Cigarette Card Album (c1935)

Five cigarette cards of famous film stars from the 1930s including James Cagney, Irene Dunne, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Barbara Stanwyck. The cards are slotted into a page for an album housing cigarette cards.

In the 1870s, cards were inserted into cigarette packs to stabilize the package and prevent cigarettes from breaking. Over time, the blank cards that were used to support the cigarette pack were converted into collectible cards on various topics including animals, authors, athletes, film stars, golf courses, and pictures from the World Wars. The cards were often kept in albums where consumers could collect all cigarette cards to fill the booklet.

The Kingston Cigarette Picture-Card Album, held in Special Collections, contains fifty cigarette cards featuring American film stars from the 1930s. Actors featured include Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, James Cagney, and Katharine Hepburn. The front of each card features a colorized photograph of the star with the rear including biographical information about the person. To promote the collectability of the cards, the following note is added to each card…

Keep this attractive series of art pictures in the Carreras slip-in album
obtainable from all tobacconists (price one penny).

The cards for this set were found in packs of Kingston cigarettes that were distributed by the London-based company Carreras Limited.

To see this item, please visit Special Collections in McCain Library & Archives room 305. If you have any questions, please contact Jennifer Brannock at .

Text by Jennifer Brannock, Curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana.

Five cigarette cards of famous film stars from the 1930s including Madge Evans, Heather Angel, Claudette Colbert, Una Merkel, and Katharine Hepburn. The cards are slotted into a page for an album housing cigarette cards.