Your Hit Parade was an American radio and television music program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1953 on radio, and seen from 1950 to 1959 on television. It was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During its 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups.
The Frank Sinatra Your Hit Parade cardboard fan, designed like a tobacco leaf, is a rare collectible.
Helen O'Connell, making a guest appearance on the radio show Your Hit Parade, early 1950s.
Your Hit Parade's TV vocalists (top, l. to r.): Snooky Lanson, Russell Arms and (bottom, l. to r.) Dorothy Collins, Gisèle MacKenzie.
The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company. The company was one of the original 12 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. The American Tobacco Company dominated the industry by acquiring the Lucky Strike Company and over 200 other rival firms. Federal Antitrust action begun in 1907 broke the company into several major companies in 1911.
James Buchanan Duke, founder
Early Cross-Cut and Cameo cigarette packs by W. Duke & Sons Co
Child laborers at American Tobacco Company in Wilmington, Delaware, 1910, photo by Lewis Hine
1914 Bull Durham ad appealing to the experienced smoker who prefers to roll his own cigarettes—the "thirty-third degree smoke veteran"