On August 7, 1969, nearly every resident of Greenfield, Iowa pledged to quit smoking — or never start — as part of the filming of Norman Lear’s satirical comedy Cold Turkey. Lear wanted the real town to mirror the movie’s premise of a community giving up cigarettes for a cash prize.
The pledge drew national media attention and briefly turned Greenfield into a public health experiment, sparking early conversations about community support, addiction, and the psychology of quitting.
