Great smokers

[marcelo]

Lotte Lenya



Singing "Mack the Knife": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPG9Gcyk ... re=related

[pretentiousfop]

And the greatest of them all, FDR...

[storeynicholas]

Nubar Gulbenkian who was driven around in specially adapted London cabs, proudly saying: "They tell me that you can turn it on a sixpence - whatever that may be."


NJS

[marcelo]

Opera Carmen, by Bizet
First Act (well...before the ban)







Metropolitan Opera

[Costi]

How nice (even for a non-smoker)

[Jordan Marc]

Marcelo:

Smoking on stage is not necessarily what it appears to be. It's a no-no for the fire department, as are lighted candles on stage. It all has to do with the 1903 Iroquoi Theatre Fire in Chicago. During a soldout performance, an arclight exploded and the stage curtains caught fire. Someone in the audience yelled
"Fire!" The audience panicked and rushed for the doors. Over six hundred patrons died in the inferno, most of them unable to escape through the lobby because the doors opened inward rather than out. It was a stampede that left blackened corpses crushed in piles. Others tried to get out through windows, which were locked tight.

That horrendous incident changed how theatres are built and operate, not only in America but all over
the world. Doors must open outward for egress, a show doesn't open without being certified by the Fire Chief and routinely inspected for being up to code during its run. So the smoke you see in a live production of Carmen is usually powder being blown by the actors rather than inhaled, and candlelight is nothing more than a flame-shaped frosted lamp that teeters back and forth on a battery-driven candle.

JMB

[Costi]

Thank goodness this is not the case everywhere in the world!

[marcelo]

Marcelo:

Smoking on stage is not necessarily what it appears to be...

JMB

Thanks for this. One has a most vivid impression the singers are actually smoking on the stage. After all, in this opera the whole plot turns around a cigarette factory. More recent performances of Carmen might well opt for the introduction of some additional sotto voce lines warning the public about the potential risks of this opera.

[marcelo]

Jeeves' father

[storeynicholas]

Lord Castlerosse, gossip columnist for the Daily Express (and his Lhasa Apso), who once declaimed: "What's the use of being a Viscount if you can't live on credit?"

[storeynicholas]

Bate's Binks. It used to be a cigarette; now it is a cigar:

[storeynicholas]

I feel sure that, whether he smoked or not, Hodge would have supported the right to smoke.

[Bishop of Briggs]

Bate's Binks. It used to be a cigarette; now it is a cigar:

Binks will have a new home in about a month's time. He is moving with Bates to Hilditch & Key.

[storeynicholas]

Groucho:





and Ingrid:




NJS

[storeynicholas]

Dame Daphne du Maurier-Browning (I can imagine where she and her husband would have told them to stick the smoking ban) -ooo000OOO:



NJS.