The original Treasure Island from 1950 has clay Churchwardens in it.
Pipe smoking in fiction (novels, TV, movies)
- Thread starter Benzadmiral
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Crosby and Fitzgerald share a funny interaction involving their pipes in this...there's also a shaving scene. This movie is kind of like Planes, Trains and Automobiles in that the two characters are traveling together and don't jive well. Fitzgerald is a bit like Steve Martin's character and Bing is like John Candy. Things get worse from that jumping off point, but I won't spoil it for you.
I watched The Best Years of Our Lives last night, one of my all-time favorite films. Walter Baldwin smokes a straight billiard in most of his scenes as Mr Parrish, the father of returning disabled veteran Homer Parrish.
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Outstanding movie and way ahead of its time.
I have to confess, even though I've seen the film many times, I still tear up a bit at Homer's homecoming scene. No other movie has that effect on me.
Finally got around to designing and printing my Lee Van Cleef double pipe stand for the Wellington and the Meer.
Need to finish smoothing and paint it.
Need to finish smoothing and paint it.
Lionel Barrymoor is smoking a pipe in almost all his scenes in "Captains Courageous" (1937).
We saw Oppenheimer this past weekend. Oppenheimer chain smokes cigs throughout most of the film but pipes pop up in several scenes, straight billiards for the most part.
Excellent film.
Excellent film.
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- #171
I haven't watched it all yet, but in the early scenes of the Leslie Howard 1941 British spy film "Pimpernel" Smith, Howard is seen in silhouette during the credits with a straight pipe in hand. And a few minutes into the film, he is part of a tour group going into Germany (I presume prior to 1939), and he and at least one other tourist are smoking pipes.
The film was apparently an inspiration for Lucas and Spielberg in the creation of Indiana Jones. Howard's character is an archaeologist!
The film was apparently an inspiration for Lucas and Spielberg in the creation of Indiana Jones. Howard's character is an archaeologist!
Fun movie, and yes I can see the inspiration (one of many influences, including Charlton Heston's look in Secret of the Incas)
Daniel O’Herlihy smoked a pipe in The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1954)
Trevor Howard in The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
Trevor Howard in The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
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- #175
I'd forgotten, even though I have the Season One DVD set. But in the Mission: Impossible episode "The Trial," IM Force leader Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) smokes a pipe in one scene. It's in a restaurant (ah, for 1967 again!), and Briggs sits in the bar area with a straight pipe. An actual puff of smoke emerges from the bowl. Looks like a billiard, dark, and in a closeup we see it has a fine white ring separating shank and stem.
The M: I characters were rarely shown smoking (though Briggs sips on a cigarette in an early show). For some reason Hill's Briggs does not look terribly natural with the pipe. It seems like a stage prop for the character Briggs is playing, not a normal feature of the character's life.
The M: I characters were rarely shown smoking (though Briggs sips on a cigarette in an early show). For some reason Hill's Briggs does not look terribly natural with the pipe. It seems like a stage prop for the character Briggs is playing, not a normal feature of the character's life.
- Thread starter
- #176
Watched a 1945 B & W film yesterday with George Sanders, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry. Despite the title, it is a crime story, one laden with elements of family secrets and manipulation. Sanders is very good in it, as he usually was. Anyway, in a scene late in the movie, we see Harry, GS's character, take a dark pipe, a billiard I think, from his suit coat pocket. He asks the housekeeper to get him a pipe cleaner from the desk (which has implications for the plot). He runs the cleaner down the stem, then opens what seems to be a tobacco jar, dips the pipe in, presses down, and lights up. Moments later, though, left alone, he slips the pipe (still burning???) into his coat pocket.
Even if the tobacco has gone out, his coat pocket would be full of ash and loose tobacco. And Harry is not shown to be a slovenly type. Odd.
Even if the tobacco has gone out, his coat pocket would be full of ash and loose tobacco. And Harry is not shown to be a slovenly type. Odd.
Today most pipe smokers are well-equipped with special cases, bags and smoking luggage of all kinds. It wasn't always that way, except perhaps for the basic tobacco bag.
Stuffing a pipe in a front pocket was a common practice once. In 1945 it would not surprise many, unless it were still lit.
Loose tobacco was flying around everywhere back in the day. Ashes too. We're much more fastidious now than the old dinosaurs were about it.
Stuffing a pipe in a front pocket was a common practice once. In 1945 it would not surprise many, unless it were still lit.
Loose tobacco was flying around everywhere back in the day. Ashes too. We're much more fastidious now than the old dinosaurs were about it.
This!
Pipe ash on a suit sleeve or lapel wasn't an existential fashion faux pas, just a consequence of life.
I remember sitting in the front seat of my uncle's '65 Plymouth Fury. A WWII Navy vet and lifetime Old Spice user. He was also a ravenous PA-RYO man. The Old Spice always competed with the strong tobacco smell on him. Bits of unsmoked PA and ash all over the place in that car. He'd roll one right in the driveway, before driving off. Always lit it with a match, even though there was a lighter in the car. AC was very optional in cars then. So in summer with the vent wings open, it would get a little interesting as things blew around. And you also smelled the cars in front of you back then.
But that car didn't need a heater in the winter. He was a Ham, and an industrial electrician, and had a huge tubed CB transceiver bolted under the dash (long before CB was popular). And it blocked the ashtray, which only made things worse. That thing would heat your left leg on a night drive with the orange glow off all the tubes, especially if he was chatting back and forth with my aunt about the errands list.
He'd be yapping away, with the mic in one hand, the steering wheel in the other, and a burning cigarette of PA hanging out of his mouth, the ash falling all over his flannel shirt and lap. In winter with the windows up, it sometimes got a little stuffy on our short drives around town. When he got out of the car, he would just brush all the ash off of him (partly all over the car floor). But that's just how things were back then. A very old school man.
Old Spice, PA, ash, pre-emissions leaded gas, and burning vacuum tubes in a Plymouth. All good aromas that linger for a lifetime.
I'm smoking Cornell and Diehl Haunted Bookshop as I read this for the first time...
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