Hey, that brings up a question. Was central air standard or sorta standard at that time? Or did only the hoity-toity have it? Am I to assume that Pete’s building has central air?
I get that part. My comment was clumsily worded. What I meant was that a guest who could speak Italian might not have the same experience as one who can’t.
niblet_head, I didn’t notice the exterior paint, just the humongousness of the house. It’s not the standard white with green shutters?
Nope. It’s a hip shade of brown (latte?) with black glossy shudders and a blood red door. Definitely looks 21st century. I expect it to be white and green.
Those don’t appear to be 60’s colors. But the design people got so much else right – odd.
I love that room off to the side, with all the windows. Don’s office, maybe?
Connie also said (on the phone), I could bump you up to a suite, but I wanted to have Don and I guess Betty too get to feel for what the average tourist would get.
But who knows if that’s true. Connie is a bigger game player/liar than anyone at SC, including Don.
I think Central Air was pretty rare for private homes back then. We saw an AC guy visit in Season 1; he measured the bedroom. Window units in the bedrooms were the first AC installed in many homes–especially up north. People could tough it out downstairs through the relatively short summer heat, with fans & cool drinks. Plus front porches & trips to the movies. But it’s hard to sleep when it’s really hot. (In the really old days, people had sleeping porches.) On HGTV, you still see older houses with window units.
I was raised near Houston, Texas, in a house built in 1953. We had an attic fan that cooled things off a bit at night. But Mom started installing window units as soon as she could; by 1963 most of the house had AC. In the winter, we got by with a big butane heater & small ones in the bathrooms; the climate doesn’t require the big furnaces they have up north.
Don’t know about Pete’s building. We know it’s got windows that open. Remember him tossing the chicken out?
Those are the exact colors my parents painted our house in 1970 or 71. Now these weren’t forward thinking folks who hired decorators. My mom probably saw the combination for a few years before choosing it herself.
Often those window room started life as a porch and aren’t heated or are but not as part of the home’s primary heating system. People I know who have them (including 3 relatives) use them as offices (but they call them “the study”).
My mom, who graduated from highschool in 1963, only watched Season 1 because of production design choices. As she put it “They get a lot of things right, but the things they get wrong would be easy to fix. I think it’s rude of them to assume that anyone who’d remember is dead or too old to watch TV!”
Ah…the episode:
Isn’t Italy closed in August?
I interpreted Betty’s reaction to the charm as disappointment that it was a girlish gift and didn’t match the sense of sophistication in which she’d revelled in Rome.
Where do you think they’re going with the “Sally’s a bruiser who can’t control her temper” story?
She ends becoming the girl that the Hells Angels kill at Altamont. It almost makes perfect sense.
So she underwent a sex and race change? Wow.
Don’s money: He’s been buying Caddies and such lately. Had to go out and get a new one after the events of the previous episode. He also probably had to pay the hospital bills for the birth. Maybe had to shell out some dough for the father-in-law’s funeral. (Who knows what sort of mess that estate is in.) It all adds up.
Betty’s world: Now that I think about, we see Betty at her randiest when she is away from home. With Don at her father’s, with the stranger in the bar, in Rome, the failed anniversary date at the hotel last season (she was game, Don wasn’t), flirting with various guys. Apparently her house is a buzz kill.
Out of curiosity, do you remember any of her specific complaints? I thought that Matt Weiner was very particular about making the production design accurate to the period, but he and most of the other people putting the show together are too young to remember the 60’s, so I’m sure they don’t always get it right.
I thought the note from the draft dodgers said “we left you your car. your welcome.” or something to that effect? Or are you referring to the car he totaled last season while having an affair with Jimmy’s wife?
:smack: Wow…that had to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever posted. Now where did I leave my brain this morning?
Oh…they were itsy bitsy teeny tiny nitpicks. Things like “Joan wouldn’t have had that dress and that hair in the same year”. Wrong length of gloves. My mom’s course of study, before she gave it up in the mid 60s to marry and raise kids was fashion, specifically historical costume design. She looks for details the rest of us wouldn’t know exist, such as what kind of fabric a dress is made of. I do recall her saying Peggy wasn’t dressed like a naive, unsophisticated secretary, her clothes and especially her hair would have been right for a high school girl and that even high school girls wouldn’t dress as young as that at the end of high school, and part of whatever secretarial school Peggy went to would focus on teaching her that.
I think your mom’s right. We were wearing sheath dresses, and straight (tight) skirts (with kick pleats) in high school by 1960. Jumpers and plaid dresses like we’ve seen Peggy wear were out of date by then. But I think it’s mostly Peggy whose clothes are dated. The other secretaries look a bit more stylish.
A note about Pete’s apartment building…I found the hallway rather less than the apartment itself. It’s hard to explain. I thought the hallway would have looked somewhat nicer than it did, considering what a nice apartment he has. He has a fairly roomy apartment, a balcony/patio area…the hallway looked bleah.
As Lightray pointed out, Don didn’t lose his Cadillac a few weeks ago. And, even the one he bought, Roger quips about what it’s like to drop six thousand (?) dollars. It does all add up but it takes a lot of $6k Caddies to add up to a half million dollars.
I get the feeling that Don’s just reached his comfort level as a farm boy-turned-ad exec and doesn’t feel the drive to get a real fancy home or summer trips to the Rivera. He seems to squirrel most of it away.
Maybe I misunderstood the previous season, but isn’t he also supporting Don Draper’s wife?
Yeah. When he ran into Gudrun stuffing the dress down the chute, I thought they were in the basement. Maybe that hallway/door wasn’t the main hallway – back door, tradesman entrance?
I may be misremembering but I thought he HAD been sending her money but she had told him he didn’t need to any more? She could support herself?