Maybe, but I think it’s definitely a “My God you really* are* a bumpkin on the make!” epiphany by Betty re his origin and motivations.
And, of course, young Robert Morse won a Tony for his starring role in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Now, he’s senior partner Bertram Cooper in* Mad Men*. Just continuing the legend…
Don’t forget that we’re not talking about your average 60’s men here - we’re talking about high-powered ad agency executives at the peak of their power. I doubt if you’d find the same philandering ways in your average store clerk or small business owner.
As for the drinking - you can still find executive offices that were set up in the 1960’s, and they often do have bars in them - the prototypical bar was an area on a credenza behind the desk where you might keep a few glasses, a pitcher of water, and maybe a bottle or two. But I don’t think people typically drank during the day - the bars were there to impress clients and perhaps a drink would be offered to someone coming in to do business.
I also remember at the time that every man wanted a rec room with a bar. My uncles would talk incessantly about it. I remember one close family friend who was the envy of the other men because he had a huge bar setup in his basement, complete with full keg dispensers, professional grade hard liquor dispensers with “Forty Pounder” bottles of vodka, rye, whiskey, and other liquors suspended over them, and a full fridge for olives, cherries, etc. He’d have parties every weekend where the whole theme of the party was simply standing around drinking mixed drinks with him as bartender. They were wildly popular.
Then there’s the smoking - and the show is quite realistic in this regard. People smoked everywhere. Bloody elevators had ashtrays in them. Cars from the era not only had cigarette lighters and ashtrays in the dash, but they’d have ashtrays in the arm rests on the doors as well. There were hundreds of different kinds of cigarette dispensers you could buy, and no living room was complete without an ornate setting in it consisting of a cigarette dispenser, ash tray and lighter. I remember playing with them as a kid when we’d visit people. Some were pretty ingenious, with mechanisms that would cause them to fan out cigarettes in a flower pattern when you pulled a handle, or ones where you could push a button and a single cigarette would be pushed out from within.
Robert Morse also starred in A Guide for the Married Man, where he played a married man contemplating having an affair. He was the go-to guy at one point in Hollywood for these sorts of roles.
There was a period in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when working in advertising was considered the ultimate in modern, behind-the-scenes power.
I find the show fascinating, particularly how:
-there was so much money in advertising (in the 50’s)-you could become a millionaire with one successful ad!
-the shallow materialism-remember when the guy bought the garish Cadillac (with those huge tailfins)-he had to get it home and show off his new toy!
-the episode hwere the boss buys that “painting” by some modern artist (Marc Rothco?)-only to confide that he plans to sell it within a few months (“it’s worth twice what I paid for it”!)
A good show, and a fascinating look at mid-20th century America.
Walter Matthau was the guy contemplating an affair. Morse was the guy coaching him on how to go about it.
A Guide for the Married Man (1967) provides pretty good insight to the sexual attitudes of the day, I suspect.
Reading Playboy or books about the Playboy lifestyle of that era offers a good look at what it was like back then, I think. Although I wasn’t there (although I wish I could have been) so I can’t say for sure. I read in one book about the golden age of Playboy (can’t remember what it was called) some passage from an old magazine about what the “Playboy man” was like and among other things it said something like “he keeps his fridge full of Coca-Cola, which he drinks at a rate of 20 cans a day” or something like that. I think that a culture of excess in consumption (bodily and materialistically) was en vogue, and while physical exercise was starting to become fashionable, there was not much emphasis put on a healthy diet (at least not for men.)
As I recall, it wasn’t really a rec room unless it had a bar. Whether or not it was stocked was another question entirely (and few IME were equipped for kegs), but there had to be a bar for entertaining.
Also, as I recall from my childhood, when you visted others, or were visited by others, the default offering was always somethng alcoholic. Unless it was during the morning or early afternoon, “Can I get you something?” meant, “Would you like something alcoholic?” Responses would be something like the following:
“Scotch and soda.”
“Gin and tonic.”
“Screwdriver.”
“Can you do a Moscow Mule?”
… so you had to have a well stocked liquor cabinet, at the very least, if you didn’t have a bar. As I recall, most requests were for liquor; beer was sometimes requested, but wine was only for meals. Us kids, of course, were given soda pop.
I read the Wikipedia entry for A Guide for the Married Man several times and I still managed to screw up my description of the movie’s plot.
Wow, thanks for all the responses . . . this is really interesting! I had a couple more questions.
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Does anyone know if the current high-powered corporate world still has these mysogynistic values? I know of course that most of these management and executive meetings would now be co-ed, and the “secretarial pool” is now the “administrative assistant pool,” and has men as well as women. But, when men in these situations get together, do they still talk about women this way? Or has all the sensitivity/sexual-harrassment training been drilled into their heads enough to stop that?
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Does anyone know the “exchange rate” for a dollar then vs. a dollar now? I found on one website about life in the 60’s some evidence that a dollar then is worth $5.80 now, but that seems too low. From what I can estimate based on what I think things should be worth, I think $1 to $10 now is more accurate. Pete’s starting salary is $3,500 ($35,000), Don’s salary after the promotion (which is supposed to be very generous) is $40,000 (400,000), a bagel and a coffee is .35 ($3.50).
But Peggy’s starting salary of $35/wk still seems really low . . . that’s only $1400 a month. Also, the Campbell’s apartment is something like $32,000, and $320,000 would be a steal for a 1500 sq ft. Manhattan condo, from what I can tell, even if it is north of 85th st. or whatever.
So any insights? Has real estate become more expensive than other things?
Yes, real estate in New York City has appreciated many times more than the cost of living overall. That’s one of the in-jokes of the series.
The problem with giving a number for conversion is that some things go up far more than other things. All you can do is take an approximate average. Multiplying most costs by ten makes sense just because it’s quick and easy. But that won’t work for real estate.
Oh, and the Playboy/Coke thing. Hefner himself drank 20 Pepsis (never Coke) a day. If AT is remembering correctly, then it’s another in-joke. But it’s probably conflating the two separately.
Bear in mind that logistically, sex was a lot more complicated back then. Then as now, the average person imparted his or her orgasm with as much sentimental attachment as a good fart, so I’m not talking about non-existant moral codes. Rather, when a woman consented to going to bed with a man, she agreed to remove and afterward re-apply all the heavy makeup that was in fashion back then, as well as deal with rebuilding her hairdo (if she brought a large handbag that could hold her can of spray. If she wore a beehive and carried a clutch, you didn’t waste your time).
If she was on her cycle, unlike today when you lay down a towel and she discreetly pulls out a cotton plug, back then she had to undo an elaborate crotch-harness and unsnap the bulky menstrual clout it held. Decidedly a mood-killer.
Consider that in the 1960s, there really weren’t any parts of the country where real estate was unreasonably priced relative to income. Looking at old real estate ads from the era, a typical new house cost between $20,000 and $40,000 in most American metropolitan areas, the price depending more on the size of the house than the desirability of the metro. Houses in suburban Detroit, Cleveland or Toledo cost the same as those in suburban Los Angeles, Washington or New York.
The Upper West Side and Lower West Side of Manhattan were two exceptions. Even then, the cost was only about two or three times the national norm for an equivalent residence; not 10 or more times the norm as today.
Also, some salaries might seem low, but consider this was still an era where salaries for most professions were still rising much faster relative to inflation. The United States was growing more prosperous.
Many prices for 1960s-era goods would seem exorbitant today in inflation-adjusted dollars; electronics, appliances/white goods, and furniture were all quite expensive. American prestige auto brands (Cadillac, Lincoln, Chrysler/Imperial) were also more expensive in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Ever hear the phrase “the glass ceiling”?
But remember, *Mad Men *is NOT a documentary. It’s a story, and like most stories, it plays with stereotypes to make its point.
Slithy Tove, that’s an amusing and well-written comment, but speaking as one who started dating when panty girdles were still made out of heavy rubber and Aqua-Net was as much a necessity for women as food and water, I can assure you that lust always triumphed over logistics.
I’d suggest that most “secretarial pools” have gone by the wayside, now that most people have computers and can type their own letters, etc. One assistant can take care of what many modern office workers need to do. That being said, however, I am one who has a personal assistant, and she looks after much of the minutae of the business day. She screens my calls and knows who to put through and who not to, she makes sure that my court documents are drafted correctly and filed appropriately, she books my appointments at times convenient to me, and so on. Frankly, she is worth her weight in gold.
But while we get along very well, there are some lines I dare not cross. Not that I would anyway. But to give an example of what you might see on Mad Men, and the difference I experience, understand that she and I have a little meeting every morning when she brings me up to date with the day’s appointments and necessary tasks that need doing during the day. Understand also, that I always get my own coffee. One day, I was a little late getting in, and she was impatient.
She: We need to get going immediately today. We’ve got a lot to do.
Me: Okay. Can I get some coffee?
She (misunderstanding): I don’t get coffee for you, Spoons, you know that.
Me: I meant, can you give me enough time to get my own coffee? Two minutes? Then we can get started.
She: Okay, get your coffee. You’ve got two minutes. Go!
Sometimes, I wonder who the boss is. This must be a marked difference from the days when Mad Men take place.
I’m sorry, but this is rich. You really think that you as an individual can be positively certain about how every damn single one of millions of New Yorkers living in 1962 would have not only spoken of but thought and believed about the Mets and the Yankees? How many New Yorkers did you know, maybe a few thousand at the most? New York has always been a diverse city, economically, ethnically, racially, politically, and all kinds of -allys.
Matthew Weiner has said repeatedly that this show is based on his personal experience of growing up at that place and time. You’re going to actually sit there and deny his experiences as impossible?
I agree with your first paragraph, and how ridiculous it is to suppose such homogeneity of attitudes to the extent of it being impossible for anyone to hold such a not-particularly-outlandish opinion.
However, as for your second paragraph, it should be noted that Matthew Weiner wasn’t born until 1965. He can’t have all that many memories of the time period.
I know in my husband’s office, you could not tell an off-color joke, nor ogle any woman, nor bring in dirty magazines, and they did something to the computers where you couldn’t send dirty pictures. Etc. Sensitivity training out the wazoo, and if you crossed a line, woe unto you, you were in BIG trouble. Didn’t stop them from saying anything they wanted about women on their lunch hours, but in the office you damn well better act professionally! So, women were spared from a lot of unpleasantness and dirty-minded old goats were prevented from harassing them. Some progress has been made!
I’m glad you got to this first, because I would have been a lot ruder.