Sep 302009
I’d been hoping to find the ad that Don tore out of the magazine in The Fog, but I know so little about cars, it was hopeless.
Basketcase a_mob_hit dropped this link in comments, and it’s too gorgeous not to share. (Click for full size.)
45 Responses to “1963 Pontiac Catalina hardtop”
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At first, I thought the point of ripping out the ad was that Don went out and bought a brand new car for Betty to ride home in (thinking he has a thing for light blue cars with white tops.) But no, they arrived with new baby in the caddy he bought a few episodes earlier. So…. what was the point of this? They didn't focus on it long enough to show you the happy little couple riding in the front, so apparently THAT wasn't the point. Was it just more escape-fantasy for Don? He loves cars because they let you escape.
Anyone?
Wow. I just read the copy in the ad. Really dreadful. Hope Don isn't aspiring to that level of writing for his clients! Maybe he's thinking "What shitty copy. I can do better than this. I think I'll tell Campbell we should go after Pontiac."
Or maybe he's just dreaming of driving off into the sunset.
The background in the picture reminds me of Palm Springs and the house in "The Jet Set"….perhaps Don was also reminded of California.
I miss illustrated ads. Everything is so literal in advertisements now. I love looking at the graphic styles of old ads from the 1950s and 60s. There was some really beautiful artwork in some of those. Even the photographs had a different feel to them. Every picture told a story — it was the story behind the product, rather than just the product itself, which is the style now.
I vaguely remember a Sopranos episode where Tony tore out a page while in the shrink's waiting room…
Since he didn’t need a car Don simply collecting an “interesting” ad.
Thematically, however, given that The Fog showed Don’s further entrapment into domesticity (complete with a prison guard), the ad for the blue car just reminded of his predicament. Ripping it out and folding it up served to hide it from view (a sort of denial). That’s my take anyway.
@7- hullaballo, this a great book of 60s ads.
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Age-Advertising-60s/…
Oh wow, there's a separate 60s fashion and beauty ads book! Must buy!
hullaballoo – look up Bernie Fuchs — I think you'll like his work. Coincidentally, he just died two weeks ago (Good God! Matt doesn't have some kind of hit squad offing relevant people just in time for the latest MM episode, does he?) I had the opportunity to work indirectly with Fuchs back in the late 70s — I worked on some projects pulling reference material for him for some illustrations he did, although I never met him in person. Wish I had.
I had two thoughts; one was that he was working. The other was that it reminds him of his Caddy, and he’s taking pleasure in it. Hearkening back to Mountain King and the muscle cars.
random quote generator:
"Happiness is the smell of a new car."
Maybe that's all there is to it. Don's still looking for happiness.
Wow, cool. I have never seen the 63 Catalina in person, but coincidentally saw the 66 Catalina at an antique car show a few years back — big long and sexy in a beautiful metallic turquoise — and I am girl, therefore marketing wise, not typically considered "a car person", yet I wanted that car more than 4000 pairs of Italian designer shoes if you know what I mean. A thing of beauty.
#8 dancewosleeping
"At Melfi's office, Tony rips out a recipe for Basque Pepper Steak from "Departures" magazine."
source – http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2007/05/sopranos…
I thought I remembered that as well. He didn't write the episode, but I wonder if Matt added that in the Sopranos writer's room?
In 1963, Pontiac was on the verge of a comeback, and the following year, it would bring out the GTO. If Don is a car guy, which he seems to be, he’d be interested in what Pontiac was up to.
My dad later had an Impala that same color, with a turquoise interior.
The Fuchs ads of the sixties were considered the last great stand for using fine art in advertising, especially for cars. Remember Don's disgust for the VW ads? (which were in TOTAL contrast to the ad he tore out) I think Don is essentially "old school" at heart when it comes to the business. There was also Sal's lament recently that artwork was being phased out of advertising and everything was going to photography, so maybe this was a way for Don to "cheer up" old Sal, especially after all the fun they had with the hotel fire and all……
The people in the background remind me of Joy's group eating on the patio. Maybe Don was reminded of running away with joy. Great ad!
# 10 – gypsy howell
Thank you for mentioning Bernie Fuchs .
I found the advertisement on line at 1963Pontiac.Com
Several other folks mentioned that the ad invokes images of California and/or Don's trip out West.
I think Don would like another trip out to California. Fast cars, women and liquor. What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps Connie invites Don and Betty out West.
I think, in addition to the California ideal, the car in the ad represents what Don had hoped for when he bought the Cadillac. The acre of blue sheet metal, the sunset, the gorgeous blonde on his arm (no seat belts for beauty). Instead, he got a big, clunky babymobile — which his gorgeous blonde has puked in, if you'll recall. He bought a Cadillac at a time when styles were changing rapidly, and no matter how fast Don tries to change, he's always stuck with the big fins just when all the exciting people of the future are going flat. I think he's jealous.
It's interesting to see that Don not only can dish the stuff out, he is himself moved by it.
This blog, by a modern commercial artist, has 5 posts about Bernie Fuchs
http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2009/09/on-…
Fuchs worked in the auto industry, but I don't think this is his. There are initials to the left of the car, "Ac K?" I zoomed but can't quite make them
Re the Sopranos incident, I thought that was supposed to show Tony's lack of consideration for the patients/readers who followed him. Interesting that doesn't occur to one with Don.
When I read Bernie Fuch's obituary recently, I looked around online for some examples of his work.
This one made me think of Sal Romano's wistful observation earlier this season, about the ad trend, in 1963, moving from drawings to photography … http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zMsg9U8UoyM/Sc_LlJfgkJI…
I can totally see Sal producing illustrations like this one – and being bummed out about a diminishing demand for his art!
Fuchs was considered one of the most influential illustrators of the second half of the 20th Century!
- here's the link to his obituary in the NY Times … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/arts/design/22f…
SmilerG- that could almost be Sal in the upper left, couldn't it? Fuch's work was wonderful.
I can almost hear the Momma & the Poppas singing “California Dreamingâ€. As Dance, Andrew, Tonya, et. al. have pointed out, Don’s taking of the ad is a nod to Tony Soprano in Dr. Melfi’s office. This manifestation of Don’s narcissistic personality disorder shows his complete disregard for anyone who may want to read the article after him. I see. I want. I take.
This ad may also foreshadow a shift in American society that Lane Pryce mentioned. In 1964, the GTO was introduced to America, the first true muscle car. The lead manager was a hot shot engineer named John Z Delorean (yes, that Delorean!). Also that same year, Ford introduced the Mustang at the World’s Fair in 1964. Based on the Ford Falcon, the 64 Mustang’s styling and most importantly its marketing spoke to the first generation of Baby Boomer drivers. After McNamara left Ford for the Kennedy administration, the hand cuffs were taken off new president Lee Iaccoco and Jack Najjar, the project manager. Najjar, who admired the WWII fighter plane that won the air war over Europe – North American Aviation’s P-51 Mustang, wanted to evoke this image of American engineering prowess. The car went from concept to production within eighteen months and it was unveiled on April 17, 1964 at the Fair. Two days later, Ford presented the car to the rest of America on all three networks at the same time. Unlike Jai Alai, this TV blitz resulted in the most successful automotive introduction in history (before and since). The Mustang proved the effectiveness of targeting this generation of Americans even to this day.
Although the first version of the Mustang had pedestrian performance, Ford quickly changed the image from a “secretary’s†car to a high performance vehicle. Ford partnered with racing legend Carroll Shelby (the Conrad Hilton of American racing) and the Shelby Mustang was born. Soon Mustangs were showing up at club racing events and drag strips across the country. Even if a driver couldn’t afford one at the time, Shelby Mustangs were available for weekend rental at Hertz (they came up with the tag line “Rent-a-Racerâ€). Mustang went on to dominate sales in its category for the decade.
So much for the history lesson. Since Ford is a sponsor of the show, my hope is that the story of Mustang is woven into Don’s and Sterling Cooper’s story lines. If you thought Don was excited when he met the San Pedro hot rodders, he would be absolutely giddy if he could work with Carroll Shelby. For any true gear head, I expect his response would be similar to a fourteen year old girl at her first Beatles’ concert. Also, Sterling Cooper has to be involved in the ’64 World’s Fair so this may be part of the story line for Season 4.
One last thing: the greatest product placement in cinematic history had to be Steve McQueen’s ’68 Fastback Mustang in Bullitt. It defined a generation of men and their cars that Detroit has wanted to replicate ever since. Give you three guesses what car I drive.
So–one can diagnose Don's "narcissistic personality disorder" by seeing one action. What's the diagnosis for a middle aged man who drives a muscle car?
not_bridget — worse, Don's a serial page-ripper! He tore out the last page of Joy's copy of "The Sound and The Fury" too.
Sorry, typing fast. Take out "disorder". Meant to write "narcissistic personality". Got carried away.
Any other thoughts on my post? I'm curious to read your perspective.
Hey Frank Bullitt, good stuff on the Mustang; that would be a cool theme for the show next year, and I guarentee you that Betty or someone will be driving a 64 1/2 Mustang convertible next season, someway, somehow! If you have the season 2 DVD, the special features section has a nice feature on Hot Rods/Rat Rods – they obviously have staff members on the show in the Burbank/San Fernando Valley area hanging out at Bob's Big Boy (the one in Toluca lake) on Friday nights; that is likely where they got the Rods for the "San Pedro" scene (I'm obviously a car guy and hot rodder to know that BTW). It would be great to see more car advertising themes rung into the show, but this is where it will get political – they will go down the tired old path of "Unsafe at any Speed" bashing the Corvair and "big/dumb" American cars, and show us in retropect how "smart" the VW ads and cars were. I don't expect a "sympathetic" or "car guy" perspective on any of the car stuff (sorry, but the show is showing more liberal bias with every episode, JMO), so don't look for that Carroll Shelby episode anytime soon…..hope I'm wrong
Well Richard, paraphrasing Stephen Colbert, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
It does seem like those hot rods are going to pop up again, one way or another. It was a pretty big scene to have just been randomly dropped in there. The question is, will the cars come back as a plot vector in Don's future, or as biographical backfill for Dick's metamorphosis into Don.
Good question; I initially thought the "Hot Rod" scene was a flashback to the early 50's Dick Whitman, but when he mentioned a "'60 Buick Nailhead" (which the car shown did have as it's engine, these guys rarely get the spoken details too wrong), I realized it was "present day" (assuming the whole San Pedro thing wasn't a dream Don was having, another theory I've heard!). As far as reality having a well-know liberal bias, I will just add that many of the ideas surrounding the auto industry in the 60s are revisionist history that paint a convenient picture of a big, clumsy corporate America churning out unsafe, dinosaur cars, the Corvair amongst them. In fact, the 60's were some of the most innovative and creative years for American car manufacturers, and the Corvair was a scapegoat that actually could have put us light years ahead of foreign rivals had it not been used as a whipping post by Ralph Nader's book, "Unsafe at any Speed". I'm betting there will be an episode that will try to show how "wrong" American car makers were (putting them where they are today), and how "great" imports were at the time (which is totally revisionist as well, the VW Bug, and I like them
, was still an unsafe piece of junk compared to what we produced at the time). Remember the episode with the "progressive", independent thinking divorce' driving the Volkswagen? Meanwhile, the Drapers are busy throwing trash out the window of their Cadillac, total nonsense IMO. But fun stuff just the same, neat to see any old cars on screen these days; I'll be watching carefully to see what they do, I hope it's closer to "Frank Bullitt's" vision, but I still have my doubts! 
Richard, I'm not sure anyone was positing, on this show at least, that the VW was a better car, but it was certainly a better advertising campaign. There's a reason it, and not the Pontiac Catalina ad above, is known as THE icon of 1960s advertising, and has been heralded as one of the best ads ever created.
As for the Drapers throwing their trash out: yes, a little 'in your face' message-wise, but not so terribly inaccurate for the time period. As a child in the early 60s, I do vividly recall Lady Bird's campaign to beautify America, a chief message of which was to stop littering. People did it, all the time.
I was confused too about the hot rod scene the first time I watched it, and not having your automotive knowledge, I had even fewer clues as to whether this was real-time or a flashback! Took me a while to figure it out.
I do think those cars will make a comeback, in some iteration, in the story. Oh sure, maybe Don will just have your typical male midlife crisis (though god knows his whole life has been one big identity crisis so far) and load up the garage with hot rods from his youth. Betty will no doubt roll her eyes, and hope he doesn't start putting them up on blocks in the back yard.
Gypsy, I love ya, but you're starting to sound a lot like my ex-wife in that last paragraph! (and we car guys have been known to have nice cars AND houses, at least when we're not too busy drinking Busweiser and watching NASCAR
) Good points on the VW campaign; I was a marketing major and of course that was the iconic automotive advertising of the sixties – but as we know from Mad Men, advertising doesn't always tell the whole story…….:)
Maybe I am your ex-wife. Did you think of that? I could be Batman for all you know.
How will Betty explain to her ever-so-proper Junior Leaguers why her husband suddenly looks like a greasemonkey, and there are car parts strewn all over their lovely manicured yard? Oh the humanity!
She'll have to buy a VW to keep her "environmentally concerned" status intact – at least Don will be working on cars and can fix that "lemon"; she'll be happy about that!
I enjoyed reading the aptly named Frank Bullitt's car comments and his thoughts on the iconic Mustang, whose name alone speaks to our inner American wanderlust. A perfect car name.
I sell used cars. Currently, we have my dream car on the lot — a 1999 Cadillac Deville. Emerald green with chrome trim, not gaudy but eye-catching and individualistic. Only 49,000 miles, nary a scratch. It pains me that I do not have the $7,000 it would take for this treasure to be mine once and for all time. (Instead, I will make do with my 2001 Chevy S-10 pickup truck in forest green.)
Even when I was younger than my current 47, I always wanted an old-style Cadillac. Just the name turns me on.
To work Mad Men in here, Don's eye for cars makes him more real to me and, as we know, there isn't a lot "real" about Don.
I imagine, like me, Frank Bullitt watches the plentiful amount of car shows on TV these days like the Mecum Auto Auction. Even though I am not a true gearhead, it says something about the mystique and beauty of the 50s, 60s and 70s automobiles that makes me unable to change the channel after being around their newer counterparts all day.
We will even get one of those old Buick Roadmaster station wagons on the lot from time to time and it's easy to get nostalgic for a time before bulky, cookie-cutter SUVs ruled the road.
FWI, my Dad was an Oldsmobile man — a nameplate that has bit the dust, as Pontiac soon will, in the name of progress and economical survival of the fittest.
Americans have taken a lot of heat recently for their love of, and dependence on, cars. But think of everything we do in our cars — we eat in them, we do our homework in them, we have sex in them, we sing in them, we see the countryside in them, we even share the fresh air with our dogs in them.
# 21 – "that could almost be Sal in the upper left, couldn’t it?"
Yes – and in the foreground, to the left, that beer stein character kinda looks like the "Roaming Gnome" in those Travelocity commercials. LOL
And, the reclining guy whose head in on the woman's lap, makes me think of the scenes of Don and the beatnik girl, from Season One, in her Greenwich Village pad.
Frank, thanks for the fine work on the Mustang. The '64-65 is my dream car.
Other sentimental favorites: the VW squareback (I grew up in it) and the Chevrolet stepchild, the Chevy Nova. My best friend drove one of those in high school; you could hear that thing coming from three blocks away.
I also have a terrible soft spot for the huge chrome land yachts of the 1940's: the old Lincolns, Plymouths and Fords, relics from the days when rich people in Southern California — where I grew up — paid a man to "dust" their cars several times a week. They wouldn't even drive the things every day. A boyfriend of mine had access to an old Lincoln, and got to drive it from time to time. That car was the size of my first apartment.
He used to tell me how WWII had all but stopped the production of cars like this, and limited those who got to buy them. The car had come into his family with a marriage: someone had really wanted to marry someone else, and that car was the whole dowry.
I'm not really a car person … but even I understood that arrangement.
Don Draper's mid-life crisis:
Quits smoking and drinking.
Sells the Caddy.
Confesses everything to Betty.
Deepens his connection with his children.
Commits to Sterling Cooper.
Swears off infidelity.
Endows the Archibald Whitman Chair at the University of Missouri.
Finds Chauncey.
Sets up a trust fund for Pete & Peggy's baby.
Buys Anna a new porch.
Rich, Bedtime & Annie – thanks for the acknowledgement. As you can tell, I come from a Ford family. My uncle was the top mechanic for one of the largest dealerships in the Bay Area and I am involved with vintage Mustangs. All this goes to show that I am a dweeb, but at least I'm not a wikipedia dweeb (all that stuff is from Long Term Memory).
Oh, I didn't answer what kind of car I drive. It's a John Deere.
Is it green or red (or both)?
2008 4.6L V8, 315 hp, 5 speed, 3.73:1 limited slip rear axle; Highland green of course.
Good to know, Frank …
I'll watch my feet.
Annie: Let me know if you are ever serious about a 64 1/2 or 65 convertible. I have a lot of connections with vintage mustang owners.
I'd love to hear about your trip to NY w/ your sister. Your last topic was brilliant, btw. I don't look at the shadows; I'm home today counting flowers on the wall, it don't bother me at all. Smokin' cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo . . .
See if you get this random reference from one of my favorite movies. And, how do you do the smiley face? Peace.
Frank,
I may get serious about my dream car if I ever I have that kind of disposable money. We currently have a kid in college and a beanpole 13 year old who's currently working on eating the world. Having a few extra thousand is a nice little dream.
Dude. Pulp Fiction! But you can't play solitaire if you're missing a card, you know. (Solitaire figures in one of *my* favorite movies: The Manchurian Candidate, b/w version.)
Smiley face emoticon: colon + right parenthesis. Sad face: colon + left parenthesis.
There you go! Bob's your uncle!
Speaking of The Manchurian Candidate, check out this post on the AMC blog. There are those who suspect Anna Draper is nefarious and I took this idea to its illogical conclusion. It won't take much for you to figure out my alter ego.
http://blogs.amctv.com/mad-men/talk/2009/09/mm-an…
Frank dear,
Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire? …
That's an excellent post. It's just in the wrong place. Here on the Basket is where you want to put it.
You are to send that post to basketofkisses@lippsisters.com, where my New York contacts will ensure it gets the attention it deserves. It's more than stirring … it may be the best post I've ever read.
Once your idea comes to light here, we at the Basket of Kisses will overtake those weak posters over at AMC with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy!
Now then … I'm taking this card (the Queen of Diamonds). There might be mischief if I leave it.
Annie B is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
I have nothing but respect and admiration for the Basket. Deborah, Roberta, you and all of the rest of the Basketcases have created an evironment where smart, funny, hip and worldly people can collaborate and express themselves.
My humor can really push the envelope so what I will submit some of my humorous work to the above address. If management approves, I look forward to sharing my skewed view with everyone else. If not, I won't take it personally. Hopefully you and the rest of the Basket knows the kind of person I am by now.
:}