‘Mad Men’ go Baltimore

Author: admin

14 Aug

Let’s get one thing clear from the start: I love “Mad Men,” and this stylish series about life on Madison Avenue in the 1960s is by far the best drama on television.

It’s steeped in authentic period detail while still speaking more eloquently than any other TV drama to America today. But there is historical detail, and then there is historical detail. And when it comes to keepers of the historical flame in Baltimore, this is a city that loves its past and can be downright picky about it.

“Mad Men” opens Season 3 Sunday night at 10 on AMC with a business trip to Baltimore. When I first wrote about it last month, several readers with strong ties to the places recreated in Sunday’s episode offered their services in critiquing the historical accuracy.

I swear, I went into this piece hoping these folks would tell me that “Mad Men” got it absolutely right. But these Baltimoreans aren’t as forgiving of Don Draper and company’s slip-ups than, say, their leading ladies, Emmy voters and, yes, TV critics.

One of them, Jonathan Myers, the former president and CEO of the company that made London Fog raincoats in Hampden, is shown in Sunday’s episode as a young executive working with his father, Israel Myers, who founded the firm. How could I not talk to him?

And am I ever glad I did. I would not have missed the chance to get his take on the scene in which Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), two ad men in the series, come to his father’s office to talk about the London Fog ad campaign. When I asked the 69-years-old Myers as the scene ended if Draper was the kind of Madison Avenue ad executive he did business with 40 years ago, Myers said, “I would have thrown him out. In the three agencies we dealt with, we never had characters like that… They weren’t dressed in three piece suits. They weren’t slick…And by the way, my father and I never smoked, and the people who called on us never smoked.” Next >>