Leave it to Los Angeles residents to make the fight against smog look like a high-budget Hollywood production. Just a few years before the premiere of the Twilight Zone, average Angelenos already knew that provocative visuals were the best way to send a message to their elected officials that they were sick of the city’s air pollution. The situation was dire—and they were demanding change.

In 1954, the city saw a two-week-long streak of smog so intense that the New York Times reported on it. “The worst of the periodic sieges of smog that have afflicted Los Angeles ever since World War II brought discomfort and exasperation for the 2,000,000 citizens to a corresponding crescendo this week.” Air quality was so poor that people wore gas masks outside. Visibility in the city was reduced to half a mile in some areas, and hospitals saw surges in intake of patients with difficulty breathing. Parents kept children out of school. “It was one of the most grievous stretches of air pollution in recorded history,” Pasadena-based journalist Chip Jacobs and co-author of Smogtown: The Lung Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles told American Experience.

So to bring attention to their cause, Angelenos got creative. They staged images of themselves wearing gas masks. They crowned an official Miss Smog Fighter. And in 1957, actor Carleton Young even began selling “Smog in a Can” with the tongue-in-cheek selling point, “used by famous Hollywood stars…No pollutants or irritants removed.”

Here are some images from the mid-century movement to reclaim Los Angeles from the shadow of its own pollution.