We present ten celebrities who died from smoking-related illness after a lifetime of lighting up – and a career of promoting cigarettes.
Yul Brynner
“Now that I’ve gone, don’t smoke. Just don’t smoke.” Such were the words of Yul Brynner who famously died from the consequences of his habit. We have taken a look at who else paid the ultimate price.
Hidden in the Hollywood archives is a haunting performance by one Tinseltown’s greatest and possibly most enigmatic tough guys. The moving yet brief soundtrack carries more power and conviction than all of his action scenes put together - which is just how Yul Brynner wanted it.
He was dying of lung cancer and when he looked into the lens for the last time the Russian-born star gave the most compelling performance of his career. It was 1985, the end was near, and the Oscar winner who starred in The King and I and The Magnificent Seven had invited a camera crew to his home to deliver a performance he had in some way been preparing for all his life.
Yul Brynner
It took him just 12 seconds to recite the lines he had scripted himself and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It went like this:
“Now that I’ve gone I tell you, don’t smoke.
“Just don’t smoke.
“If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer.”
Cut.
By his own admission, he had smoked himself to death
Brynner’s eyes burned with his famous intensity in the hope his final words would be heeded and that those who followed him would not make the same mistakes he had.
Weeks later, on October 10, 1985, the life-long smoker died of lung cancer aged just 65.
By his own admission, he had smoked himself to death.
In accordance with his wishes the warning was broadcast on American TV and today the short, intensely moving clip of a man wrestling with his own fate is on YouTube where it still stands as a warning from beyond the grave.
But the short clip is also accompanied online by a number of other dead legends who smoked and who today haunt the internet with a very different message.
Many of them succumbed to the effects of their lifetime habit but the TV adverts they made for tobacco firms at the height of their fame live on. Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is littered with the names of stars who smoked and who died from lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses.
It is a grim epitaph from Hollywood’s golden era when cigarettes had become the accessory of the sophisticated and the famous, synonymous with on-screen machismo.
John Wayne
John Wayne, famous for True Grit, The Searchers and many more classic movies died in 1979 aged 72 from stomach cancer, though he had also battled lung cancer.
Throughout his career, he had been a chain smoker
Despite rumours widely reported in Hollywood at the time that his cancers were caused by radiation when he filmed near a US government nuclear weapons testing site in Utah, the “Duke” always said his six-pack-a-day smoking habit was to blame.
In his heyday and before cigarette advertising was banned on US TV, Wayne had advertised Camel cigarettes and today his words seem prophetic.
“After you’ve been making a lot of strenuous scenes I like to sit back and enjoy a cool, mild good-tasting cigarette and that’s just what Camels are. Mild and good-tasting, pack after pack.
“I know, I’ve been smoking them for 20 years.”
The ad is till on YouTube today. But now the words are chilling and sound like a man telling us how he would die.
Paul Newman
Paul Newman, star of Cool Hand Luke, The Towering Inferno and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died aged 83 in 2008 from lung cancer.
Throughout his career he had been a chain smoker, though he quit some 30 years before diagnosis.
If the role of cigarettes in Newman’s death was inconclusive, there appeared little doubt that Humphrey Bogart paid the ultimate price for his life-long habit.
Bogey, star of classics like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, died aged just 57 in 1957 from cancer of the oesophagus, or throat cancer.
Before being diagnosed he suffered from a chronic cough which he said was caused by smoking.
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball, the star of the 1960s hit TV comedy I Love Lucy died aged 77 in 1989 from a ruptured abdominal artery while recovering from heart surgery.
She had been a heavy smoker for most of her life and smokers are known to be at increased risk of abdominal aneurysm or swelling of the artery wall.
Lucille Ball
Like the Duke, Lucille had also advertised cigarettes on TV with her husband Desi Arnaz who appeared with her in I Love Lucy and other spin off shows.
In one ad with him for Philip Morris, made in the 60s and still online, she says: “Don’t say cigarette, say Philip Morris,” to which her husband relies: “Oh, is there any other kind?” as he lights up.
Steve McQueen
Perhaps Hollywood’s greatest icon - Steve McQueen, The King of Cool - also a life-long smoker - died aged just 50 from cancer. He had starred opposite Brynner in The Magnificent Seven and had already succumbed to cancer in 1980 - five years before Brynner warned the world of the dangers of smoking.
McQueen was diagnosed in 1978 with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer associated with asbestos exposure which was thought could have been linked to movie stage insulation, the asbestos-lined protective suits he wore as a racing driver.
McQueen himself believed the disease began when he removed asbestos lagging from a troop ship during his service in the US army as a marine. The cause remains unknown to this day but what is know for certain is that when he began suffering with a chronic cough in 1978, and shortly before his diagnosis, the first thing he did was quit smoking.
Steve McQueen
The first thing he did was quit smoking
He too had starred in a now equally haunting piece of archive footage - an advert for Viceroy cigarettes - made when he starred in TV western series called Wanted Dead or Alive between 1958 and 1961 when he was on the brink of movie stardom.
In the grainy images the star of The Great Escape walks on set smoking a cigarette and says: “When I’m off stage I like to stop and think, figure things out.
“That’s why I smoke Viceroy. And when you think your way through all the filter claims you come to the cigarette with the thinking man’s filter and smoking man’s taste.
“Viceroy, the thinking man’s filter and the smoking man’s taste.”
Given his subsequent death from cancer it is almost as haunting as Brynner’s plaintive plea to a new generation.
The thousands of images of McQueen with a drooping cigarette between his lips and his subsequent early death from cancer are somehow as sad as Brynner’s final words on film.
And the list goes on.
Errol Flynn
Smoker Errol Flynn died aged 50 in 1959 from a heart attack.
The coroner’s report said the heart attack was caused by coronary thrombosis and coronary atherosclerosis - blood clots in the artery and narrowing of the artery - both known to be associated with smoking.
Sammy Davis Junior
Flamboyant movie star, singer and dancer Sammy Davis Junior, who was rarely seen without a cigarette clasped casually between his be-jewelled fingers, died aged 64 in 1990 from throat cancer.
He claimed to have smoked four-packs a day as an adult and in 1989 he began to complain of a tickle in his throat and an inability to taste food.
Nine months later he was dead after unsuccessful chemotherapy.
Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck, the star of the noir classic Double Indemnity, had smoked from the age of nine.
She died aged 82 from congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - both associated with smoking - in 1990 just four years after having finally quit cigarettes.
Lee Marvin
Ultimate tough guy Lee Marvin died from a heart attack aged 63 in 1987 and, like John Wayne and Steve McQueen, had smoked all his life and advertised them on TV playing on his macho image to sell a non-filtered brand.
Officially he died from a condition called coccidioidomycosis - a form of fungal infection - before succumbing to a heart attack nine months later.
In his TV ad for Pall Mall cigarettes, made when he starred as a detective in a TV series called M Squad, Marvin is seen punching a boxing speed ball in a gym before sitting down and lighting up.
“And remember with Pall Mall you can light either end and get satisfying flavour so friendly to your taste,” he says as he puffs away.
The list of stars goes on and on from those who died of cancers directly linked to tobacco to those who died of other medical conditions such as heart disease which are now know to be associated with smoking tobacco.
Added to the list could be Clark Gable, Richard Boone, Betty Grable, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin and many, many more.
