run as a Marlboro Man, quit the role to avoid badly influencing his children. He died, age 90, in 2019. Leo Burnett was not satisfied with the cowboy actors found. Broadway and MGM movie actor Christian Haren won the role as the first Marlboro Man in the early 1960s as he looked the part. Burnett then came across Darrell Winfield, who worked on a ranch, after a cattle rancher by the name Keith Alexander declined the role because he did not believe in smoking. Leo Burnett's creative director was awed when he first saw Winfield: "I had seen cowboys, but I had never seen one that just really, like, he sort of scared the hell out of me (as he was so much a real cowboy)." Winfield's immediate authenticity led to his 20-year run as the Marlboro Man, which lasted until the late 1980s. Upon Winfield's retirement, Philip Morris reportedly spent $300 million searching for a new Marlboro Man. In 1974, Marlboro's marketing agency discovered rancher Herf Ingersoll at a rodeo in Augusta, Montana, and hired him to be photographed as the Marlboro Man. After appearing as the Marlboro Man in 1987 advertising, former rodeo cowboy Brad Johnson landed a lead role in Steven Spielberg's feature film Always (1989), with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfuss. Results The use of the Marlboro Man campaign had very significant and immediate effects on sales. In 1955, when the Marlboro Man campaign was started, sales were at $5 billion. By 1957, sales were at $20 billion, representing a 300% increase within two years. Philip Morris easily overcame growing health concerns through the Marlboro Man campaign, highlighting the success as well as the tobacco industry's strong ability to use mass marketing to influence and manipulate the public. The immediate success of the Marlboro Man campaign led to heavy imitation. Old Golds adopted the tagline marking it a cigarette for "independent thinkers". Chesterfield depicted cowboy and other masculine occupations to match their tagline: "Men of America smoke Chesterfields". Smoking-related deaths Five men who appeared in Marlboro-related advertisements — Wayne McLaren, David McLean, Dick Hammer, Eric Lawson and Jerome Edward Jackson, aka Tobin Jackson — died of smoking-related diseases, thus earning Marlboro cigarettes, specifically Marlboro Reds, the nickname "cowboy killers". Wayne McLaren testified in favor of anti-smoking legislation at the age of 51. During the time of McLaren's anti-smoking activism, Philip Morris denied that McLaren ever appeared