Jack Nicholson, Angelica Houston, hairstylist Ara Gallant, and Catherine Deneuve smoke during a private dinner at Regine’s.

The cigarette was an essential accessory of the late Seventies and early Eighties.  Inside their homes, on the town, anywhere and everywhere, everyone was sending smoke signals.  How you held a cigarette, how you lit it, what brand you smoked, how you crushed it at the end, was part of your personal style.  Ashtrays were abundant in every location, and men and women of every type rushed to fill them.  And Rex Reed, the film critic and man about town, blew smoke rings.