When cigarette advertising was a thing, the Marlboro Man on Sunset was its king

It was the end of an era for a sign of the times.

On a rainy March day in 1999, a 70-foot billboard perched at the doorstep of the Sunset Strip was taken down and trucked away. That spot on Sunset Boulevard and Marmont Lane had long been the home of the rough-hewn, lasso-toting Marlboro Man — so much a fixture it became part of the glitz and glam of L.A.

"It was such an iconic ad — such a tall billboard with this very handsome image up there," said John Heilman, current and then-mayor of West Hollywood. "Right there by the Chateau Marmont and near a lot of music venues that we have up on Sunset."

Billboards along the Sunset Strip, including one for Marlboro, in December 1985.

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Paul Chinn

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection / LAPL

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That's how I came to know about these larger-than-life Marlboro billboards, going to the Roxy and the Whiskey to see shows, and to the Sunset Tower Records for music in the 1990s. I didn't know it at the time, the image apparently changed every couple of years, but the vibe was so consistent it felt like one, long seamless spell.

 "When you came in on Sunset, that is what you saw," said Neil Ford, head of sales for central U.S. and the West Coast at Big Happy, a digital and mobile ad agency based in Chicago. "It really captured what out-of-home [advertisement] was at that moment, what it meant."

The Marlboro billboard on Sunset Boulevard.

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Elisa Leonelli

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Courtesy Elisa Leonelli

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Ford said the campaign was groundbreaking — advertising at its most effective.

"You think about that image of the Marlboro Man. It was a different size, it had presence and it captured your attention," Ford said.

It was a gamechanger for Philip Morris. Sales for Marlboro hit $5 million in 1955, a more than 3,000%  increase a year after its debut.

In other words, it attracted more smokers.

 "It was obvious that the image of the rugged Marlboro Man encouraged generations of men to smoke," said Paul Koretz, a former West Hollywood council member who was at the sign on that March day to celebrate its fall.

The total pivot

Hypermasculinity aside, Marlboro was originally marketed to women as a luxury brand peddling a mild flavor when it was introduced in the 1920s.

The pivot came three decades later, when the company was looking for a way to sell men on filtered cigarettes, long considered effeminate and less flavorful.

Enter Chicago ad man Leo Burnett, who engineered what many consider one of the greatest brand reinventions of all time by creating a new series of mascots — not just butch cowboys, but tough-as-nail sailors, hunters, businessmen, sportsmen, writers.

At the end, the cowboy won out, becoming the brand's reigning Marlboro Man.

" They brought this masculine symbol — image, visual — and really re-created what Marlboro as a brand meant," Ford said. "And it just was one image, there was very little copy. It had the logo on it. It was its own creation at the time."

The campaign propelled Marlboro to the top of the domestic industry by the 1970s, even as the toll on public health from the use of tobacco products racked up.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that some 480,000 people in the U.S. die every year from cigarette smoking, including exposure to second-hand smoke. At least four actors who portrayed Marlboro Man died from smoking-related diseases.

In 1971, the U.S. banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. Brands then shifted to other mediums, in particular billboards.

The Sunset Strip

A street view looking west from the northern side of Sunset Boulevard near Chateau Marmont at night. In the background is the billboard for Marlboro.

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Carol Westwood

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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The 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Strip in West Hollywood has never been a stranger to grabby billboards. In fact, it was where the medium became art.

"It's always been known for very creative advertising," Heilman, West Hollywood’s mayor, said.

Its golden era was arguably the 1970s, when giant, hand-painted rock ‘n’ roll signs lined the Strip, a veritable checklist of who’s who in the music world.

Various billboards on the Sunset Strip and Horn Avenue during a full moon in June 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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The phenomenon started in 1967, with Elektra Records taking out a billboard to promote the debut album of a little-known local band called The Doors.

Two years later, The Beatles’ "Abbey Road" appeared, followed by Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.

The era came to a close in the 1980s with the advent of MTV, which changed the playbook of music marketing, says photographer Robert Landau in his book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip.

"Other types of billboards focusing on the entertainment industry were very popular," Heilman said. "A lot of the new movie releases, new album releases, new product releases."

And the Marlboro Man stood amid this hit parade in one of the most commanding spots on The Strip since at least the late 1970s.

"As I recall, at one point they actually had steam coming out of it to simulate smoke," said Heilman, who has lived in West Hollywood for more than four decades.

Night view of large billboards along Sunset Strip circa 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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Billboard ads along Sunset Strip in November 1985.

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Paul Chinn

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection / LAPL

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The billboard predates the incorporation of West Hollywood as a city in 1984. Helping to lead the cityhood efforts was Koretz, who went on to become a City Council member for West Hollywood before serving on the state Assembly and the Los Angeles City Council.

"I actually lived near the Sunset Strip, so I thought about it every time I drove by," he said of the Marlboro Man ad. "It was one of the most effective symbols of tobacco marketing."

Both his parents, Koretz said, were heavy lifelong smokers who died from the addiction.  As a lawmaker, Koretz led a number of anti-smoking efforts, including a smoking ban in restaurants in West Hollywood — as well as a near total ban on tobacco advertising in the city.

Large billboard of the Marlboro Man, located on the Sunset Strip at Marmont Lane in West Hollywood, circa 1985.

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Carol Westwood

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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That ban was passed in the final months of 1998, just before a settlement agreement between the nation's biggest tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, and dozens of state attorneys general. The $206 billion deal settled lawsuits filed by the states to recoup health care costs for smoking-related illnesses. It also banned youth marketing, as well as outdoor advertising.

As a result, Los Angeles's most famous Marlboro Man stepped down on March 10, 1999 — about a month before the official removal deadline.

That day, Koretz held a news conference to send the sign off. He said not everyone was happy to see the landmark go. But the ban, among a slew of other anti-smoking policies, have made an impact.

Last year, the American Cancer Society reported cigarette smoking among U.S. adults dropped from  42% in 1965 to 11% in 2023.

" It was always controversial. There are always people that didn't like it," Koretz said of the billboard ban. "This is largely a success story."

Shortly after, a new billboard went up in the place of the Marlboro Man on Sunset.

It was still a cowboy, looking eerily similar to its fallen predecessor, but with a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Instead of Marlboro, it read, "Impotent."