One of the most significant generational divides is the differences in tobacco consumption. As attitudes around nicotine have evolved, separate age ranges have either embraced or spurned cigarettes and other delivery methods. Whether we all heed the Surgeon General's warnings or not, it's clear that each peer group has its hangups and choices. 

While Big Tobacco finds new ways to market to fresh-faced consumers, an opposing force continues its attempt to educate and prevent over-use. For decades, television users have been subject to anti-tobacco advertising, just as they were once the targets of cigarette commercials. The Food & Drug Administration has carefully monitored where and how tobacco can be advertised, and a lot of that space is now filled by public service campaigns aimed at teaching younger people the ills of smoking. Whether those commercials are effective or not is up for debate. However, one can't argue that they've been a big part of American life since the Sixties.

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Perry Mason

The cast of Perry Mason threatened to quit after William Talman was suspended from the series

The first-ever anti-smoking commercial to feature a celebrity was broadcast in 1968. The ad included a posthumous performance from Perry Mason's William Talman, famous for portraying Mason's adversary District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Talman died from lung cancer that same year before the campaign could air. 

Talman was already fatally sick when he agreed to appear in the ad series. According to producer Donald Hillman, The American Cancer Society "decided to do this film because it presented a unique opportunity for the society to dramatically and realistically portray to the American TV audience the beliefs and feelings of a man soon to be a victim of his own smoking habits."

Talman, according to Hillman was "all the more effective because he had previously been established as a loser."

While Talman's Hamilton Burger might've lost a lot of court battles onscreen, in real life, Talman should be remembered as a hero for his place in anti-smoking history. He used his fame to teach everyone a lesson he wasn't lucky enough to learn until it was too late.

"We're just that way," Talman's son Tim told Hour Detroit Magazine. "We don't do anything unless there's an effect. What my dad was telling the world was, 'When you see this, I'll be gone.' It doesn't get any more dramatic than that."