes on. These women were not hiding the habit. They were photographed front-on, cigarette in hand, completely at ease.
Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida smoking a cigarette in Venice, 1954.French actress Anouk Aimée smoking during the XVI Venice International Film Festival, Venice, 1955.Swedish-born actor Anita Ekberg smoking a cigarette on the set of William Wellman’s film ‘Blood Alley’, 1955.
The office was another setting where women and cigarettes went hand in hand. Secretaries and typists took smoke breaks at their desks or just outside their office doors. A 1955 photograph shows an office worker stepping away from her typewriter, crushing a cigarette into an already overflowing ashtray — a small but telling detail about how routine the habit had become in daily working life.
An office worker leaves her typewriter for a moment for a smoke, and anxiously crushes out another cigarette into an already full ashtray, 1955.A woman smoking in Newcastle. 19th March 1955.
The humor magazines and satirical photographers of the era noticed the trend too. A 1955 series of images parodied women’s lifestyle magazines by staging absurd smoking scenarios — a woman with four cigarettes burning at once, another demonstrating, tongue firmly in cheek, that smoking was inappropriate for babies. The fact that these images existed as parody shows just how embedded smoking had become in the visual language of femininity.
Smoking four cigarettes at once. From a series of images parodying women’s lifestyle and beauty magazines, 1955.Naturally, it is important that a baby learn the right habits. This woman demonstrates that smoking is wrong for babies, 1955. From a series of images parodying women’s lifestyle and beauty magazines.
By the late 1950s, early medical research was starting to draw connections between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. The findings were reaching the public, slowly. But the decade closed with the habit still deeply woven into social life — in beauty salons, at dinner parties, in theaters and bars, at fashion shows, and on film sets from Hollywood to Rome. Women smoked while they got their hair done, while they socialized, while they worked, and while they performed. The cigarette remained, through every setting and every class, a fixture of the era.
Spanish fashion model, Teresita Montes, sister of the film star Maria Montes, sitting under a Parisian beauty salon’s hairdryer smoking a cigarette. October 1955.
Barbara French lights her cigarette with the smallest ever gas lighter at the International Watch and Jewellery Trade Fair, Albert Hall, London, 1959.
Italian actress Sophia Loren on the set of the film “It Started in Naples,” 1959.
German actress Hildegard Knef in Munich, 1951.
Hildegard Knef at her London hotel. 18th November 1952. She is modeling the outfit she plans to wear to the premiere of her latest film, The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
A woman modeling a dress and smoking a cigarette. 23rd February 1953.A woman smoking a long cigarette which she has constructed using a rolling machine. April 1953.
A teenage girl smoking a marijuana “reefer” in New York. June 1953.
Aspiring actress Jean turns to drink to drown her sorrows after another unsuccessful day looking for work in New York, circa 1955.
A member of a teenage girl gang lying in bed smoking a cigarette, circa 1955.Two women chatting at a coffee bar in London. 4th November 1955.Drinking and smoking in the Mannequin Club, 1956.Austrian actress Julia Arnall, leaning against a shop window and smoking a cigarette. 27th February 1956.A young woman lighting a cigarette as she sits on a New York park bench at night, circa 1957.Richard Burton and Claire Bloom attend a reception at the Dorchester Hotel, London, to launch their latest film, Look Back in Anger. August 1958.English actor and comedian Tony Hancock shares a joke with actress Hattie Jacques during a break from the “Hancock’s Half Hour” rehearsals. 21st October 1959.Italian actress Silvana Pampanini smoking a cigarette during the International Film Festival of Punta del Este, 1950s.Italian tailor Roberto Capucci sitting on a sofa with a model, both smoking cigarettes, Rome, 1950s.Three aspiring actors Shirley Buchanan, Mara Lynn, and Donna Williams light their cigarettes from a candelabra at a bar, Loreto, Mexico, 1950s.American actor Jane Wyman smoking a cigarette at a formal event, dressed in black, 1950.American actor Sammy Davis Jnr at a candlelit dinner for two, without visible cigarettes, circa 1950.A woman smokes a cigarette in a local restaurant in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, circa 1950.Danish writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) smoking a cigarette, undated, assumed 1950s.Frederick Laws and American photographer Lee Miller smoking at a one-night performance in London, March 1950.Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh relax on the set of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ without visible cigarettes, circa 1951.
Edwige Feuillère smoking a cigarette in the film “The Cape of Hope,” France, 1951.
German actress Hildegard Knef in Munich, 1951.
French actress Corinne Calvet smoking a cigarette with Czechoslovakian actress Florence Marly at the World Film Favourite Festival, California, 1951.American theatrical leading lady Tallulah Bankhead smoking a cigarette in London at the Ritz, 1951.Actress Diane Hart smoking a cigarette, 1952.Actress Claire Trevor smoking a cigarette as Connie Williams in the film “Hoodlum Empire,” 1952.Greek actress Irene Papa smoking a cigarette, 1952.
Actress Irene Dunne smoking a cigarette in character for “Port of Call” episode of “The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars,” California, 1952.
German actress Hildegard Knef smoking a cigarette at her London hotel, 1952.
Beverly Michaels smoking a cigarette at a bar in a scene from “Wicked Woman,” 1953.
English singer and actress Joyce Blair smoking a cigarette, 1953.
Actress June Whitfield in “Love from Judy” at the Saville Theatre, 1953.
Loretta Young in “Hotel Irritant” episode of “The Loretta Young Show,” 1953.
Actress Pauline Stroud smoking a cigarette in her dressing room in England, 1954.Australian actress Diane Cilento smoking a cigarette in England, 1954.Gary Cooper with Hjordis Tersmeden at the wrap party for “The Seven Year Itch,” Los Angeles, 1954.Barbara Morris stars as Simone in a Picture Post reconstruction of her dream film roles, 1954.
Italian actress Lorella De Luca smoking a cigarette at the Venice International Film Festival, 1958.
Jeanne Moreau smoking a cigarette in “La Machine Infernale” by Jean Cocteau at the Bouffes Parisiens Theater, 1958.
A model wearing a paisley-patterned jumpsuit at Mae McDowell’s modeling school in Manchester, 1954.Shooting of the film ‘Oasis’ by Yves Allegret in Morocco: Michèle Morgan smoking a cigarette in a jeep next to Cornell Borchers, 1955.
American actress Ava Gardner at a press reception at the Savoy Hotel, London, 1955.
American actress Lauren Bacall smoking a cigarette during a rehearsal break in Hollywood, California, circa 1955.
Ernest Hemingway with his wife Mary Welsh Hemingway and actress Ava Gardner in the mid to late 1950s.British actress Elizabeth Allan in England, 1955.A portrait of Lady Norah Docker in England, 1955.Close-up portrait of a fashion model smoking under a fur wrap, 1955.American actress Ava Gardner, 1955.French actress Anouk Aimee smoking a cigarette with her husband Alexandre Astruc in Venice, 1955.
Two cross-dressing women in Paris, circa 1955.
Portrait of Italian singer Nilla Pizzi smoking a cigarette, circa 1955.
Susan Hayward as Lillian Roth in the film “I’ll Cry Tomorrow,” 1955.Audrey Hepburn on the terrace of the Restaurant Hammetschwand in Switzerland, 1955.
Swedish actress Anita Ekberg, 1955.
Italian actress Lisa Gastoni smoking, 1960s.
Italian singer Flo Sandon’s posing with a cigarette in April, 1960.
Actress Anita Ekberg smoking a cigarette in Copenhagen, on the way to Malmo, Denmark, 1956.
A Russian girl models British underwear in a sales campaign, 1956.Actress Elizabeth Taylor at the premiere of “Moby Dick” in Los Angeles, California, 1956.Actor Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy attend the premiere party for “Moby Dick” in Los Angeles, 1956.Italian leading lady Elsa Martinelli, 1956.American singer LaVern Baker smoking and adjusting her dress in New York, New York, 1957.Theatrical actress Franca Valeri looks doubtful at herself in the mirror with a cigarette, Rome, 1958.Actress Anita Ekberg smokes a cigarette with Gaea Pallavicini at a dinner party in Rome, 1958.Film star Joan Collins in London at her parents’ flat in Regent’s Park, 1958.
Kimberly Adams is passionate about classic movies, actors, and actresses. She offers a fresh perspective on timeless films and the stars who made them unforgettable. Her work is an ode to the glamour and artistry of a bygone era, and a tribute to the enduring appeal of classic cinema.
