Alan Landers
| Alan Landers | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Alan Stewart Levine November 30, 1940 Brooklyn, New York City |
| Died | February 27, 2009 (aged 68) Lauderhill, Florida |
Alan Landers (born Alan Stewart Levine) (November 30, 1940 – February 27, 2009) was an American male model and actor, best known as the "Winston Man", who appeared in advertising for Winston cigarettes.
Born in Brooklyn, New York on November 30, 1940, he started to smoke "before [his] bar mitzvah". He enlisted in the United States Army at 17, where smoking breaks of five minutes each hour helped in the development of a two-and-a-half pack per day smoking habit.
After leaving military service, Landers took acting classes in New York and worked as a model, appearing in numerous fashion magazines, including being featured in a Playgirl centerfold. He also appeared in Cosmopolitan, GQ and Vogue. In addition to an appearance in the 1977 film Annie Hall playing the part of a pompous producer, he also had roles in several television programs such as America's Most Wanted.
Appearing in advertisements for Winston cigarettes in the mid-1960s, Landers recounted how he would smoke through cartons of cigarettes, ensuring that the ash on the end of the cigarette was never more than one-quarter inch, puffing to make a spiral of smoke just right for the photograph in ads that appeared with the slogan "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should". Reynolds paid him $3,000 to $5,000 a day for the week-long photo shoot, making it one of his most rewarding modeling jobs.
In 1987, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and later emphysema and cancer of the larynx, and had coronary artery bypass surgery, all of which he attributed to a lifetime of heavy smoking. Part of his right lung was removed in 1988, which led him to stop smoking for a few years. He resumed the habit in 1992, stopping a year later when he lost part of his right lung due to cancer.
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