Gauloises
Encyclopedia
Gauloises is a brand of cigarette
of French
manufacture. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco
following their acquisition of Altadis
in January 2008.
and made with dark tobacco
s from Syria
and Turkey
which gave off a strong and distinctive smell.
Between the World Wars the smoking of Gauloises in France was considered patriotic and an affiliation with French "heartland" values. The brand was associated with the cigarette-smoking poilu
(a slang term for the French infantry
man in the trenches) and the resistance fighters during the Vichy Regime. Their slogan is "Liberté toujours" (Freedom forever). The brand was also linked to high-status and inspirational figures representing the worlds of art (e.g. Pablo Picasso
) and the intellectual elite (e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre
, Albert Camus
and Jean Baudrillard
) and music (Jim Morrison
). Henri Charrière
, French author and convict, repeatedly references the smoking of Gauloises in his autobiography Papillon
. George Orwell
also mentions that he smokes the brand in Down and Out in Paris and London. This, together with the romantic associations of France, made Gauloises a popular brand among some writers and artists: Ian Fleming
's hero, James Bond
, smoked Gauloises (but Bond's preference remained for his custom-ordered cigarettes from Morland's Special Blend of Grosvenor Street); in practically every story and novel written by Julio Cortázar
set in Paris, the protagonists smoke Gauloises; they also appear in the Roman Polanski
film The Tenant
and in John le Carré
's book Smiley's People
. John Lennon
was a noted smoker of Gauloises Bleues. Frank O'Hara
in his poem "The Day Lady Died" writes of going to "the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre" in New York and casually asking "for a carton of Gauloises." Smoking Gauloises is also mentioned in the teen series Gossip Girl
. Fictional Detective Sergeant Mort Cooperman smokes Gauloises in several mystery novels by Richard "Kinky" Friedman
.
Smoking Gauloises was also promoted as a contribution to the national good: a proportion of the profits from their sale was paid to the Régie Française des Tabacs, a semi-governmental corporation charged with controlling the use of tobacco, especially by minors, and directing its profits towards socially beneficial causes. The designers of the traditional Gauloise packet reinforced national identity by selecting a peculiarly French shade of blue (like the blues later used in the work of French artist Yves Klein
).
John Frusciante was a noted smoker of Gauloises in the book by band mate and friend Anthony Kiedis, "Scar Tissue".
but 1999 proved to be a landmark year. The legal difficulties crystallised when a French health insurance fund filed a 51.33 million franc lawsuit
against four cigarette companies, including Seita, to cover the estimated and continuing costs of treating the illnesses linked to cigarette smoking. This was followed by an action filed by the family of a deceased heavy smoker and the French state health insurer, Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie, claiming compensation for the cost of the deceased's medical treatment and for producing a dangerous and addictive product. Consequently, brand management was assigned to Altadis
, with joint French and Spanish
ownership, and this company continued manufacture and international distribution until its acquisition by Imperial Tobacco
.
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
of French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
manufacture. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco is a global tobacco company headquartered in Bristol, United Kingdom. It is the world’s fourth-largest cigarette company measured by market share , and the world's largest producer of cigars, fine-cut tobacco and tobacco papers...
following their acquisition of Altadis
Altadis
Altadis is a multinational purveyor and manufacturer of cigarettes, tobacco and cigars. Altadis was formed via a 1999 merger between Tabacalera, the former Spanish tobacco monopoly and SEITA, the former French tobacco monopoly...
in January 2008.
Cigarette
Traditional Gauloises were short, wide, unfilteredCigarette filter
A cigarette filter has the purpose of reducing the amount of smoke, tar, and fine particles inhaled during the combustion of a cigarette. Filters also reduce the harshness of the smoke and keep tobacco flakes out of the smoker's mouth.-History:...
and made with dark tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
s from Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
which gave off a strong and distinctive smell.
Brand history
Gauloises cigarettes first appeared in 1910. The brand is most famous for its cigarettes' strength, especially in its original unfiltered version and 40 years later filtered Gauloises cigarettes appeared. In 1984 the brand was relaunched to an American type blend of light tobacco and renamed Gauloises Blondes. Lower tar versions of Gauloises cigarettes are also available, sold in red and golden/white packets.Between the World Wars the smoking of Gauloises in France was considered patriotic and an affiliation with French "heartland" values. The brand was associated with the cigarette-smoking poilu
Poilu
Poilu is a warmly informal term for a French World War I infantryman, meaning, literally, hairy one. The term came into popular usage in France during the era of Napoleon Bonaparte and his massive citizen armies, though the term grognard was also common. It is still widely used as a term of...
(a slang term for the French infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
man in the trenches) and the resistance fighters during the Vichy Regime. Their slogan is "Liberté toujours" (Freedom forever). The brand was also linked to high-status and inspirational figures representing the worlds of art (e.g. Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
) and the intellectual elite (e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
and Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
) and music (Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison
James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...
). Henri Charrière
Henri Charrière
Henri Charrière was a convicted murderer chiefly known as the author of Papillon, a hugely successful memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana....
, French author and convict, repeatedly references the smoking of Gauloises in his autobiography Papillon
Papillon
Papillon may refer to:* Papillon , a memoir by Henri Charrière about his imprisonment at a penal colony in French Guiana** Papillon , a 1973 film based on the book starring Steve McQueen...
. George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
also mentions that he smokes the brand in Down and Out in Paris and London. This, together with the romantic associations of France, made Gauloises a popular brand among some writers and artists: Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's hero, James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
, smoked Gauloises (but Bond's preference remained for his custom-ordered cigarettes from Morland's Special Blend of Grosvenor Street); in practically every story and novel written by Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
set in Paris, the protagonists smoke Gauloises; they also appear in the Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
film The Tenant
The Tenant
The Tenant is a 1976 psychological thriller/horror film directed by and starring Roman Polanski based upon the 1964 novel Le locataire chimérique by Roland Topor. It is also known under the French title Le Locataire. It co-stars actress Isabelle Adjani. It is the last film in Polanski's "Apartment...
and in John le Carré
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
's book Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
. John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
was a noted smoker of Gauloises Bleues. Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
in his poem "The Day Lady Died" writes of going to "the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre" in New York and casually asking "for a carton of Gauloises." Smoking Gauloises is also mentioned in the teen series Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl is an American young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Little, Brown and Company, a subsidiary of the Hachette Group. The series revolves around the lives and romances of the privileged teenagers at the Constance Billard School for Girls, an elite...
. Fictional Detective Sergeant Mort Cooperman smokes Gauloises in several mystery novels by Richard "Kinky" Friedman
Kinky Friedman
Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American Texas Country singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election...
.
Smoking Gauloises was also promoted as a contribution to the national good: a proportion of the profits from their sale was paid to the Régie Française des Tabacs, a semi-governmental corporation charged with controlling the use of tobacco, especially by minors, and directing its profits towards socially beneficial causes. The designers of the traditional Gauloise packet reinforced national identity by selecting a peculiarly French shade of blue (like the blues later used in the work of French artist Yves Klein
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
).
John Frusciante was a noted smoker of Gauloises in the book by band mate and friend Anthony Kiedis, "Scar Tissue".
Legal issues
The cigarette was manufactured by SeitaSEITA
SEITA , was the former French state-owned tobacco monopoly. It merged in 1999 with its Spanish equivalent, Tabacalera, to form Altadis.- See also :...
but 1999 proved to be a landmark year. The legal difficulties crystallised when a French health insurance fund filed a 51.33 million franc lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
against four cigarette companies, including Seita, to cover the estimated and continuing costs of treating the illnesses linked to cigarette smoking. This was followed by an action filed by the family of a deceased heavy smoker and the French state health insurer, Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie, claiming compensation for the cost of the deceased's medical treatment and for producing a dangerous and addictive product. Consequently, brand management was assigned to Altadis
Altadis
Altadis is a multinational purveyor and manufacturer of cigarettes, tobacco and cigars. Altadis was formed via a 1999 merger between Tabacalera, the former Spanish tobacco monopoly and SEITA, the former French tobacco monopoly...
, with joint French and Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
ownership, and this company continued manufacture and international distribution until its acquisition by Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco is a global tobacco company headquartered in Bristol, United Kingdom. It is the world’s fourth-largest cigarette company measured by market share , and the world's largest producer of cigars, fine-cut tobacco and tobacco papers...
.