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Pipe smoking in fiction (novels, TV, movies)

I can’t remember specific scenes from 60+ years of TV and movies.

But off the top of my head in TV ...

Jim Anderson, Father Knows Best
Steve Douglas, My Three Sons
Henry Mitchell, Dennis The Menace
Alan Brady, Dick Van Dyke Show
Dan Rowen, Laugh In

Too many in movies.
One movie with at least 3 pipe smokers (and a few cigar smokers, too) : They Were Expendable ... including Douglas MacArthur.

A wonderful scene with Finlay Currie smoking a beautiful bent, as Lawrence Olivier plays a concertina and sings as a French Canadian trapper, in The 49th Parallel.

And the great classic, with James Stewart crossing a snowy street, in It’s A Wonderful Life. Uncle Billy puffed on one, too, I recall.

Oh ... and a great scene involving a pipe in The Train, with Bert Lancaster.
Alan Brady did? Darned if I can remember that. All the other TV shows, yes indeed.

There is also a 1950s Ellery Queen short-short in which his pipe figures very strongly, "The Mysterious Black Ledger."
 

Columbo

Mr. Codgers Neighborhood
Alan Brady did? Darned if I can remember that. All the other TV shows, yes indeed.

There is also a 1950s Ellery Queen short-short in which his pipe figures very strongly, "The Mysterious Black Ledger."

Yes, he did ... along with the racks of toupees. Alan Brady was a very unoccasional character on that show. About 1-2x per season.

In one episode I do still remember, Buddy smokes a Meerschaum very early in the show ... 1961 or 62. Morey Amsterdam was a special talent. I met him once the year before he passed. He really was a “human joke machine”.

That one, and the one with Vito Scotti, the painter. “Give me your walls”. No pipes, but memorable (to me).

There was one episode of my moniker’s show where the professor victim smoked a pipe, and they forensically analyzed the tobacco (out of the tire treads) to help solve the crime. The murderer was a cigar smoker, and the crime was also solved based on the difference in how matches were used between a pipe and a cigar. This episode also featured a return of “Robby the Robot”, and a character dedication to Steven Spielberg.

I think the male lead in Hazel may also have smoked a pipe, but I’m not sure.

I also think I am starting to date myself. How about famous scientists and Presidents that smoked a pipe instead?
 

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
William Conrad in the TV series Cannon. In real life he was an avid Chartan collector.

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The new Poldark has the men smoking clays in the pubs and inns. Sometimes in the house meetings.

Boardwalk Empire showed a few pipes among the people in the crowd but the more well do to folk smoked cigarettes.
 
Probably before most of you were born, but "Martin Kane, Private Eye," started off as a radio show and then went to early TV. i recall he was always smoking a pipe. He also frequented a tobacco store on most episodes.

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As I recall Eddie G's pipe was broken. Robinson also was the spokesperson for a drug store brand of pipe tobacco, back when I was smoking.

The story is that EGR helped develop the drugstore blend with Sutliff. I smoked a lot of it back in the day and thought it very good compared to the other OTC blends. It's still available.
 

Columbo

Mr. Codgers Neighborhood
Another one.

Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride. He had a nice pipe smoking station going on in his living room. And they drink hard booze throughout that movie like nobody’s business. People sure enjoyed themselves in 1950.
 
Regarding Travis McGee again, I think there was a passage in one novel where he mentions a high-quality pipe, perhaps a Dunhill, given him by a former lady friend. He also buys a Dunhill, I think, on a visit to Chicago. I'll see if I can find those.
Found the second one. From A Fearful Yellow Eye (1966); McGee is in Chicago in December:

"I walked . . . into one of the great pipe stores of the Western World, Iwan Reis [sic], across from the Palmer House, and celebrated my luck . . . by gifting myself with a pale Ropp with a bird's-eye grain, comfortable bite, and generous bowl."

The other scene, I think, takes place in one of the other novels aboard his houseboat in Florida. I'll have to dig around for that.
 
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