

"When you feel "all in"-

get a lift with a Camel!"



This 1930s Camel cigarette ad (and it is a real ad, not a fake) caused oddly-photographed gentleman jockey Crawford Burton to go to court and sue for libel. He didn’t see the photos before they were published, and either those who made the ad didn’t notice, thought nobody else would notice, or planned it in secret marketing meetings to create a phallic cigarette ad to increase sales.

Besides the double meaning in the headline, Mr. Burton’s quoted words likely provided many a snigger as well:

"Whether I’m tired from running a hard race or from the pressure and tension of a crowded business day, I feel refreshed and restored just as soon as I get a chance to smoke a Camel. So I’m a pretty incessant smoker, not only because Camels give me a "lift" in energy, but because they taste so good! And never yet have Camels upset my nerves."



Have you tried this enjoyable

way of heightening energy?

(Click to greatly enlarge)



Said Judge Learned Hand, who heard an appeal of the court case:

"…one

of the photographs was "susceptible of being regarded as representing

plaintiff as guilty of indecent exposure and as being a person

physically deformed and mentally perverted"; that some of the text, read

with the offending photograph, was "susceptible of being regarded as

falsely representing plaintiff as an utterer of salacious and obscene

language"; and finally that "by reason of the premises plaintiff has

been subjected to frequent and conspicuous ridicule, scandal, reproach,

scorn, and indignity." "…the photograph becomes grotesque, monstrous, and obscene; and

the legends, which without undue violence can be made to match,

reinforce the ribald interpretation. That is the libel." "We dismiss at once so much of the complaint as alleged that the

advertisement might be read to say that the plaintiff was deformed, or

that he had indecently exposed himself, or was making obscene jokes by

means of the legends. Nobody could be fatuous enough to believe any of

these things; everybody would at once see that it was the camera, and

the camera alone, that had made the unfortunate mistake. If the

advertisement is a libel, it is such in spite of the fact that it

asserts nothing whatever about the plaintiff, even by the remotest

implications. It does not profess to depict him as he is; it does not

exaggerate any part of his person so as to suggest that he is deformed;

it is patently an optical illusion…"

Hand Holding Gives Jockey a Lift in Absurd Libel Case, North Jersey Law Injury Blog>>