Marlboro Man

• Marlboro man

From the brand name of Marlboro cigarettes; first used in the mid-1950s.

Marlboro Man (plural Marlboro Men)

1. An iconic male character depicted in cigarette advertisements as a rugged, handsome, physically active, and very masculine smoker; a real or fictional man whose appearance or behavior evokes this character.
   • 1958 March 24, "Sport: Ladies' Day," Time (retrieved 14 July 2014):

     The weather would have discouraged a Marlboro man.

   • 1990 March 11, Ronald Steel, "The Long Shadow of Ambition" (book review of Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro), New York Times (retrieved 14 July 2014):

     This one, if not a knight in shining armor, is at least a Marlboro man: a tall, lanky, self-taught lawyer of "broad shoulders," whose personality, "strong and silent," was the very "embodiment of what Texans liked to think of as 'Texan.'"

   • 1997, David Koepp (screenplay), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (film), Universal Pictures:

     Dr. Ian Malcolm: "What are you talking about? Five years of work and a hundred miles of electrified fence couldn't prepare the other island. And you think that, what? A couple dozen Marlboro men were going to make a difference here?"

   • 2006 Jan. 8, Jonathan Romney, "Brokeback Mountain," The Independent (UK) (retrieved 14 July 2014):

     A rugged landscape, two rugged men—stetsons, corduroy and denim—both gazing terse and tight-jawed at the Wyoming mountainscape. . . . This is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, but it could have been called Secret Sex Lives of the Marlboro Men.