Don’s first-season moments with Midge are as rosy as rosy can be—they listen to Miles Davis, smoke a little pot here and there, and go their respective ways—him back to Ossining, her back to Bob Dylan-types and ‘I love you, Grandma!’ greeting cards.
In Don’s mind, the women he medicates with never change. In reality, they stay in the Village too long and wind up slaves to the needle.
Yes, in a quickly decaying New York, it makes sense that counterculture rears its ugly head in the form of heroin-addicted Midge and her would-be pimp husband.
A year or so away from theVelvet Underground’s ode to the drug, Village heroin use was in full swing. A 1965 Life Magazine shoot takes us inside the claustrophobic world of two addicts—a young couple who steal and hustle to feed their collective habit and leave their squalid quarters only to score (don’t even get me started on how much like the recent activities of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce this is).
Don tells Midge that he’s expected to see her in the Village, and of course he has! Don Draper knows nothing of what it meant to be an early bohemian woman—remember, Midge is living the boho life in 1960, a solid six years before little Peggy Olsen dares to venture over to a loft party. By 1966, Midge’s art career has gone nowhere, and the Dons of New York have moved on to younger and brighter things, and Midge’s flouting of convention has left her (literally) high and dry.
Destruction is on its way—to our SCDP heroes, to the women they throw money at, to the very city in which they all ply their trade. In a few short years, the Village will be uninhabitable for besuited businessmen like Don. The walls are closing in, and Don Draper’s only starting to notice.
If a lady can either be a Marilyn or a Jackie, then this same Kinseyian principle also applies to automobiles.
Every convertible may look similar, but they’re not the same. Out in the sun-drunk air of Southern California, free from his cold, urban life, Don Draper’s automotive selection presents what type of man he is.
If this was the Don of Season 2, we could envision him behind the wheel of the brand new (to the marketplace) Ford Mustang – a powerful and sleek automobile, able to attract ladies with just a glance – touring PCH with the top down.
Instead, it’s Season 4, and he’s a different Don, clunking along in the “luxury” Imperial, carrying its 5,185 lbs. of American steel and dreadfully harsh lines. Where is the guy who pitched the Jantzen ad earlier this year? Oh yeah, he’s cruising in a car for older men trying to feel young again.
And if the Imperial is reminiscent of something, it’s not a two-piece bathing suit. The Chrysler is lacking the arousal factor (something Don desperately needs to find again) to pull that off. A few years prior, Chrysler pulled off what Duck Phillips never could: they poached designer Elwood Engle away from Ford. While at Ford, Engle designed multiple automobile bodies, including the 1961 Lincoln Continental.
“We never learn the full names or identities of the Fellini-esque aristocrats with whom Don escapes. Names like Rockefeller, Astor, Rothschild, Dykeman — or Whitman — mean nothing in the desert. The whole scene is drenched in a democracy of the sun. Nothing has come before and few think of tomorrow.”
“Just so you know, the people who talk that way think monkeys can do this. They take all this monkey crap and just stick it in a briefcase, completely unaware that their success depends on something more than shoeshine. You are the product. You, feeling something — that’s what sells.” - Don
Christina Perry and Derrick Gee are two illustrators I commissioned for the Mad Men Unbuttoned book (pre-ordering is for winners!) to make it pretty. There are 5 original pieces and they are beautiful as this wallpaper you see above.
For this illustration we were trying to isolate what motivated us to do the book, we figured out that we loved so much was to getting closer to the characters by filling in the gaps. Looking at the history that surronds them and plugging it into the personal details of their lives. So Christina, Derrick and I imagined all the little treasures we would find in Don’s desk.
“A friend suggested I watch the series, “Mad Men”. It feels like deja vu….this photo was taken in 1960 in Manhattan (the series takes place in the same year and place)….my mother and stepfather (a television executive) look a lot like the main characters Don Draper and his wife Betty. It all feels so familiar…the hair styles, the thin ties, the smoky air, the cocktails…….the extra-martial affairs……”
“How about a movie? I hear The Apartment is good,” Joan baits Roger, waiting for an opportunity to describe the misfortune of Fran Kubelik, a congenial elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine who sleeps with the married men her office building. “The way those men treated that poor girl, handing her around like a tray of canapés?” Joan snaps when Roger says nothing, “She tried to commit suicide”.
This exchange comes on heels of a hotel room tryst where Roger suggests Joan get her own apartment so they could stop sneaking around.
“Don’t you like things the way they are?” Joan asks while re-adjusting her dress.
“Are you kidding?” Roger responds. “This has been the best year of my life. Do you have any idea how unhappy I was before I met you? I was thinking about leaving my wife.”
Released in 1960, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment likely sparked similar spats between professional men and the women who loved them (no, not their wives—the other women who loved them). Jack Lemmon stars as a hapless middle-manager whose apartment is considered community property by his bosses: use the pad to conduct extra-marital liaisons. The suicide attempt to which Joan refers comes after MacLaine’s Kubelik, object of affection to Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter, is faced with the grim realization that Baxter’s Sheldrake, played by Fred MacMurray, is, despite his apparent interest in her, is cold, rational, and unlikely to leave his wife. Sound like anyone we know?
“By the time they had lived seven years in the little house on Greentree Avenue in Westport, Connecticut, they both detested it. There were many reasons, none of them logical, but all of them compelling. For one thing, the house had a kind of evil genius for displaying proof of their weaknesses and wiping out all traces of their strengths.
