Lee Aubrey "Speed" Riggs
Riggs' career came to an end in 1969, when the United States Federal Trade Commission banned tobacco advertising over all forms of broadcast media.
Later in life, Riggs moved to California and started “Your Community Fund,” a nonprofit with the mission to teach handicapped children various labor skills.
Riggs is remembered today as a public figure and star performer of the 1940s and 1950s, having gained fame as part of the last generation of mass media tobacco advertisers.
Lee Aubrey Riggs was born on February 18, 1907, in Silverdale, North Carolina — a small community in rural Onslow County.
At just 14 years old, Riggs remembered mimicking the “staccato style…humming Yankee Doodle.” By practicing at such a young age, he trained himself to speak at the staggering pace of 469 words per minute, which was thought to be a world record at the time.
[2] Riggs fondly recalled his years between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, when he would practice his chant daily, slowly edging toward mastery of the craft:
Rumors quickly spread throughout the South of the “tall, lanky auctioneer, with big ears and a protruding Adam’s apple, selling in Durham, North Carolina.” After being purchased by the American Tobacco Company in 1905, Lucky Strike cigarettes grew immensely in popularity due to aggressive advertising campaigns, an essential practice in the tobacco industry.
These ads had such a large impact that confectioner companies began running competing advertisements claiming that it was still possible to become thin while consuming sweets.
By the late 1920s, George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, was spending $7 million per year on advertisements, a number second only to General Motors.
Thus, Hill began a search for the new face of the show to further increase viewership; the man he discovered was Lee Aubrey “Speed” Riggs.
George Washington Hill's interest in watching Riggs auction stemmed from his desire to further the rebranding for Lucky Strike Cigarettes.
Riggs’ career lasted thirty-three years but was cut short due to government regulation, specifically the passing of the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970, banning all tobacco advertising on radio and television.
In 1981, Riggs began helping industry promotion aimed at winning back smokers, and he outwardly opposed legislation attempting to ban smoking in public areas.
After Congress outlawed the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio, Riggs decided to dedicate the remainder of his life, and a good deal of his accumulated wealth, to helping those less fortunate than he.
Riggs moved to Fullerton, California, where he established “Your Community Fund”, a nonprofit organization that provides youths with learning handicaps training in skilled labor, particularly furniture-making.
