...Almost 40 years ago, Colorado rancher Bob Norris was hand-picked as the first Marlboro Man – with no audition or even a chance encounter with a scout. Norris had a contract with the tobacco company to photograph his horses and T-Cross Ranch for the initial Marlboro Man campaign.
But shortly after the crew showed up, they unexpectedly replaced their professional model with “the real McCoy†– Norris.
With a wry smile, Norris claims they lit on him because, as they were stomping on the model’s clothes to make them look authentic, they noticed Norris “was already dirty.â€
The fact he was tall, lean and ruggedly handsome couldn’t have hurt.
Dressed in his everyday gear, Norris was lacking only two accessories, according to the ad agency executive in charge: a felt cowboy hat – he was wearing his summer straw – and a cigarette.
Norris found his winter hat, and they stuck a cigarette in his mouth.
Though they then proceeded to take a couple of thousand shots of him kneeling in front of his horse, Buck, he was skeptical they would waste all that film on him and wondered if the cameras were actually empty....
https://www.shrineofremembrance.com/robert-c-norris/