Early years

Born in Fort Madison, Iowa, O'Keefe was the son of Edward Flanagan and Charlotte Flanagan,^[Irish vaudevillians working in the United States. As a small child, he joined his parents' act and later wrote skits for the stage. He attended the University of Southern California but left midway through his sophomore year after his father died.

Career

O'Keefe continued his father's vaudeville act for several years after the father's death. He started in films as an extra in 1931 and appeared in numerous films under the name Bud Flanagan. After a small but impressive role in Saratoga (1937), Clark Gable recommended O'Keefe to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which signed him to a contract in 1937 and renamed him Dennis O'Keefe. His film roles were bigger after that, starting with The Bad Man of Brimstone (1938) opposite Wallace Beery, and the lead role in Burn 'Em Up O'Connor (1939).

O'Keefe left MGM around 1940 but continued to work in mostly lower budget productions. He often played the tough guy in action and crime dramas, but was also known as a comic actor as well as a dramatic lead.

He gained great attention with a showy role in The Story of Dr Wassell and became a comedy star. He expressed interest in expanding into direction.

In the mid-1940s, he was under a five-year contract to Edward Small. O'Keefe starred in film-noir classics such as T-Men and Raw Deal, both directed by Anthony Mann.

In a 1946 newsreel following Howard Hughes' calamitous plane wreck into a neighbor's Beverly Hills house, O'Keefe can be seen walking through the home inspecting the damage.

In 1950, O'Keefe starred in the radio program T-Man on CBS. Also in the 1950s, he did some directing and wrote mystery stories. During the 1950s, O'Keefe made guest appearances as himself, or in acting roles, on a episodes of a number of television series, such as the legal drama Justice, the variety show The Ford Show, Studio 57, the anthology series Climax! and others. In 1957 he was to be the permanent host of Suspicion,^? an anthology TV series in which ten episodes were produced by Alfred Hitchcock. After two episodes he left the series and was not replaced. From 1959-1960, he was the star of the CBS Television situation comedy, The Dennis O'Keefe Show.

O'Keefe's Broadway credits include Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory (1964) and Never Too Late.

O'Keefe wrote under the pen name Jonathan Ricks. His Don't Pull Your Punches was produced by Warner Bros. In 1947, he was working on plans to co-produce and act in Drawn Sabers, another of his stories. He also wrote and directed Angela.

Camel is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States and by Japan Tobacco outside the U.S.

Most current Camel cigarettes contain a blend of Turkish tobacco and Virginia tobacco. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city where R. J. Reynolds was founded, is nicknamed "Camel City" because of the brand's popularity.

In 1913, Richard Joshua "R. J." Reynolds, founder of the company that still bears his name, innovated the packaged cigarette. Prior cigarette smokers had rolled their own, which tended to obscure the potential for a national market for a pre-packaged product. Reynolds worked to develop a more appealing flavor, creating the Camel cigarette, which he so named because it used Turkish tobacco in imitation of then-fashionable Egyptian cigarettes. Reynolds priced them below competitors, and within a year, he had sold 425 million packs.

Camel cigarettes were originally blended to have a milder taste than established brands. They were advance-promoted by a careful advertising campaign that included "teasers" simply stating "the Camels are coming", a play on the old Scottish folk song "The Campbells Are Coming". Another promotion was "Old Joe", a circus camel driven through towns to attract attention and distribute free cigarettes. The brand's slogan, used for decades, was "I'd walk a mile for a Camel!"

The iconic style of Camel is the original unfiltered cigarette sold in a soft pack, known as Camel Straights or Regulars. Its popularity peaked through the brand's use by famous personalities such as news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose usage of them was so heavy and so public that the smoking of a Camel no-filter became his trademark.

In Europe, Camel is also a brand of cigarette rolling papers and loose cigarette tobacco, maintaining a top 20 roll-your-own rank in Northern Europe with yearly expansion into Southern and Eastern Europe according to the European Subsidiary's annual report.

In 1999, Japan Tobacco International gained ownership of the rights to sell Camel outside the United States. The tobacco blend of the non-American Camel contains less Oriental tobacco and a higher proportion of Burley.

On July 1, 2000, an "Oriental" variety of Camel was introduced, followed by Turkish Gold, a regular cigarette, in 2000, and Turkish Jade, a menthol, in 2001. In 2005 Camel added its name on the cigarette paper and changed the filter color and design on its Oriental version, which was subsequently discontinued, but then reinstated. Also in 2005, Turkish Silvers were introduced, an ultralight version positioned in strength below Turkish Gold "lights" and "full flavor" Turkish Royal. Various Camel Crush and Camel Click cigarettes have also been created and are some of the most popular Camel variants being sold.

In 2012, Camel was surpassed by Pall Mall as R. J. Reynolds' most popular brand.

As of June 2012, Camel Filters were discontinued in the United Kingdom. Camel Blue, the light version, is available from supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Waitrose, though not all stores stock it.

In 2013, Camel celebrated its 100th anniversary. Professor Robert N. Proctor of Stanford University commented on the occasion with an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, noting that over the last century, Camel sold over 4 trillion cigarettes and "have probably caused about 4 million deaths." In the same editorial, Proctor also stated that about half as many cigarettes are being sold to Americans in 2013 than in 1981.

Marketing

Graphic design

The photograph used for the Camel design was taken on September 29, 1913, by Andrew Jackson Farrell, a Winston-Salem based photographer. Farrell and Mr. R. C. Haberkern of the Reynolds Tobacco Company went to the Barnum & Bailey Circus to photograph a camel and a dromedary to use in the design for a "brand of Turkish Cigarettes which we [Reynolds Tobacco] are about to put on the market."^[9] "The label's background of temples, minarets, an oasis, and pyramids was much like it is today, but the camel in the foreground was a pathetic, one-humped beast with short, pointed ears, two-pronged hoofs and a drooping neck. Is this a camel? the Reynolds people asked each other. Consulting the "Encyclopedia Britannica", they learned that a one-humped dromedary could indeed be called a camel, although no one was too pleased with the creature's looks. Luckily, Barnum & Bailey came to town. Monday, September 29, 1913, Roy C. Haberkern, Reynolds' young secretary, went to investigate. With a photographer (Andrew Jackson Farrell), he visited the circus menagerie and found not only a dromedary, but a two-humped camel as well. When the animal's boss refused permission to photograph them, Haberkern pointed out that Reynolds had always closed offices and factories for the circus, a practice that could easily be discontinued. The trainer relented, but demanded a written release from the company. Haberkern raced back to the closed office building, climbed through a window, wrote the agreement, and signed Reynolds' name to it. Back at the fairgrounds the circus man conceded and brought out the two animals. The camel posed willingly, but Old Joe, the dromedary, wouldn't hold still. The trainer gave him a slap on the nose. Old Joe raised his tail, threw back his ears and closed his eyes as the shutter snapped. From that photograph an improved label was designed and Old Joe became the most famous dromedary in the world."

The Reynolds company commissioned Fred Otto Kleesattel in 1913 to draw the original artwork. The signature scene on most Camel cigarette packs shows a single dromedary, the smallest of the three species of camel, standing on desert sand, with pyramids and palm trees in the background. The back features bazaars and mosques. On European and some other non-U.S. versions, the desert motifs have been replaced by health warnings. On others, Kleesattel included "Manneken Pis", a historical figure of Brussels.

Known as "Fritz", Kleesattel was a highly sought after graphic designer living in Louisville, Kentucky. He was hired through his company, Klee Ad Art, to design the packaging for the new Camel cigarettes' line. Klee Ad Art was also integral in devising designs for Four Roses Distillery, Heaven Hill Distilleries, and many other now immediately recognizable U.S. brands. While serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, Kleesattel worked as a camouflage artist, disguising buildings, vehicles, and other potential targets by making them blend with their surroundings.

Ad campaigns

In an apparent attempt to counter Lucky Strike's popular "It's Toasted" campaign, Camel went in the opposite direction by boasting that Camel was a "fresh" cigarette "never parched or toasted."

In 1936, Camel used the slogan "For digestion's sake – smoke Camels." The ads ran from 1936 to 1939. In 1951, over a decade after the ad campaign ended, the FTC issued a cease-and-desist order prohibiting R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) from claiming that Camels aided digestion in any respect.

In 1946, Camel advertised their cigarettes as being the favorite choice among doctors "from every branch of medicine", making smokers believe it was safe to smoke them. The slogan "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette" became the mainstay of Camel advertising until 1952. Ads featuring the slogan were seen in a range of media, including medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, television commercials, popular radio programs such as Abbott and Costello and magazines such as Life and Time. The slogan was claimed to be based on surveys by "three leading independent research organizations"; however, these surveys were conducted by R. J. Reynolds's advertising agency, the William Esty Company, and included free cigarettes for the doctors who were interviewed.

In late 1987, RJR created "Joe Camel" as a brand mascot. In 1991, the American Medical Association published a report stating that 5- and 6-year-olds could more easily recognize Joe Camel than Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone, Bugs Bunny, or even Barbie. This led the association to ask RJR to terminate the Joe Camel campaign. RJR declined, but further appeals followed in 1993 and 1994. On July 10, 1997, the Joe Camel campaign was retired and replaced with a more adult campaign which appealed to the desires of its mid-20s target market. Camel paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of using Joe Camel to market smoking to children.