Bad Reception
Mad Men often accentuates the action in the stories with brief snippets of actual newspaper headlines, magazine covers, radio broadcasts and television clips from the period. Obviously, this is part of establishing a 1960’s feel for the show. But, these bits often compliment the storyline itself. For instance, The Grown-ups has the Drapers at home mourning the death of Kennedy while a speech by Governor Nelson Rockefeller can be heard on a radio in the background. This is a subtle reminder to the audience about Henry Francis (who works for Rockefeller).
As B. Cooper points out in “Voices of God,” The Grown-ups makes extensive use of archival news footage. Cumulatively, this footage becomes another cast member in the episode. The reception on the various black and white television screens during these moments seems deliberately worse than previously shown on Mad Men. The images are grainy and quite often somone has to adjust the vertical hold. This echoes the emotions of people watching those sets who are themselves overwhelmed by the swirl of events.
I assume it’s unintentional, but I liked how this device was used in an episode whose centerpiece was a “ruined” wedding reception.
Something I’m not sure was unintentional was the black and white cars Betty and Henry drive to their rendezvous. Both are linked to the JFK assassination. Betty’s black Lincoln is, of course, the same model of car that Kennedy was killed in. We are shown later that Henry’s car resembles the white convertible in the Aqua Net ad which Don and Peggy worry may remind viewers of the tragedy. So, just as people in the Mad Men universe first find out about Kennedy from black and white TV sets, the audience first finds out about Betty’s decision to go to Henry with a high angled shot of their respective black and white cars side-by-side in a parking lot.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Matt this is very thought provoking – below is an interesting link to a site that give pics of old TV shows along with the theme songs.
http://oldfortyfives.com/WhenLifewasInBlack&White.htm
ahh those B&W days – are about to come to an end for our MM characters
I am sure the symbolism is foreshadowing the civil rights movement among other things
November 17th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I really liked seeing the old TV footage on Kennedy’s assassination. I was born in 1964, but I do remember, I guess from the late 1960’s how some TVs had that vertical hold problem & had to be adjusted. Wow, how far we have come with our high definition sets!! I remember my mother buying our first color TV around 1968/9? When did they actually come out? Of course, even when they did come out, we still had so many rerun shows in B&W well into the 1970s. (I Love Lucy, Lost in Space…) Interesting to think how my children only rarely see some black & white footage on TV when I am trying to introduce them to some classic movie or classic histrorical footage on something. Of course, and I am sure the observation has already been made, but with the onset of color TV, our society also became a bit more colorized…less conventional. We left the “Leave it to Beaver” ’50s and entered the more “Mod Squad” ’60s?
November 17th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Color TV was available in the US from around 1953-54. One of my earliest memories is of our first color set being delivered in the spring of 1955, when I was 2½. (My father taught the technical side of radio/TV on the college level, so that was why we had one so early.)
Yes, the older TV’s were touchy to tune. With color sets, you didn’t just have to worry about the horizontal and vertical holds, but you also had to tune just right so that the colors weren’t off. Skin tones could be too orange or too green if you didn’t tune correctly. (My parents were amazed that I learned how to do that right after we got the set; they couldn’t get over what a bright child they had.)
It wasn’t until the 1966-67 TV season, if I remember correctly, that the whole prime-time schedule of the three major networks was in color.
Actually, I’m surprised that a well-to-do executive like Don doesn’t have a color set in 1963, especially when you consider that he might want to see ads in color for business purposes.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:49 am
The first color TV set I can remember seeing was sometime around 1968 or 1969. Everyone looked blue on it but nobody cared because it was in color for cripes sake!
I don’t know if this is historically accurate, but I remember my dad telling me that the best way to calibrate the TV was to watch Star Trek because that was one of the first shows actually geared for the new color sets.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I keep thinking of how that meeting in the parking lot between Henry and Betty reminded me of the meeting in the parking lot between Betty and Glenn at the end of the first season.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Perhaps Don hasn’t bought a color TV because he doesn’t really want to think about work at home? Maybe he’s not a big TV fan. And Betty may not have pushed for one–furnishing the house does seem to be up to her. (Although Don pays. Or paid…)
TV reception was better if you had a rooftop antenna. In the office or a hotel kitchen, it got dicey.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:22 am
@v6 not Bridget-My money is on not a big TV fan. He gets home so late many nights, the only thing on would be a test pattern.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
@5 Modern Dowager–I am working on a post about that. Now I know it wasn’t just me!
November 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I also think Star Trek would have been great for color tuning because it utilized so many primary colors plus black and white. There would be no guessing if the red or blues weren’t right.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
The b/w car scene seemed to me terribly tawdry
. With the b/w TV viewing and the assassination in the same episode, the rendezvous made me immediately think of a meeting of co-conspirators planning a crime with only trash cans as their witnesses, shot documentary style.
I think of Don’s noninterest in TV as part of the changes taking place in media that professionals were slow to acknowledge and respond. (Like we’ve seen in real life with newspapers and the Internet for the past decade.) Remember he hated the VW bug ad. I think MM has made it pretty clear that while his talent is in storytelling, Pete’s the closest thing they have to a visionary – his foresightness was enumerated for us in the season finale.
For that matter, Connie may have seemed a nut to SterlingCoo, but space tourism is becoming a reality (for people as rich as he was, at least).
November 17th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Just out of curiosity, were there any alternatives to the rooftop antenna until cable tv came about? We had a rooftop antenna well into the 1990s that brought in all the NYC channels, but I wonder what people did if they were farther away from a major market, or were tv signals just that strong? I’ve used a regular antenna right after a move when I haven’t had cable and it doesn’t work too well at all.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I lived in Montreal, Canada during that period (fifties and sixties). My parents got a TV on the late side – probably about 1956 or so when I was 8. Originally we had just rabbit ears – poor reception of Montreal TV channels. When we got a TV antenna, probably about 1960 or so, we could now also get American channels – CBS and NBC – from border towns Burlington, VT and Plattsburgh, NY, about 60-100 miles away. So, yes, the signals were strong, but you needed a pretty massive and, I’d guess, expensive rooftop antenna to get them. Reception was always a lot worse than the local channels. It would be sort like we see on the rabbit ear TVs on Mad Men, flickering, fading, whereas I recall local reception being much better than that. But I really can’t correlate reception quality to precise years at this point. Montreal, and other Canadian cities, which are almost all close to the border, were pretty ripe territories for cable when it arrived. The lure of American channels. Though Canadian channels were generally better (we got much better news on CBC, so never bothered watching US News programs).
November 17th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Not to be a complete pedant, but I think Betty was driving Gene’s Chrysler Imperial, not a Lincoln. Anyone?
November 17th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
#5 Modern Dowager, #8 Deb:
Yes! I caught that too!
Something about the way Henry sprang the idea of marriage on Betty was very Glen-like. “We could go to a movie,” felt so much like Glen saying, “I wish I was older.”
That same quality of children playing at real life, you know?
November 17th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
My first thought when I saw Henry’s white car is that he’s coming in on his white horse to save her.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Did anyone else think Henry was arriving on his “white horse” to save the damsel in distress? That was my first thought . . .
November 17th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
# 13 HH Snooty I think Betty was driving Gene’s Chrysler Imperial, not a Lincoln. Anyone?
If Betty’s driving the same car that Gene let Sally drive in The Arrangements (which I assume is the one Betty got), then it’s a Lincoln.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
GMW and LL, niiice.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Wow. That’s funny. Should say “jinx,” GMW? Guess we were typing and submitting at the same time.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
I agree that there was something “Deep Throat” (conspiracy) about the encounter, in addition to being “Glen” ish and evocative of the White Knight. Really superb and economical image.
We had one of the earliest color sets and only NBC broadcast in color. You had to wait a week to see Perry Como in color. The commercials were in black and white. Does anyone know the first color commercial? I believe the cigarettes may have been the first. I also recall that the reception, although dicey, wasn’t as bad as MM always portrays. In hotels and in offices it would have been deadly, though.
I like this post and agree that the black and white of the cars was very interesting. Henry is saving Betty from the death car. Other posters have mentioned that Henry’s Ford was a cheap model – government issued. Any thoughts on that?
November 17th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
It’s Gene’s 1961 Lincoln:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/main.php?g2_itemId=53845
And as long as we’re car-shopping, why not check out a 1962 Cadillac Series 62?
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/main.php?g2_itemId=12434
November 17th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Interesting post!
Here’s a funny little story for you.
When he was 5, my stepson (born 1981) turned to me as the credits rolled on a 1950s episode of Lassie and asked in all seriousness and sincerity, “When you and Dad were kids, was the world black and white?”
November 17th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Gene definitely drove a Lincoln Continental; a four-door sedan with the famous “suicide doors” – the rear doors opened backward and are now considered more dangerous to passengers because if another car clips the door as a person is stepping out, the door hits the person. Gene’s car may not be the exact same year as the Kennedy limo, but it is clearly the same make/model.
I am going to look for screen caps from the episode, because it is possible that Henry’s car is a sedan version of the car used in the Aquanet ad, but I can’t be sure. There would be a similarity in both of them driving the hard top version of convertibles, and the choice of that Lincoln for Gene and eventually Betty sure shows some forethought on MW’s part of the integration of the JFK assassination into the show.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
LL, I like the way you think!
November 17th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Here’s a link to an ad, for the T.V. Color Screen. It’s a multi-colored plastic sheet that fits over your Black & White TV screen.
According to the ad: “Transforms all Black-White television sets into Beautiful life-like color tones.”
- 50s/60s “flat panel” technology …
http://www.dcrtv.com/tvcolor.jpg
November 18th, 2009 at 8:05 am
#4 and #9–We didn’t get a Color TV until 1974, and since we had cable and WPIX and WWOR from NYC, we were so excited to finally see Star Trek in all it’s primary technicolor glory!
The way TV reception is portrayed on MM brings back memories for me in the ’60’s. For one thing, you always had to ‘warm up’ the TV, it could take 5 minutes for it to turn on. Often, we needed our ‘bow tie’ antenna so we could keep the picture from flipping or ”ripping” diagonally. There were ‘color’ and ‘tint’ buttons on the side, and sometimes we would make the skin tones intentionally green! Of course we had no remote, you still had to get up to change the channel or up the volume. And of course whenever you turned it off you be left with a lingering glowing ‘eye’ that would steadly decrease to nothing.
The whole car scene with Betty and Henry did strike me as a white knight kind of thing. and reminded me of when Glen wanted to ‘rescue her’ in the parking lot that one time.
November 18th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Thanks, all, for pointing out the similarities between Glen/Betty and Henry/Betty.
#11–Re: more powerful T.V. reception: We lived about 25 miles from a major city, but our T.V. reception in the 1950’s must have been poor with the usual rooftop antenna, because my parents put up a 70 foot “tower” for the antenna (right in back of our house) in the very late 50’s, I believe.
November 19th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This discussion is great. I was a 70’s baby and I’m pretty sure my parents had a color tv when I was a baby but I remember the bad antenna reception (we didn’t get cable till I was in college so though I am MTV generation I was “deprived” of all that “goodness”) and I remember hitting the top of the tv to get the reception to improve at times (and I kind of miss being able to hit stuff to make it work, that never works now). I also remember playing with the tint to purposely make things look weird and of course getting up to change channels. I sort of miss whizzing through the channels really fast by turning the dial and the once in a blue moon now where I absolutely cannot find the remote and have to change the channel on the box manually it is so hard and the buttons are soooo tiny (I also spend an inordinate amount of time looking for my remote b/c it gremlins move it all the time). The thing that sucks about tv remotes is that unless someone has the same set up that you have, so often you cannot go to someone elses house and figure out how to change the channel; once I was pet sitting for a friend and hit some button, spent 20 minutes trying to fix it, then I wound up calling their satellite provider to figure out how to fix it and to work the remote properly. We’ve come a long way but sometimes the technology just drives you crazy.
@ 22, also sort of wondered about the world being in black and white before color tv when I was a kid and I was always stunned, when the Wizard of Oz came on every year and the screen changed from black and white to color. And using an antenna for a tv now is just as bad as it used to be, the last time I moved and had to put the antenna on the tv until they came to install cable and except for the “uhf” channels the reception sucked and when I stayed with a friend recently who will not get cable b/c she doesn’t want to waste money her reception was really bad too.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Dark Peggy-funny you should mention Wizard of Oz in connection with b/w and color TVs. I was born in 1960 (coincidentally around the same date as Peggy’s baby on MM….) and remember b/w tv, rabbit ears, rooftop antennas, etc. We got our first color tv about 1968 or so-a floor model with a stereo in the top (for records only). Being the youngest, I was usually the one who had to get up ands change channels, move the rabbit ears, etc (in those days parents said that’s why they had kids…haha) The funny thing is all my memories of the yearly showing of Wizard of Oz remember color when Dorothy got to Oz EVEN before we had a color tv!!! Funny how you remember things from when you were really young in ways you couldn’t have actually witnessed them, isn’t it? Do you also remember having to use needlenose pliers to change channels or turn the volume up or down if a knob broke off?
December 21st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
#29 snorincats,
LOL. I remember using scissors to change channels, when that knob came off (I can’t locate any memory of having “broken” it off, naturally). And my mother coming in and losing it because I was going to “wreck” the already broken TV.
Funny.
I also remember:
* Taking it on faith the Mister Green Jeans’ jeans were really green
* Smacking the top, or side, of the TV set, to get better reception (the upper right side was the best spot to hit, to achieve good results)
* The way the sound would come in before the picture did
* Really SEEING the red, in those greyish Ruby Slippers
And honestly? To this day, when my computer’s slow, I smack the monitor. This is how you know I’m over 40.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm
They kept referring to Lucy as that crazy redhead, but I never got it.