More Smokers in Movies Than in Reality, Study Says : Health: Researchers say too many are depicted to be upscale types, giving children a false image. Tobacco officials worry about censorship.

Smoking has dropped dramatically in real life, but not in reel life--with cigarettes being smoked three times more in motion pictures than in the actual population, according to a new study released Wednesday by researchers at UC San Francisco.

Looking at a random sample of 62 of the top-grossing films of the last three decades, the researchers found that an overwhelming number of movie characters who smoked were in upper socioeconomic strata, compared to the real numbers of smokers in those groups.

The trend is harmful because “movies are a teaching device for kids,” said Stanton A. Glantz, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, and one of the authors of the study.

“As smoking continues increasingly to be viewed as an outcast behavior, particularly in California, people won’t smoke. But the fact that movies are portraying smoking as a behavior engaged in by upscale characters is perpetuating this misunderstanding by children,” he added.

The tobacco industry expressed concern, however, that the study might prompt calls for film censorship.

“The world is not a sandbox,” said Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute. “You cannot limit the adult population to seeing only what is fit for children.”

Glantz, also an investigator at the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Cardiovascular Research Institute, chose 1960 as a starting point for the study--four years before release of the landmark surgeon general’s report that declared smoking a health hazard.

In the 1960s films, 83% of major characters of high socioeconomic status were smokers, compared to 34% of people of similar status in the population, according to the study. In the 1970s, 73% in movies were smokers, compared to 26% of the general population, the study said. And in the 1980s, the respective figures were 57% and 19%.

Overall, the profile of the prototype smoker was a white male, middle class, successful and attractive movie hero who took his smoking for granted, Glantz said.

Examples, he said, included the chain-smoking architect played by William Holden in the 1961 film “The World of Suzie Wong;” the James Bond played by Roger Moore in the 1973 “Live and Let Die”; the cigar-smoking killer played by Jeff Bridges in the 1985 film “Jagged Edge”; and the wheeler-dealer character played by Tom Cruise in the 1988 hit “Rain Man.”

In the 1989 “Lethal Weapon II,” the police detective played by Mel Gibson defies “no smoking” signs throughout the movie, the study said. And, in the last scene, after he “knocks off all the bad guys, the battered Mel Gibson, barely able to move, takes a drag from a smoke which is lit and held by partner Danny Glover.”

The researchers selected two movies each year from a list of the annual 20 top-grossing movies between 1960 and 1990 and analyzed them for tobacco-related events. The films were of all types and for all ages, ranging from the 1960 film “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and the 1975 “Return of the Pink Panther” to the 1978 hit “Animal House” and the 1990 “Born on the Fourth of July.”

The study found that the most frequent users of tobacco in films between 1960-90 were white (78%), middle class (23%), attractive (45%), male (72%), heroes (44%), major characters (32%) and youthful--in their 30s and 40s (32%).

In films that showed smokers, most of the smoking was prominent and in the foreground (75%), the study said, with relaxation (34%) and stress (23%), the dominant motives, the study said.

“Films portrayed the smoker in the same way that tobacco advertising does,” said Glantz. “The dominant themes of cigarette advertising were that smoking is associated with youthful vigor, good health, good looks, personal and professional acceptance. Films consistently reinforce the same misleading images created by tobacco advertising, which is designed to convince children to smoke.”

Glantz attributed the smoking--at least in the earlier movies--to the tobacco industry itself, which routinely paid to have its products placed in films.

Merryman, of the Tobacco Institute, acknowledged that such a practice existed at one time but said “cigarette companies don’t do that any more.”

Glantz attributed the current presence of smoking to the fact that “producers and directors all see the same ads we do, and probably, like the rest of the population, overestimate the prevalence of smoking and continue to use it in their movies.”

Glantz, who conducted the study with Anna Russo Hazan, also of the institute, said that he hopes the study will prompt the entertainment industry “to finally deal with this issue in a socially responsible manner.”