Edwin Georgi, Philip Morris, Webster Cigars, Webster Cigar

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Georgi Smokes

(Philip Morris and Webster Cigars)

Edwin Georgi isn't alone in depicting the joys and jeopardies of puffing. The illustrators who created paintings for cancer sticks and coffin nails (so nicknamed long before any Surgeon General's warning label) made up an impressive list; among them: Douglas Crockwell, Adolph Treidler, George Petty, Saul Tepper, Joe Bowler, Bob Peak, Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, Hayden Hayden, Floyd Davis, Joseph Leyendecker, McClelland Barclay, Bradshaw Crandell, Ellen Segner, Albert Staehle, Robert Patterson, Charles Edward Chambers, Al Moore, Coby Whitmore, Robert O Reid, Clark Agnew, Phil Dormant, etc.

Georgi's Philips Morris ads ran in the mid-1950s and featured his pixilated palette. They are an explosion of amazing color and effect, aimed mostly at the female market.

His relationship with Webster Cigar is a longer one. In the early 1940s, John Holmgren did a number of side panel black-and-white ads for the company. When the company went to full-page color, they hired Georgi for the assignment.

Georgi's war-years Websters show our boys, usually in dress uniform, enjoying a cuban and the charms of a dream girl.

Georgi's pointillist effects are less in evidence than in the Philip Morris ads, but the women are just as gorgeous, the men, boy-next-door charming. By 1950, the ads had shrunk to half page, Georgi departed and another artist (I don't recognize the style) took his place. Soon after, black and white photos became the company's signature (blech).

Georgi is ahead of his time in these 1940s advertising gems. The Webster campaign predicts the world of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels with the sophisticated clubs, restaurants, and rendezvous. The gentlemen are clean-cut and nattily dressed, often in tuxedoes. The women are curves and soft smiles, a bevy of icy blondes and cool brunettes, warmed by candles, firelight, and the ever present glow of a Webster.

Philip Morris (195?) Georgi Smokes - 001