Houston Chronicle
September 14, 1996
Marlboro Man duped, widow says/Suit seeks damages from tobacco firms
JIM SCHUTZE, Houston Chronicle Dallas Bureau Staff
DALLAS - The stoical Marlboro Man, tall and alone in the saddle, image of all
that is masculine and strong, was actually an actor choking his way through pack
after pack of cigarettes while fussy movie directors tried to get the smoke to
rise just so and the ash to tip in just the right direction, according to a
wrongful death suit.
It did him in, according to Lilo McLean, his widow, who is suing Philip
Morris Cos. Inc. and other tobacco companies in a lawsuit filed in federal court
in Marshall.
""They used him as a pawn to make everybody smoke, said Jack Baldwin, a
Marshall attorney representing Mrs. McLean They didn't even tell him the danger.
He was duped as well.11
Actor David McLean, who portrayed the Marlboro Man in television commercials
beginning in the early 1960s, died of lung cancer last year at age 73. His
widow's lawsuit seeks unspecified money damages, claiming Philip Morris should
have warned McLean, who started smoking at age 12, that the cigarettes he was
smoking might kill him.
McLean was the second Marlboro Man to die in recent years. Wayne McLaren, 51,
who claimed to have been the Marlboro Man in print advertisements, died in 1992,
also of lung cancer.
The McLean lawsuit concedes the actor smoked other brands, and the suit also
names Liggett Group, R.J. Reynolds, the American Tobacco Co. and Brown and
Williamson.
But the lawsuit says the worst of McLean's smoking took place on movie sets:
""During the taping of the commercials," the lawsuit claims, ""David McLean was
obligated to smoke Marlboro cigarettes. The commercials were very carefully
orchestrated, and David McLean was required to smoke up to five packs per take
in order to get the ashes to fall a certain way, the smoke to rise a certain way
and the hand to hold the cigarette in a certain way."
An attorney for Philip Morris said the company was not even certain to what
degree or for how long McLean was the Marlboro Man. He predicted the firm will
defend itself successfully against the suit.
""The company has a handful of actors who were all identified at some point
as the Marlboro Man," said Michael York, a Washington lawyer. ""The company did
some research at one point and couldn't determine if he was the Marlboro Man.
""The company has had these (wrongful death) cases now for more than 40 years
and has successfully defended itself against all of them," York said.
According to a film industry biography of McLean, the actor became active in
the anti-smoking movement after he learned he had lung cancer in 1993 and even
appeared at a Philip Morris shareholders meeting to urge the company to do less
advertising of cigarettes.
It's not a rarity for a high-profile person in the pro-smoking camp to turn
against tobacco when he himself gets sick, according to John Banzhaf, a George
Washington University law professor who is also executive director of Action on
Smoking and Health (ASH), one of Washington's oldest and most effective
anti-smoking organizations.
""This is an all too familiar thing," Banzhaf said Friday. ""People who have
been smokers and have received a high profile for being smokers, when they get
their lung cancer, they suddenly repent."
Banzhaf, whose organization led the fight for the 1971 ban on broadcast
advertising of tobacco, called the Marlboro Man image ""the best known image of
any advertising image around the world."
Banzhaf called McLean's conversion ""better late than never."
The lawsuit against Philip Morris was filed in Marshall even though neither
the plaintiff nor the defendant has any Texas connection. Baldwin, the Marshall
attorney, said federal rules allowed the case to be filed anywhere and that he
was chosen to help represent the widow because of his work on another recent
smoking lawsuit.
The judge in whose court the case was filed, David Folsom, also happens to be
presiding over the $4 billion anti-smoking lawsuit filed earlier this year in
Texarkana by Texas Attorney General Dan Morales. Baldwin said filing the McLean
suit before Folsom made sense because Folsom ""is familiar with tobacco
litigation."
Mrs. McLean, who was resisting numerous requests for interviews late Friday,
lives in Los Angeles, along with her adult son, who is also a plaintiff in the
suit. Suzelle M. Smith, who is the widow's main attorney in Los Angeles, said
Friday-her client regarded suing Philip Morris as a way to make amends for some
of the harm her husband's advertisements may have caused, however unwittingly,
to consumers.
""She sees it as an opportunity to pay back a debt to society," Smith said.
The attorney said she did not know how long McLean worked as the Marlboro Man or
how much money he made doing it.
The Marlboro Man image was invented by the Leo Burnett advertising agency of
Chicago in 1955. The advent of filtered cigarettes - an early response to cancer
findings by the Surgeon General - presented cigarette companies with the
challenge of showing male smokers there was nothing ""sissy or feminine about
these filtered cigarettes," according to a history of the Marlboro Man image.
The Marlboro Man, originally called the ""Tattooed Man" because of a faded
tattoo visible on his hand, was a rotating group of actors at first, all dressed
in various rough-and-ready blue-collar costumes.
Careful market study showed the cowboy image to be the most effective of all
the Marlboro Men and it went on to become one of the most effective campaigns in
advertising history.
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