Fatima (cigarette)

Fatima print advertisement ca. 1951 featuring Jack Webb of Dragnet. The redesigned package removed the veiled woman image.

Fatima Cigarettes (pronounced fa-TEE-ma) was a brand of cigarette produced in the United States by the Liggett & Myers (L&M) tobacco company. The brand dates to the 19th century, and was marketed as an exotic blend of Turkish tobaccos. The name Fatima, a common Turkish or Arabic woman's name, helped bolster the Turkish image. About 1911 it became the first cigarette brand to be sold in 20-unit packs (15 cents).^[1] Before about 1950 the package design included a stylized image of a veiled Middle Eastern woman.

Fatima print advertisement ca. 1949 featuring Basil Rathbone, star of the Tales of Fatima radio series.

Radio show sponsorship

In the late 1940s L&M converted the brand to a king-sized version and began an extensive radio advertising campaign. Fatima was the sole sponsor of the early years of the Dragnet radio series. The creator and star of Dragnet, Jack Webb, voiced a number of on-air pitches for the brand and appeared in print advertising as well. There was also a short-lived mystery anthology series called Tales of Fatima, hosted by Basil Rathbone.

The brand's old-fashioned image caused it to lose market share from the mid-1950s onward, and L&M eventually phased it out by around 1980.

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