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famous smokers killed by it never smoke?

T

The Lone Centurion

Active member
Location
Deloraine, Tasmania, Australia
German Emperor Friedrich III doesn't die of smoking-caused throat cancer. German and European history will be very different.


Australian politician and ALP leader Ben Chifley. He doesn't smoke so he doesn't die of heart disease. Unlike H. V. Evatt, he might be willing to negotiate with the right-wing Labor Catholics who split off to form the DLP so no 23 years in the electoral wilderness for Labor?

Chifley's predecessor John Curtin doesn't smoke. How are the late 1940s in Australia different with Curtin instead of Chifley?
 
I was going to rather facetiously suggest that famous cigar smoker Winston Churchill might have eked out a few more years, instead of dying at only 90 - but then averting some/all of the strokes he suffered* before and during his peacetime ministry might actually have influenced the development of 1950s politics. Perhaps his final retirement is delayed long another for a fourth Attlee-Churchill rematch in the '55/'56 General Election, a different build up and resolution to *Suez (under a PM with less to prove and different chemical vices), and ultimately different successors as PM/Conservative Party leader.

(*of course this ignores all the other contributory factors - the drinking, restricted sleep patterns, heavy workload, his age, and literally WWII - so admittedly is something of a stretch).

But then '50s TLs are underdone, as are health PODs that aren't "WI: Spontaneous Heart Attack".
 
Joseph Stalin smoked heavily for pretty much his entire adult life, and it led to atherosclerosis (a condition in which plaque builds up in the arteries). The condition leads to an increased risk of stroke, which of course is what killed Stalin (assuming he wasn't poisoned). If Stalin had never taken up the habit he probably would have lived longer, and the mental decline he suffered towards the end might have been averted (atherosclerosis can also cause dementia).

Actually, a lot of Soviet leaders smoked. And a lot of them suffered from atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis (which is a more general form of the former). Those who suffered that disease included Brezhnev, Andrei Kirilenko, and Mikhail Suslov. Konstantin Chernenko also smoked (starting at the age of 9), which caused the health problems that left him as little more than a zombie. Basically, if any one of these guys had avoided smoking the late Brezhnev period and the struggle to succeed him could have gone completely differently.
 
The flip side of this is possible ramifications regarding how well publicised the dangers of smoking will be. If these high profile deaths don't occur, is there less ammo for the anti-smoking lobby?

One of the key proponents of tackling smoking in the workplace in the UK was Roy Castle. He never smoked, but still ended up with lung cancer thanks to a lifetime of playing trumpet in smoke-filled rooms. Now, he's hardly the only person this happened to. But he probably was the only person with a profile big enough to push the issue into the limelight. He was a West End star, a television presenter and personality, a household name. "A bloke who played in the backing group of a jazz club" doesn't have the same draw.

Does eliminating any of these high profile deaths have the effect of taking the wind out of the sails of any anti-smoking campaigns, akin to handwaving the cancer out of Castle's lungs?
 
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Yul Brynner is the first one that comes to mind, since he was very heavily into promoting an anti-smoking message after his lung cancer diagnosis.

He had wound down his movie career prior to his death to concentrate on the King and I on the stage, but it's interesting to consider what might happen should he get another 15-20 years. I could see Tarantino wanting him in something due to his past in Spaghetti Westerns and Eurocrime movies in the 70s.
 
I've often thought about Edward R. Murrow in this regard. He was, famously, an extremely heavy smoker and died of lung cancer at the age of 57, but just a few years before his death he'd moved from journalism into government service. JFK put him in charge of the US Information Agency, and he was appointed to the National Security Council. After Kennedy's death, Johnson asked Murrow to stay on in his administration, but by then Murrow had already been diagnosed with cancer and had a lung removed.

Murrow died just as Johnson was escalating in Vietnam. What would be the implications of the America's most respected journalist serving as the government's chief propagandist during the Vietnam War? Would he show the grisly truth and get fired? Would he toe the administration line, ruin his reputation, and contribute to public mistrust of the press?
 
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Nat King Cole probably lives through 2000 at least. No doubt he'll be heavily involved in the civil rights movement, especially if MLK still dies as ITTL. George Harrison would likely still be working to this day, and Louis Armstrong would have a few more years before he passed. Not sure what other musical PODs would occur, but that's something.
 
BClick said:
I've often thought about Edward R. Murrow in this regard. He was, famously, an extremely heavy smoker and died of lung cancer at the age of 57, but just a few years before his death he'd moved from journalism into government service. JFK put him in charge of the US Information Agency, and he was appointed to the National Security Council. After Kennedy's death, Johnson asked Murrow to stay on in his administration, but by then Murrow had already been diagnosed with cancer and had a lung removed.

Murrow died just as Johnson was escalating in Vietnam. What would be the implications of the America's most respected journalist serving as the government's chief propagandist during the Vietnam War? Would he show the grisly truth and get fired? Would he toe the administration line, ruin his reputation, and contribute to public mistrust of the press?
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Murrow was in London for the Blitz, so he knew full well the appalling civilian suffering that Operation Rolling Thunder would be inflicting, and he was intelligent and experienced enough to know it wouldn't weaken North Vietnamese resolve to continue fighting in the least; if anything it would harden that resolve and the US air force was killing women and children pointlessly. It is hard to picture a man of Murrow's character, who had repeatedly put his journalistic career at risk for the sake of upholding his ethics, being a willing part in that. It is far easier to imagine him making the same decision Daniel Ellsberg did; putting civic duty ahead of any notional loyalty.

That's assuming any newspaper was willing to publish an anti-war opinion while LBJ was still in office; he might simply have found himself out of work with no-one willing to listen to him.
 
LBJ is the one who comes to mind for me, dying quite young from a heart condition aggravated by his smoking. I know Vietnam loomed (and looms) large over his legacy, but perhaps he could have kept the memory of the Great Society alive in some way, and helped prevent some of the excesses of Reaganism.
 
Australian war-time Prime Minister John Curtin who literally smoked himself into an early grave in July 1945. Curtin, who took office in October 1941 and lead the country through the darkest days of the Pacific War, was a workaholic and also a chain smoker, with the number of cigarettes he consumed each day directly proportional to the level of stress he was experiencing.

Curtin was one of Australia's most capable prime ministers and, having lead Australia through the worst of WW2 had an enormous amount of prestige both within parliament and across the country, he also had a great deal of clout internationally, which his successors lacked.
 
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