[1][4] In 1929, Cullman's father purchased the Webster Tobacco Company after the 1929 stock market collapse where the younger Cullman worked during the summers while attending Yale University from which he graduated in 1935.
[1] In 1954, Cullman brothers exchanged its interest in Benson & Hedges for $22.4 million in Philip Morris stock.
[6] Described as "the cigarette industry's chief defender against the antitobacco movement",[5] he oversaw the creation of the successful Marlboro Man campaign from the 1950s onwards which has since become known as an icon of American TV advertising.
In a now notorious 1971 television interview on the American current affairs program Face the Nation, in response to a recently published study on the large numbers of undersized babies born to pregnant female smokers he declared "I concluded from that report that it's true that babies born from women who smoke are smaller, but they are just as healthy as the babies born to women who do not smoke.
His company, Philip Morris, at the request of Gladys Heldman, sponsored the first Virginia Slims Women's Tennis Tour starting in 1970.