I've just acquired the programme book for the RB's tour of the US in 1955 and am enchanted to find it actually includes 'I dreamed I danced a ballet in my maidenform bra', complete with illustration. Also there's 'lovely Maria Tallchief' enhancing the beauty of Gulistan carpets, and 'Capezio people are jim-dandies to be with' - I assume that's a good thing? (From the photo it appears that they're the sort of people who walk around with shoes on their heads. ) And a small-ad for J. Berle, who designed 'a perfectly-fitting brassiere for a prominent ballerina'.

(There are some nice pics of the RB dancers too)

Jane,

This sounds like a hoot.

I have a lot of old opera programs and magazines.
There are many different ones that feature prominent opera singers stating that they find smoking Chesterfields, or Lucky Strikes , etc. so "soothing" to their voices.

It was a different era! At least in the US, today smokers need to hide their shame lest they be considered outcasts and menaces to society.

A former tobacco head,

Richard

I heard on the radio this morning that smoking in public areas has now been banned . . . in Cuba, of all places!

What's even stranger is the fact that Cuba used to include cigarettes in it's monthly rations of subsidized foodstuff's

Back to programs, I have some NYCB's from the late seventies and eighties where every other page is an ad for cigarettes or alcohol.

Some of the most famous ads in the 1960s were for Blackglama mink coats, worn by such prominent types as Fonteyn and Nureyev.

One of the very best subway ads of all time, I think for the NYC classical radio station WQXR, had ABT dancer Joey Carow (looking very James Dean) in a tux on a motocylce in front of Lincoln Center.

Martha Graham was featured in Blackglama ads too -- am I wrong, or do I recall seeing her with F&N?

On the off topic subject of smoking ads, I have a picture of Laurence Olivier endorsing his own brand of Olivier cigarettes. There's also a scene in "The Band Wagon," where Astaire lights up and offers a cigarette to snooty ballerina Cyd Charisse, who responds stiffly that she thinks dancers shouldn't smoke.

I can't say I remember Fonteyn in the Blackgama ad with Nureyev and Graham. I know someone who -- uh -- obtained a bus-stop ad of Nureyev's solo appearance in his mink.

This is another product now seen in a different light (no pun intended). Recently the counter-ads are of glamourous types posing discretely nude and saying, "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing fur."