Robbed!
When Don’s secretary, Allison, discovers the Sterling Cooper office ransacked in Shut the Door. Have a Seat, she shouts “We’ve been robbed!” I doubt they had this in mind, but the moment reminded me of a 1964 Alfred Hitchcock film called Marnie. Tippi Hendren plays the title role of a kleptomaniac who steals from the business offices of her well-to-do employers. The movie’s very first line, “Robbed,” is uttered by Sidney Strutt upon discovering Marnie’s crime in the opening scene.
There are a number of interesting parallels between the two and it amuses me to think that the characters in Mad Men may feel comfortable in Marnie’s universe (and vice versa).
Like Don Draper, Marnie conceals her true identity and has personality issues that are related to a prostitute mother. Also, horses play key roles in the storylines as Don’s father is killed by a one while Marnie is forced to euthanize her beloved Florio. Marnie’s Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) and Pete Campbell both force themselves sexually on women who they claim to be helping. Mark Rutland and Roger Sterling are ridiculed by others for the impetuousness and expense of their respectively hasty decisions to wed. Finally, red, which is used as the color for “Mad” in the Mad Men logo, also precipitates Marnie’s various episodes of “madness.”
At one point in the film, Marnie attempts suicide by jumping into a pool. Following Allison’s discovery in Shut the Door. Have a Seat, there’s a quick bit of dialog where she expresses disappointment over the fact that Don didn’t leave a note. One usually associates “notes” with suicides not robberies. So, in a way, Allison’s remark may be linked to Mad Men’s imagery of a man falling down the side of a building. Making the act, in this case, deliberate.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Mr. Strutt is played by Martin Gable, husband of Arlene FRANCIS.
Good observations.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Thanks Matt. I just knew there was something about Allison’s comment of a note. Hmmm, did the SCDP&C commit suicide?
November 12th, 2009 at 9:18 am
I think not leaving a note is much more like a breakup than a suicide. If someone special in your life disappeared without saying goodbye or leaving a note, it would hurt.
What is with all the death imagery? Too many predictions of suicide or mass slaughter. I never assumed that Pete was going to turn into the Lone Gunman just because he owned a rifle. Most of the time, I never even noticed it in his office when others kept pointing it out.
If I were being Freudian, I’d say that guns, especially rifles, are a phallic symbol … and that Pete is preoccupied with his masculinity and “agency” within the ad agency. There’s a reason that the wives of gunowners call a gun-cleaning session a “petting party” — ho, ho.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_%28philosophy%29
November 12th, 2009 at 9:42 am
What kept going through my mind was that the SCDP crew sure made a mess leaving — the place really looked ransacked. If it were ME doing the skullduggery, I would have taken all the files etc, but left the place neat as a pin. Think how long it would have taken for anyone to figure out what happened!
I guess I have a criminal mind.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:52 am
gypsy, time was of the essence, and the minute that PPL got the telex Monday morning, they knew what had happened.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:07 am
This wasn’t espionage, it was an escape! A smash-and-grab!
OCD is probably helpful to a spy, but OCD burglars are more likely to get caught.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Peggy Joan, I think everybody’s attention to the rifle is a Chekhov’s Gun situation. We’re trained by now to expect a gun to go off.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Sorry about the egregious use of the term OCD. Let me rephrase:
Neatness and extreme attention to details are probably very helpful to a spy, but burglars are more focused on speed and efficiency than neatness.
Therefore, you may kick in the door instead of picking the lock.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:47 am
OOOOO! Hitchcock connections, my favorites. And I just saw Marnie in a old fashioned theater a month ago. Some are a bit of a stretch bit here it goes:
Marnie rides horses to escape the stress of her day “job”s as does Betty in S2.
Mark’s father, old Mr. Rutland lives in the Philadelphia suburbs like Gene.
Mark acts as Marnie’s psychiatrist, and Betty’s tells on her to Don.
Hitchcock gives Marnie a brunette rival (like Melanie had in “The Birds”), while Betty has to put up with Don’s brunette mistresses.
“A Night to Remember”: Mr. Strutt shows up at a big party and compromises Marnie’s past identity. Jimmy Barrett reveals Don’s infidelity to Betty as a big shindig.
Marnie does not like sailors just like Peggy’s roommate.
The role of Marnie was originally intended as a coming out of retirement role for Princess Grace but the Monegasques did not approve. Betty’s “Grace Kelly” modeling comeback was curtailed by Don’s official business.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Speaking of Betty’s doppelgänger, Grace Kelly would have turned 80 today.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Re: Pete’s rifle –
The interesting thing to me is that this is the first episode in which we see both the rile and the chip-and-dip he exchanged to get it. From Trudy’s angry reaction at the end of “Red in the Face,” I always assumed that Pete was lying when he said they got two chip-and-dips; it looked like he was going to have to return the rifle to get it back, but then of course we saw that he kept the rifle — and now we discover that he must’ve gotten the chip-and-dip back some other way.
To me, this was a symbolic echo of something Peggy seemed to notice and possibly resent at the end of “Shut the Door. Have a Seat”: Pete has somehow figured out how to have it all. Whereas Peggy had to give up on the man she loved and on the child they had together in order to succeed in her profession, Pete now has the job he always wanted and a loving, supportive wife. (And perhaps even a child soon, if the Clearasil account means what it meant originally; if not, he at least has regained the support of his in-laws.)
In short, he can keep his rifle and still get Trudy’s chip-and-dip back, whereas Peggy has to accept that the things she’s given up are gone forever.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Considering how Betty is often compared to Hitchcock’s traditional icy blondes, it doesn’t surprise me that Hitch would be a good source for MM to reference. Plus, considering how lots of people here thought S3 was leading to a suicide/death, it makes the Marnie suicide comparison more ironic.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Dev, while I like the symbolism of “having it all,” I never considered that they only got one chip-and-dip. Pete comes back from his honeymoon thrilled to be a married man and delighted with the whole notion of marriage. He is happy to be doing his wife this favor. But the entire experience of returning the chip-and-dip is emasculating. (Granted, it’s Pete; it doesn’t take much to make him feel emasculated.) He compensates for the feeling of emasculation by buying the gun, but when Trudy berates him for it, he is again emasculated.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I always thought the “we got two” excuse was Pete’s justification for taking it without Trudy’s permission. Didn’t she say that some aunt or other had given it to her?
Speaking of the gun, I noticed that was one of the only things Pete carried with him as they raided Sterling Cooper. Have gun will travel, eh, Pete?
November 12th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Whereas Peggy had to give up on the man she loved and on the child they had together in order to succeed
I think Peggy realized that Pete wasn’t “the man she loved” rather than just giving up on him. She was paying attention throughout S2 and saw him for what he was, which isn’t pretty, let’s face it.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I’ve been wondering whether anyone noticed that the door was unlocked that morning, or would they just have expected the janitor to have unlocked it?
The idea that Don had a key to the office outer doors means that he’d be in there working lots of times after hours.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
brenda, absolutely. He was seeing Connie in the middle of the night and then going into work, remember?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I always thought the “we got two” excuse was Pete’s justification for taking it without Trudy’s permission. Didn’t she say that some aunt or other had given it to her?
Yep, it’s only that one scene with Trudy that makes me think Pete made up the “we got two” excuse. The rest of the episode makes perfect sense the way Deborah described, but I can’t figure out why Trudy would be saying what’s she’s saying if she’d actually asked Pete to return the chip-and-dip.
“That was a wedding gift from my Aunt Letty! And you go and get some stupid toy? I can’t believe you! That was for us! ”
She wouldn’t have to remind him that it was a wedding gift if they’d just had a conversation in which she asked him to return it because it was double-gifted. And if they got two identical chip-and-dips, would she really be keeping track of which one they returned and which one they kept, such that she could attribute that particular one to Aunt Letty?
I think Peggy realized that Pete wasn’t “the man she loved” rather than just giving up on him. She was paying attention throughout S2 and saw him for what he was, which isn’t pretty, let’s face it.
No, I think her speech in the season 2 finale frames her decision very specifically — she hasn’t given up on Pete because of anything he did; she’s given up the part of herself that loved Pete because of what she wanted.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
16 & 17 – I loved the “we already took everything that was worth anything” subtext of not locking the doors.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Deborah, of course. He nearly made Allison jump out of her skin!
November 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
hull, great catch.
Pete now carries the card of a man.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Dev, if Aunt Letty and Aunt Tildy both give you the same wedding gift, you can reasonably expect to replace it with something for the couple or the home, not a toy for the husband.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Great reference! Marnie!
November 12th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Dev, if Aunt Letty and Aunt Tildy both give you the same wedding gift, you can reasonably expect to replace it with something for the couple or the home, not a toy for the husband.
Oh, sure, I get that part. As I said, my problem with reading the scene that way is that a) if she’s lecturing him merely for making a stupid exchange, she wouldn’t need to remind him that it was a wedding present, because they would’ve already had the “Here’s one of our wedding presents; go exchange it on your lunch hour” conversation only days before, and b) if there really are two totally identical chip-and-dips, I don’t understand why she’d be keeping track of the fact that Pete returned Aunt Letty’s and not Aunt Tildy’s. The fact that Trudy mentioned Aunt Letty by name suggests to me that it was a unique gift that Letty would be hurt to learn they no longer had.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Here’s my cop out theory for the “Aunt Letty” lecture and the presence of the chip n’ dip:
Trudy and Pete only got ONE chip n’ dip, and he was lying when he returned it. He never liked the thing (had the same “WTF” attitude like the other chimpmunks) so he claims they got two. When he comes home with the rifle, Trudy yells at him about the importance of Aunt Letty. To avoid hurt feelings when Aunt Letty visits, Trudy goes out and buys a replacement chip n’ dip, thus explaining why we see it again in the S3 finale.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
This could be the Drapers! (looks not story content)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZTBtq8W9JQ
November 12th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
It’s interesting that Matt said in the AMC interview that he never thought of Hitchcock being a reference for him until people pointed it out, starting with his casting of January as a rather Hitchcockian character.
Anyway I got Marnie on DVD a couple months ago, they are reissuing all the Hitchcock movies with special features.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Poor Alison, I felt bad for her and laughed at her all at once when she was crying about Don leaving, it was like a loved one had left her high and dry. Funny and sad too.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
JS,
I recently watched Strangers on a Train and was curious about whether Farley Granger was still alive (happy to say he is). But I was reading about him and saw this comment on Rope, another favorite Hitchcock film:
“In Rope, Granger and John Dall portrayed two highly intelligent friends who commit a thrill killing simply to prove they can get away with it. The two characters and their former professor, played by James Stewart, were supposed to be homosexual, and Granger and Dall discussed the subtext of their scenes, but because The Hays Office was keeping close tabs on the project, the final script was so discreet that Stewart never realized his character was gay, much to Arthur Laurents’ amusement.”
It also seems that Granger met his life partner in 1963 and spent 50+ years with him. There’s hope for Sal, even if it’s off screen.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Goodbye Don, Betty et al
(Never thought Sterling Cooper would fall)
Or that Betty would ever get up the nerve
To stand up for herself with such anger and verve
But what bothers me more than I can say
Is how could Betty just fly away
Leaving the kids for more than a day
With just the housekeeper…to my dismay!
Why doesn’t Don move back to stay
To comfort them while mom’s away?
Nobody’s mentioned those poor kids
whose lives are also on the skids
Cause mom and dad just can’t agree
Their world fell apart in season three!
Grandma Bea
November 13th, 2009 at 7:34 am
It’s the 60’s and as long as the kids are being taken care of: fed, bathed, clothed and taken to school that was good enough. The emotional needs of children were not always put first. If the basics were being taken care then that was considered good enough. Today there’s literally thousands of books written about children and how to emotionally nuture them. In 1963 there was Dr. Spock. End of story.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Grandma Bea, you should get together with Midge and start a greeting card company!
November 13th, 2009 at 8:27 am
It’s the 60’s and as long as the kids are being taken care of: fed, bathed, clothed and taken to school that was good enough. The emotional needs of children were not always put first. If the basics were being taken care then that was considered good enough. Today there’s literally thousands of books written about children and how to emotionally nuture them. In 1963 there was Dr. Spock. End of story.
Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care was published in 1946. It was far from the first book on child care, but was immediately popular & became mainstream very quickly.
Spock’s ideas have become such a part and parcel of the parenting landscape that it’s easy to forget how revolutionary they were. In post-war America, parents were in awe of doctors and other childcare professionals; Spock assured them that parents were the true experts on their own children. They had been told that picking up infants when they cried would only spoil them; Spock countered that cuddling babies and bestowing affection on children would only make them happier and more secure. Instead of adhering to strict, one-size-fits-all dictates on everything from discipline to toilet training, Spock urged parents to be flexible and see their children as individuals.
Perhaps most revolutionary of all, he suggested that parenting could be fun, that mothers and fathers could actually enjoy their children and steer a course in which their own needs and wishes also were met. All this and much more, including a wealth of helpful medical advice, was delivered in a friendly, reassuring, and common-sense manner completely at odds with the cold authoritarianism favored by most other parenting books of the time.
http://www.drspock.com/about/drbenjaminspock/0,1781,,00.html
Later, Benjamin Spock came out against the Vietnam war and in favor of ideas like decriminalizing abortion & homosexuality. So the warmongers began calling his theories “permissive”–note that “discipline” is mentioned above. He was blamed for the evils of the Boomer generation–many of whom, had, in fact, been raised by parents who’d read his book–by the same people who wanted to send that generation off to die. A generation who honored their own fathers’ battles in the past & realized that this was A Different War.
In the first season, Francine mentioned a book on child care she’d been reading, in answer to Betty bitching about her evil son; probably not Spock, since they keep publishing the stuff. Betty snippily answered that she didn’t need to read a book to know what little boys wanted.
Poor Betty–she was going to raise her kids exactly as she had been raised. After all, she turned out just fine!
November 13th, 2009 at 8:52 am
I was just wondering if anyone else noticed that Betty’s nails were painted a vicious RED in the “Family Scene” when she and Don broke the news to the children…it almost looked scary on her…but at the same time it says so much…I’m certain this was not by accident knowing Mr. Weiner!
November 13th, 2009 at 10:07 am
# 9 Empress Rouge… great list. The sailor reference is particularly good!
# 29 Aran…The Hays Office was keeping close tabs on the project, the final script was so discreet that Stewart never realized his character was gay.
That’s interesting. Though, had he known, I wonder if Stewart would have still done the movie. Weren’t there rumors about Stewart’s sexuality floated early in his career?
FWIW, I’ve heard Martin Landau say in interviews that when he made North by Northwest, Hitchcock told him the character he was to play was a homosexual.
But getting back to filmmakers not understanding the script, Robert Wise DIRECTED the original The Day The Earth Stood Still and never realized that Klaatu was supposed to be Jesus Christ. I’ve always gotten a hoot out of that one!
November 13th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
#35 – From the commentary for Rope: “But production codes of the time insisted that anything smacking of overt homosexuality be struck from the script, and Jimmy Stewart ‘never had an affair with anyone; he was just a Boy Scout.” So by the end result, Laurents says, Rope was “curiously off-focus and didn’t have the sexual center that it should have.’”
I don’t know about any rumors about Stewart’s sexuality, but one of the reasons cited for Rope’s initial flop was the inability of the audience to believe him to be gay. Cary Grant was rumored to be bi-sexual because during his early career, he shared a home with Randolph Scott in Hollywood. Cary Grant was actually Hitch’s first choice to play Cadell, having worked with him twice before.
I’ve also heard about Martin Landau’s character’s orientation in North by Northwest. Certainly, his attraction towards James Mason’s character would explain why he was so suspicious of and out to get the mistress (Eva Marie Saint).
November 13th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Landau’s character Leonard goes so far as to cite his own “woman’s intuition” when he explains to Van Damm that he doesn’t trust Eve Kendall.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Speaking of North by Northwest, I’m surprised the show hasn’t had many parallels with that film, compared to others. The movie was about a Madison Avenue ad man with a case of mistaken identity, and the movie came out one year before the beginning of the show.
Actually, I find the end of the season has many references to Vertigo, especially in “The Gypsy and the Hobo” and “Shut the door. Have a seat.” Most obvious it the revelation of Don/Dick identities, like Kim Novak’s Madeleine/Judy character. Blonde Betty wears a lot of grey in “TG&tH” (an off color for a blonde) just like just like Madeleine and blond Judy wears the famous grey suit throughout most of the movie. Suzanne wears different shades of green just like the sweater dress Scottie first spies Judy in. Incidentally, it is obvious the busty Judy is not wearing a bra underneath, just like Suzanne likes to go au naturel jogging under the Bowdoin shirt.
Then there’s the rejection when true identities are revealed. Betty rejects Dick; Scottie rejects Judy. And Scottie and Don both have violent reactions when they discover/assume their perfect blond ice queens have whored themselves to another man.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
#38 NBNW was heavily discussed in the episode in season two where Don and Bobbie have the car accident. Don at the police station echoed Roger Townsend at the Glen Cove station.
Not directly tied into NBNW, but Archibald is Cary Grant’s real name; Cary was sort of a hobo; a Cockney member of a traveling circus troupe. Thinking of Hitchcock, he was a Catholic and Cockney and Chaplin had a miserable childhood (I believe he is part Jewish).
Great insights into Vertigo.
November 14th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
#38 and 39… In The Jet Set, after Don wakes up, Joy’s friends jokingly suggest that they thought he was a spy until a search of his wallet proved he was in advertising. Don laughs and ironically replies that the contents of his wallet may only prove him to be a good spy. In NBNW, trying to convice James Mason and Martin Landau that he’s not really a spy, Cary Grant takes out his wallet and points to various pieces of identification. Unconvinced, Landau dismisses the documents and coyly tells him that “they provide you with such good ones.”
November 18th, 2009 at 7:42 am
I agree there are common things between Marnie and this Mad Men episode.
I wrote (in french, sorry but there are pictures) some lines about Marnie and Mad Men here : http://www.web-et-cinema.com/12-mad-men-the-grown-ups-s03e12.html
To say it in english, let’s say that the moment when Betsy meets Henry in the car really made me think about a shot in Marnie. And in Mad Men, at this moment you can here… The birds…