| Grand
Ole Opry Scripts from the Files of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company,
1948-1959,
apear online at the
Legacy
Tobacco Documents Library,
University of California, San Francisco. Click
here to view a selection of the scripts cited in a recent Southern Cultures article on the
Opry and Big Tobacco by historian
Louis M. Kyriakoudes.(See excerpt below.)
For more information, including a complete list
of scipts sponsored by the tobacco company, click
here to contact Louis Kyriakoudes. The
Grand Ole Opry and Big Tobacco
Radio Scripts from the Files of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
Company, 1948-1959
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
(From the Summer 2006 issue of Southern Cultures)
Historians rely on documents from the past that have been preserved
in archives, museums, libraries, sometimes basements and attics.
What gets saved and what gets tossed out is often a matter of sheer
luck or circumstance. One of the more interesting cases is the fate
of the tobacco industry’s internal documents. Long considered
the most secretive of American industries, cigarette manufacturers
zealously guarded access to their company files. Cigarette manufacturers
would go so far as to ship the results of their own internal research
linking cigarettes with disease overseas or transfer documents to
their legal counsel so that incriminating documents could be shielded
from the prying eyes of government investigators and plaintiff’s
attorneys by attorney-client privilege. That has all changed. Millions
of pages of industry documents are but a few clicks of a computer
mouse away. Contained within the 1998 Tobacco Industry Master Settlement
Agreement (MSA) between the major cigarette manufacturers and forty-six
states, five territories and the District of Columbia is a provision
requiring each company to maintain an online archive of the documents
released during litigation. Available through the web [see the gateway
sites: http://www.tobaccoarchives.com/; http://www.tobaccodocuments.org,
and http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/ ] and containing millions
of pages, these archives have been a rich source for scholars studying
the cigarette industry’s internal research, its marketing practices,
and its massive public relations and lobbying efforts over the years.
Public health scholars have made the most use of the industry archives,
digging deep into the records to uncover the industry’s scientific
research on smoking and health, cigarette design as well as their
extensive youth marketing activities.
Click
here to read the entire article online through Project-Muse
as it appears in the Summer 2006 issue of Southern Cultures.
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