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The Legend of Dick Hammer | Field Ethos
By Chad Adams The legend of Dick Hammer continues to grow. Born Richard Bernard Hammer in Long Beach,…
fieldethos.com
By Chad Adams
The legend of Dick Hammer continues to grow.
Born Richard Bernard Hammer in Long Beach, Cali., in 1930, he became affectionately known as Dick Hammer. That name has been thrust back into the spotlight recently as his grandson, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, gears up for Super Bowl LX.
But Hammer deserves remembering well beyond his snicker-inducing name and baller of a decendent.
Because Dick Hammer led an extraordinary life.
The Legend of Dick Hammer
Like his grandson, Hammer was an athlete in his youth. A two-sport star at the University of Southern California—where Darnold would later play quarterback—Hammer helped lead the Trojans basketball team to the 1954 NCAA Final Four. He also played volleyball at USC, later going on to represent the United States in the 1964 Olympic Summer Games in Japan. And he did so at the age of 34 years old—no spring chicken when it comes to elite, Olympic athletes.Somewhere along the way, Hammer became a fire fighter in Los Angeles County, eventually rising to the rank of captain. Among his area of duty was reportedly none other than the backlots of Universal Studios. It should come to no surprise then when the square-jawed athlete fire fighter finally crossed over into the limelight of Tinseltown.
So, Hammer became an actor, playing Captain Richard “Dick” Hammer in the 1972 season of the television series “Emergency!” Essentially playing a romanticized version of himself, Hammer ultimately left the role after 10 episodes because it interfered with his actual firefighting.
But the spotlight refused to leave him. Commercial work continued, including alongside the famous Aunt Jemima, another modern casualty of the culture wars. And it was in that light where Hammer would carve out his greatest fame.
The Marlboro Man
In 1970, Hammer became the fourth man to play the role of the iconic “Marlboro Man” for Philip Morris’ wildly successful advertising campaign. Hammer played the rough, Marlboro red-smoking cowboy for nearly a decade.For those of a certain age, the Marlboro Man defined a rugged cool that many wanted to emulate. He lived outside; he worked with his hands. He surely carried a Winchester ’94 in a saddle scabbard when the cameras weren’t looking. Philip Morris knew exactly what they were doing. The Marlboro Man was a badass American.
Until the lawsuits came. And then he wasn’t.
Hammer reportedly became uneasy about his role in marketing cigarettes toward the end of his life. And then in 1999, Hammer himself died of lung cancer, a wicked curse that befell several Marlboro men from those iconic campaigns. Their very deaths sparked the nickname “Cowboy Killers” to be bestowed upon Marlboro reds. Tragic, smoke-filled irony at its finest.
All Icons Die
And with Darnold and his Seahawks about to dominate the airwaves this weekend, the social media snickers return over the incredible name that is Dick Hammer.“He passed away when I was two years old, so I didn’t really get to know him,” Darnold said. “But from what my mom tells me, we have very similar personalities. We attack everything that we do in a similar way.
“I feel like my family and her side of the family compares me to him a lot,” he said.
Athlete, public servant, and industry icon—Darnold’s familial comparisons put him in good company of a life well lived.
From deer camps to cowboys, Dick Hammer represents something else altogether beyond the modern, mainstream carictures. His campaigns echo these ghosts of the American past. A shadow of rugged individualism, independence and self-reliance—of rugged masculinity—that so often gets whitewashed away, if not downright vilified, in contemporary society.
There’s a raw, intrinsic freedom represented in the Marlboro Man. He’s gone forever now—both Hammer and the multiple portrayals of the character—and their deaths represent a complex portrait of the things we’ve lost, from the water-colored romantic to the suffocatingly tragic.
