Why did actors in the classic films always tap their Cigarettes?

[High Pockets]

Experience taught me that packing cigarettes, with or without filters, is merely something people do out of habit. Yes, packing non-filtered cigarettes helps keep tobacco out of the teeth, but only marginally so. When I smoked, I hardly ever bothered - unless I wanted to look cool like Robert Mitchum - and I never found flare-ups or uneven burning to be a problem with good quality factory-made cigarettes.

Guttersnipe knows what he's talking about.
As a smoker of both Pall Mall and Camel cigarettes for years,...(I remember $2.10 cartons),.....packing a pack or tapping a single was not to fix a faulty product. The action was two fold,....one; to make the tobacco more dense, and two; to look cool.
We did a lot of things as smokers to look cool,....blowing smoke rings, french inhaling, finding novel ways of opening and striking your Zippo lighter, striking matches on the back of your leg, (providing you were wearing jeans of course.), and even spitting those little flecks of tobacco off the tip of your tongue.

It's a fact; most of us started smoking to look cool......and anything we could use to add to the "coolness" was adopted immediately.

I don't miss it at all.
(much)

 

[ezrydn]

While all the reasons give have applicability, you should run your own short test.

Take two nonfiltered cigarettes. Tap one down tight, leaving the other "as is" out of the pack. Light both and put them in an ashtray.

The untapped cigarette will burn out faster than the tapped one. Ergo, your smoke last longer by not burning away while you hold it.

Try it. Prove it to yourself.