Chris Miller Reflects Upon the Halcyon Days of the \'Real\' MAD MEN

Editor's Note:

Without doubt, the new series Mad Men on AMC every Sunday at 10:00 PM is the sexiest, most well-written program to harvest the wasteland of television since HBO tried its experiment at neo-realistic drama with The Sopranos.

Now in its second season, Mad Men is more than a dramatic sitcom; it is more a clarifying nostalgic period piece on a history and time in America when 3-martini lunches were the norm; people smoked in boardrooms, on airplanes, in restaurants, and anywhere they felt like it; and the womens' rights movement was merely a gleam in Gloria Steinem's eye.

Covering a period beginning in 1958 through the early days of the Kennedy Administration, MadMen focuses upon a time when America was truly a super-power, the airlines were thriving, and Detroit still built 90 percent of the automobiles in the world.

Humorist and 'Animal House' author Chris Miller worked in an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. He kindly submitted the following thoughts to the Review about the real life "Mad Men".

This is an excerpt from his work-in-progress memoir about his transition from a suit and tie wearing advertising copywriter to long haired hedonistic humorist being published in The National Lampoon magazine, which debuted in 1970, right down the street from the ad agency where he worked, Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample:

The sixties were something of a golden age for advertising, and the guys who staffed the agencies had a way cooler image than other businessmen.

In the public imagination, they were urbane, fun loving, even hip. In fact, every Hollywood advertising employee you saw was handsome or beautiful, and dressed like they'd just stepped out of a fashion magazine. So if you were soon to graduate from business school and casting about for something exciting to do with your new MBA, advertising looked like a good bet.Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample was the agency that hired me.

They were a top-tier shop, occupying several floors at 347 Madison Avenue, across the street from Brooks Brothers. In its house style, it was a mainline, middle-of-the-road sort of place, more creative than Ted Bates, which made commercials for aspirin showing hammers hitting people on the head, but not near as hip as Doyle-Dane-Bernbach or Jack Tinker and Partners, with their envelope-pressing, new-look advertising for Volkswagen and Alka-Seltzer.

DDB had come up with the "You Don't Have to be Jewish to Love Levy's Real Jewish Rye" posters in the subways, showing Indians and Asians and black women chowing down on Levy's. This was all very sixties, and formed part of the exciting cultural matrix within which we lived in those days.

A management supervisor named Stu Upson had come on board not long before, and was endeavoring to imbue the agency's creative output with a livelier, smarter personality, and this had brought an exciting energy to the proceedings. As with so much else in the sixties, there was a sense at DFS that things were evolving, getting better.

My boss, Jack Keil, was the smartest and funniest of them all - he later became the creative director of the agency. He was a lean, rangy guy in his thirties in whom ideas floated up as continuously as the bubbles in a flute of champagne.

 With his infectious and punchy delivery, his client pitches were legendarily entertaining and successful. Presenting proposed new commercials; he'd play all the parts, assured as a veteran actor. In fact, he'd been an actor - and later invented and became the voice of McGruff the Crime Dog.

 Most appealing of all to me was that he clearly enjoyed his job - told me once that he thought of it as a great adventure - and his attitude infected me and everyone else he worked with.

As in those workplace sitcoms that have been a staple of TV, I became part of a family of likable, eccentric characters. Jack was the dad, and fellow copywriters Jay Heyman and Dick Anderson were my brothers.

Jay was the king of the wisecrack - he could have carried around a drum machine to go tuh-boomp-boomp after his remarks - and the aptly named Dick got laid more than anyone I ever met. One rainy night, he and some girl ran for the same cab at the same moment and agreed to share it. Before they'd gone ten blocks, they'd paid off the driver and were busy at it behind one of the pillars of the Museum of Natural History.

 Then there were the art directors - Gordon Price and Ray Kravacy - who were, I suppose, my weird uncles. Gordo cracked me up. He had more funny ways to kvetch about his wife than Henny Youngman.

Once when I told him I was working my ass off on something, he drew me a picture of a sweating guy digging a hole with his ass flying off. Ray was easy to make laugh, and could seem goofy until he began sketching storyboard ideas, whereupon he turned into Leonardo DaVinci. He could draw anything and make it work; even make the obnoxious Lucky Charms cereal commercials endearing.

 Once he helped me work off my angst about those stupid spots by drawing an angry rhino shoving it's snout up the Leprechaun's posterior, the gratified sprite crying out in a word balloon, "Pink horns!" Ray and Gordo were affable, genial, amusing guys, and great company.

 Sitcoms have their share of sexy, female characters, and we had our secretaries. Jack's right hand girl, Judy, was modest, sweet and loyal, more a sister than a fantasy lover, but Ina was a great, long-legged Jewish Amazon, with a booming laugh and breasts big as fish bowls.

 And Jody Golden was such a scrumptious dumpling of a young thing that every time she walked by my cubicle my crotch emitted coyote howls.

She had the sort of curvy, near plump figure that one was referred to as "pneumatic." The presence of Ina and Jody, in their miniskirts and sixties eyelashes, was endlessly distracting. Entire pitch sessions would break off when Ina strode in with the storyboards - the agency guys and the brand managers from Proctor and Gamble or General Mills gaping as one - to resume only upon her departure, with much sighing and awed head-shaking.

 Once, before a company cockcocktail party, Ina came into Jack's office and asked him if her miniskirt was too short.

 Jack said he guessed it was okay. Ina then turned her back to him and bent over, saying "Are you sure? What can you see?"

"All the way up Main Street to the monument," Jack replied.