Have you ever asked yourself, “I wonder what their story is?” For example, I’ve always wondered about Joan’s backstory. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall knowing anything about Joanie except that she and Roger had an affair while she was office manager at SC. But what initiated it, how long did it last, and does Joan have any family that we know of? And Bert; We know he has an appreciation for Japanese culture; has a sister, and apparently he has cattle somewhere. But how did Bert get into advertising in the first place; did Bert ever have a love of his life, and what was it that made him see the “very good storyteller” in Don? And as for Don, if my memory serves me correctly, he was a car salesman first. How did he get into advertising? I could go on, but I think you know what I mean.
95 Responses to “I wonder….”
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I imagine Joan had a sad childhood. Kinda like Marilyn Monroe. Remember how moved she was by Marilyn's suicide? Roger found her lying down in his office. She is a self made force. But, somebody paid for those accordion lessons!
I bought Don's aw shucks "I'm in love!" attitude toward Betty before they married: he thinks he's hooked his dream girl, the Golden Girl, the girl with money in her voice.
But he's a Gatsby, and although it may take years, Don's lies and facade will crumble as will the marriage built on sand, and his Daisy will flee to the more familiar and safer arms of someone of her own class.
However, when Don describes Betty to Anna he isn't factoring in his own hollow core, his own inability to love a woman completely, because he isn't even who he respects.
Both Don and Betty are deeply flawed, but don can be giddy in the belief for a time that he's finally found love in his life, although he may be incapable of keeping it.
By the way, accordian lessons would not be something an upperclass family would give to their girl children.
Piano lessons, the harp maybe, something on which classical music could be played, tennis lessons, surely.
But accordian lessons were still big for kids in my lower middle class neighborhood in the 1950s.
one more clue joan didn't attend one of the seven sisters.
I also don't doubt Joan had an unhappy childhood.
It was highly unusual for (especially) an attractive woman to be unmarried that late in life in the early '60s.
Joan's inability to make that connection is a fairly good indication that something had happened earlier in her life that screwed up that part of her adulthood.
Also her final choice of Dr. Rapey, not an indication of someone who has good judgement, based on examples of marriage in her early life, patterns she can follow.
Joan created herself from wholecloth, but there are missing pieces.
#49 – Lisa,
I do watch MM. I was just wondering about the backstory of some of the characters, such as Joan and her family background, what Bert saw in Don that made him think he'd be the person who could tell a good story through advertising. And I don't recall where Bert's appreciation for Japanese culture came from, but I'd be interested in that as well.
Joan could have gone to Hunter College, which was free to women in the 1950s or to City College. She also could have gotten a scholarship to any number of schools. But I doubt she went to a Seven Sisters school (the Ivy League was male only).
Here's another question: why didn't Joan marry sooner? Did Roger support her on the condition she wouldn't? Did she have to support a disabled father?
I also want to know what the Drapers were like when Sally was born. We suspect Don missed the birth. How did he feel about having a girl? What was his relationship like with Betty?
Don was writing advertising copy inhouse for a fur company — original enough that it caught Roger's attention, he tracked down the young Don and hired him for SC.
How Don made the transition from car salesman to the fur company is a mystery, but I imagine that he took a stab at writing the ads for the car company first.
Maybe after taking some advertising classes at City College, and once he had a sample book of published ads, Don may have answered an advertisement for the fur company looking for an inhouse copywriter.
I had a newspaper reporter boyfriend working for a New Jersey paper, who wanted to make a switch to something more lucrative in the '70s — he took a class, wrote mocked up ads, but that went nowhere.
We moved to New York, after he ended up in Public Relations, which was always looking for someone with writing skills who could make contacts with reporters, having been on that side — and he later switched over to editing a trade magazines.
That was the point of New York City, you could use your experience elsewhere to move up and onward because of all the opportunities in the big city.
Like we moved from New Jersey, where I'd worked for two local weekly newspapers, and ended up in a sort of paid internship at a national magazine in New York, off the recommendation of someone I met at a party.
Upstate New York would have it's limitations — a self-made man like Don with no ties, would be eager for both the anonymity of a big city, and the promise of unlimited opportunity which that city seems to offer.
(According to wikipedia, the word "anonymity" is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness" — nice coincidence for Don!)
"Mink: It's Not Toasted!"
I attended classes at Hunter College in the '70s, but it didn't have student housing then, I believe.
(Even now: "Only 612 of Hunter's 25,000 students have the opportunity to live in the Residence Hall." http://www.google.com/search?q=hunter+college+stu…
So, I'm not sure Joan's roommate situation with the lesbian in love with her could have happened there.
#56 When Joan's NYC roommate confesses having a crush on Joan since they met in college, she goes on to say she followed Joan to NYC. That would rather rule out Hunter or CCNY, since both are in NYC.
My mother graduated from Vassar in 1925. Although she grew up in comfortable circumstances and her family paid for her expenses, Mother volunteered each summer teaching less fortunate high school office skills. At Vassar one of Mother's best friends was on scholarship. Following graduation the friend got a job as a secretary, expecting to either marry soon or find a career. Twenty-five years later that friend was a slightly less sexy version of Joan, managing the office of a mid-size publishing firm.
During WWII I remember that lady having dinner at our Greenwich Village apartment. She was escorted by a man my father's age, 18 years older than Mother. Later Dad remarked that man was president of the publishing firm. Maybe she was being "kept" Perhaps she was vastly over qualified. Certainly at that dinner she appeared very happy.
Joan didn't accept Roger's of financial support and an apartment for several reasons: if it got out, she'd be screwed at the office.
And as she made clear to Roger during their affair, she was still husband hunting, being kept by Roger would have put a crimp in that. No respectable bachelor would want to marry a woman kept by another man.
Many men were still expecting that they'd marry a virgin, no matter how many women they'd slept with.
Roger wasn't offering marriage, and Joan was focused on the goal before it was "too late" to make a "respectable" marriage.
I don't completely agree. Yes, Joan comes off as condescending, but I believe her intentions with Peggy were good. She looks at Peggy and sees someone who right now is all work/no fun and says, "This is about two young girls out on the town having an adventure – am I wrong?" (paraphrasing so forgive me if I got some of the wording wrong) The "am I wrong" part shows that she's willing to have Peggy correct her if she's misunderstanding things, but she also genuinely feels that Peggy wants to have fun, enjoy her youth, and take advantage of all the city has to offer. The best time to do that is when you're young and single! So yes, I feel she is trying to help, even if she also comes across as know-it-all.
To go back to Lianne's original post: yes, I have often wondered about the various characters's backtstories. I remember after we were discussing "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency," someone speculated here that Joan might have some nursing background in her past. I don't imagine she ever actually worked as a nurse, but possibly she did some candy-striping or volunteering or something like that. And I am always interested in knowing more about the characters's families — not just the major characters like Joan but also the more minor characters like Ken or Kurt or Smitty. Who is Carla's husband? Does Harry have a big family? Things like this are not necessarily things that we'll ever find out, or even that we need to find out, yet to get a few more details at some point would still be interesting.
How about Alice Cooper? Who else gets the feeling that she's a lesbian?
The first time we see her, Bert asks about her "companion" (can't remember her name). Watch Alice's reactions when she talks about her and that she can be moody.
Bert also mentions that Alice never settled down and got married and that this one seems to make an excellent companion for her.
Don't know about you, but the gaydar was pinging the first time I watched the episode.
Read The Group by Mary McCarthy (Betty's bath time reading in Season 3). Eight Vassar graduates who all intend on entering the workforce in some capacity after graduation. They all know themselves to be intelligent and capable, but it doesn't enter anyone's mind that they can actually compete with men in the workforce: Joan to the letter. We don't know where Joan went, but we do know that she went to university and does WANT to get married; therefore more aligned with Betty than with Peggy in terms of background and expectations. It is highly unusual for her to have stayed single for so long, which is why I figured she had something other than her own moxy to fall back on.
Oh, definitely Alice Cooper is a lesbian: "companion" would be upper class code for that.
In the l9th century (and earlier) wealthy women had paid companions to keep them company, often a penniless female relative. In those centuries "respectable" women went nowhere alone, and there would be talk if they went somewhere with any male but a relative.
Not a necessity in the 20th century, so "companion" definitely could be code for a non-related woman living with a wealthy woman.
Especially since a paid companion couldn't get away with being "moody." (Read Vanity Fair, for an example of the tyranny of the wealthy woman over her companion.)
Besides, so much easier to say socially, than "My older sister's lover, um, friend, um roommate."
Nope, not buying it. If Joan went to a Seven Sisters School and had family money there'd be some indication.
Like Trudy's name-dropping of Pete's family name, Roger's allusions to having inherited SC, Harry dropping his Ivy League status (and being embarrassed by the reveal that he went on scholarship, given away by his preppy drug dealer obviously from a wealthy family.)
Eventually, those sort of people drop hints about their family status, Ivy League affliation, or money.
Joan's so obviously a self-made woman of the period, and that she reveals nothing about her background, means she's come from nothing, that it might be an embarressment to discuss. Kinda like Don.
(Another indication: her first abortionist, may or may not have been a midwife, Joan had to take pot luck. But by the time she's worked her way up in a Madison Ave advertising agency, Joan's able to connect to the doctor of the Upper Eastside's elite.)
When Don first met Conrad Hilton at Roger's country club for Derby Day, I got the impression that he might have also worked as a bartender at some point.
I've always thought that Don worked nights tending bar and met Roger that way. It's not impossible that he was working days at the furrier as a copywriter and making extra cash as a bartender.
Earlier, when he was selling cars, he might have been doing that to pay for his night school classes and then began his work doing the ad copy for the furrier, once he finished his courses.
As Don Draper, Dick would have been eligible for the GI Bill, which would have paid for his night school classes.
In one episode, Roger clearly states that he found Don writing ad copy for a fur company.
(It would also be too much of a neat coincidence for Don to have met both Roger and Hilton from behind a bar.)
Since Don says he cobbled together a degree from City college, that would have had to have been since he moved to New York City, not when he was a car salesman upstate.
Anything is possible, but it's more likely Don learned how to mix a drink, or work behind a bar, in between parking cars as a teenager at the roadhouse.
I've lived in New York City and upstate New York, and attended college in both areas.
And whenever anyone spoke of "City college" they meant New York City based.
Upstate you'd refer in the shorthand form to that area, such as "I went to school in Albany," or "I go to Syracuse," etc. and everyone knew you were refering to one of the state colleges or universities.
Never heard them referred to as "city" colleges, even in that city. "City college" meant New York City alone, for some reason.
Perhaps because New York City was simply referred to as "The City" in a surrounding portion of the tri-state area, including New Jersey and Conneticut.
If I had to guess, Joan probably went to a SUNY school upstate (like Albany). Joan would have been about the right age to have been one of the first SUNY students, and tuition was dirt cheap, if not free.
City college as distinct from New York (city) University, which is and was always referred to as NYU.
And back then City College would have been more commuter and night school oriented than NYU.
From her deportment, I'm assuming Joan got a full scholarship to one of those private women's colleges, just below the Seven Sisters.
Where the rich sent their not-as-bright daughters, but a school that would give a free ride to a very bright, poor girl.
Joan learned a manner up there from the rich girls, but it was all girls, which made it less likely she'd earn her Mrs. Degree.
And Joan knew she had to make her living after she graduated, so she also took typing and shorthand courses from somewhere, either her high school, or a summer course at a Secretarial school.
Freddie discovered Don, writing copy for the furrier & going to night school. Then he brought him to Roger's attention. This may have been mentioned in the episode where Freddie got his "six months' leave."
Getting GI benefits required a bunch of paperwork & showing up at offices with multiple ID's. (Family history has taught me about these procedures.) Original Don Draper earned his engineering degree as a member of ROTC, so his academic record was part of his military record. I think Our Don was paying his way through school by working for the furrier because claiming educational benefits would have been too dangerous. (Did he ever think that, if he'd survived Korea, he would have had a much easier time afterward? He made that decision very quickly & could never go back.)
Had Our Don always dreamed of an advertising career, or did he accept Roger's job offer because he'd met this beautiful girl & needed to support a family?
However, I'm not so much interested in the Don/Betty Origin Story. He's struggling to move forward & I sincerely hope she is capable of growth. I really want to know more about Joan.
My theory: Joan had a Great Love early on that went very bad. (The first abortion? The comment to Roger about losing someone important?) So she decided to move to the big city & get a job; eventually, she'd find somebody to marry & have a family. If marriage had been her real first priority, surely she could have found somebody quickly. But NYC was an exciting place & learning about the ad business was interesting. Paul might have worked out, but he lacked discretion. Roger was only a distraction–but such a charming one that she wasted valuable time. So she settled for the next opportunity that looked promising.
Joan didn't need a medical background to learn first-aid skills; the Red Cross did (& does) offer classes. Of course, not everybody has the strength of character to step up & do what must be done when the blood & body parts start flying.
And I can't help but visualize a Very Young Joan, her hair in braids, earning college money at Uncle Stan's restaurant. I'm sure she got very tired of playing "Who Stoke the Kishka."
@36, 38, & etc. freelancewoman
Also born in 1950. "I rode the line between then and now." You have it, exactly. (But you forgot beautician as a pink collar career option.
I yearn to know more of Joan's back story, more than any other character.
Accordian lessons could have been given by a family member, and thus would not needed to have been paid for.
Nice backstory work, Not Bridget, Retrogirl and Bornin50.!
All of what you write makes sense.
Didn't forget beautician, but you're right, that's more skilled than either waitress or cashier. We had a Beauty School in the next biggish town, and as a lower middle class girl, I went there to have my hair done for the Prom.
Also accordian lessons more likely to be given in a lower-middle class or working class family.
Definitely, not a WASP family (can you imagine anyone in Pete's, Roger's or Burt's family playing the accordian? Sure, it's fun to imagine, but improbable.)
In the hotel scene in season one when Roger wants to order lunch, Joan declines saying food in the bedroom reminds her of a hospital. She may have had a seriously or terminally ill parent (most likely a mother) when she was very young.
As a result she may have had the burden of caring for younger brother and siblings which could be a reason for wanting to postpone parenthood and family responsibilities and indulge herself for a time. It could also explain the authoritative tone she sets at SC and later at SCDP
Nice catch, cecelia.
But we hear and see nothing of these relatives: Joan, like Don, "has no people."
Which suggests she cut herself off from them, or they died.
With the possible exception of Roger, we've seen that Joan thinks of men more as either status symbols or providers of free meals. My guess is that she put off marriage because she was holding out for a top-shelf model with the iviest degree and the fanciest country house, instead of getting to know men and finding one she actually liked and wanted to spend time with. I think she's always thought of marriage as a transaction and only wanted to spend her capital on the wisest invesment.
#29 – I do you think you're right about Don's start date at SC, now. I guess I just didn't think Roger would wait that long to make a pass at Betty
#81 I think it's reducto ad absurdom to reduce Joan to a simplistic gold digger: men as either "status symbols" or "providers of free meals."
In the 1950s and earlier, marriage was considered the only way for a woman to earn a living over her lifetime, despite some evidence otherwise.
Also the only way to comfortably raise your children, enjoy a consistent sex life, and experience love.
The economy was such that a family could live on a husband's salary alone, even in working class and lower middle class, especially since in those economic groups the wives made all the meals for the family from scratch, and cared for the children, house and clothing 24/7.
By contrast, most "women's work" paid so badly that it would be difficult to raise children without marriage, or even live comfortably as a single woman, and women were frozen out of the well-paid professions or advancement in professions.
Where they could be employed in the same jobs as men, women received a fraction of the salary for the same work, on the assumption that men would be "breadwinners" for a family — whether that was the case or not.
It was also the expected courtesy that men paid for all expenses on dates. Joan is a realist in that period, not a goldigger. Advice books of the period (such as Helen Gurley Brown's) advised women to get meals out of men, for the simple reason that single women weren't paid enough to afford restaurants, or other upscale entertainment, on their own.
(For instance even in the early '70s, I was paid exactly half the salary of each of my two eventual live-in boyfriends, even the one with whom I shared a profession.
That was a more egalitarian time than Joan's, so I insisted on splitting the rent and utilities and paying all my own personal expenses, but the boyfriends had to pick up the check on any entertainment, or we would never have been able to go out together at all.)
Joan's expectations of a husband, and dating, were perfectly aligned with society's in the first half of the 20th century. Love was considered part of the package, but the man you married supposedly determined your entire economic future, and that of your children.
Mad Men is painting a portrait of a time of change, but there's no reason to tar Joan with the brush of your distain from the far reach of the 21st century.
freelance woman, sorry to nitpick but Syracuse isn't a state school it is and always has been a private university. I'd have saved a lot of money if it had been a state school
There is a SUNY school right which has a campus adjoining Syracuse's and their students do live in the SU dorms, can use all of the SU facilities and may enroll in SU classes if they like but it is a the SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry School (ESF) but I'm not sure it was around in Joan's time and I doubt she'd be interested in any of the things they study there.
Concerning Joan's accordion playing as a marker for her socio-economic childhood background, Christina Hendrick mentions in a recent interview that the show's writers had initially asked if she could play the piano – to which she replied 'not really, but I can learn' – for the dinner party scene in which we discover Joan can sing and play on request, but then okayed the substitution, due to her accordion abilities, instead. ( I think accordion worked better in the end than piano for the emotion they wished to convey )
Joan's reluctance, but at the insistence of the others' ready-capacity for performing her little entertainment bespeaks a middle class upbringing, in which the children's music lessons expense was rationalized in part because their parents could hope to later impose upon the child to provide a little ditty when their friends would visit the home socially, once a respectable proficiency at the piano or violin had been reached.
Working class folk paying for accordion or ocarina lessons would be more along the lines of 'play me something that reminds us of the old country'.
Maybe middle-class (when the middle class including working class, in the 1950s and '60s," but not upper middle class.
I grew up in a lower-middle class community in the 1950s: kids got lessons (ballet for me, accordian for other kids, gymnastics.)
As a poster noted upthread, in ethnic communities kids might also be taught by Uncle Stash.
In the 1950s, working people could be middle class, during the boom.
Although Joan would have been a kid during the '30s and '40s, when the economy not booming, and smaller or next to no "middle class."
When I first ran across the upper-middle class, or the true middle class: not an accordian in sight.
Even in my community, the daughters of the banker and lawyer learned the piano, the daughters or sons of factory workers, accordian.
For one thing, an accordian was a hell of a lot cheaper for a family to buy than a piano. For another, an accordian was more likely to create "ethnic" music, than classical. back then. (When was the last time you saw a classical concert with an accordian?)
Classical music was considered "high brow" a mark of class, accordian music, not so. (Usually associated with the polka, back then.)
We still had music lessons in our public high school during those boom years, but they were "band" instruments.
Neither piano nor accordian included.
Joan was very cute on that one song, but exotic to those doctors and their wives: none of their children would be given accordian lessons.
Joan's reluctance to play for the doctors and their wives would have had more to do, in the early '60s, with the idea that the accordian was considered "lower class" than the piano, or other instruments favored by the upper middle class. (Of which doctors were, which is why Joan aspired to be a doctor's wife.)
But being Joan, she pulled it off, very cute.
But I grew up in the 1950s and '60s, and accordian lessons were still very much dictated by class then, so would be even more so, when Joan was a child 20 years before during the Great Depression.
(And yes, I know the story of the writers and Christina Hendricks, but that doesn't mitigate the reality of accordian/piano, but may have been the reason the writers were so enthusiastic about writing in the accordian — Joan's husband has put her in a potentially even more embarrassing position.)
freelancewoman: I agree. You develop the larger point behind my mention how the accordion came to be present in the scene instead of a piano quite nicely. Call it serendipitous Christina couldn't play piano, since the writers wished to underline Joan's embarrassment – that they proceeded to make hay from, possibly, because Joan's cringing about playing that instrument, points to the belying of a middle class childhood adversely affected by depression conditions. She knows she missed her chance to learn piano or violin, like perhaps her older sisters had, instead.
In other words, accordian lessons had less to do with lack of money, than supposed lack of class.
No WASP family down on it's luck would think to give a child accordian lessons.
Like Pete's family, they would keep up appearances even if the coffers were empty.
They might go on scholarship to the Good Schools, but they were no more take on the trappings of the working class, than they would otherwise want to advertise their slide from the monied middle class.
For a time after WWII, ethnicities and working class people became middle class in greater numbers through a booming economy and opened up educational opportunities.
So that's where your confusion may lie about the "middle class."
But class in America has more to do with just money.
Or, the accordion could be an idiosyncrasy. It could have been a "fun" thing she picked up in college, like other girls did with the ukelele. It's something small, portable, and fun that you can take to parties. Most of the big bands, and lots of the small jazz combos, of the '30's and '40's had an accordion player. And while ethnic Polish music had a working-class connotation, French jazz (also accordion-heavy) always had a certain chic.
No, I'm not going with the fun thing for parties, either.
The ukelele was basically a '20s thing, and it is a light thing.
Have you ever picked up an accordian? Because I have, and it's a heavy mother-fucker.
Never once, in college, saw a girl or a guy drag an accordian to a party, and I went to a lot of colleges (small, big, university, etc.) in several states and on two continents.
Yes, I know about french jazz, but I grew up on the east coast in the middle of the 20th century in the lower middle class, and I'm here to tell you, the accordian was not what traditional middle class family gave a girl lessons in.
Italian families, polish families, working class families (maybe making middle class money in the 1950s), but not non-ethnic, white middle class families.
Like I said, pretty Joan playing that particular popular song of the moment, would be exotic and entertaining to the crowd of doctors and their wives, but it's not an instrument they would have been given lessons on when they were children, nor would their own children be given lessons on that instument.
And that's part and parcel of Joan's embarrassment, and why the writers were so thrilled that it was that idiosyncratic instrument with which they could make their point.
Jazz combos of the '30s and '40s: the musicians usually didn't come from middle class and certainly not upper middle class families.
(Check out the Benny Goodman story.)
Still gotta disagree about the possibility of a middle class childhood for Joan.
If a middle class household couldn’t afford piano lessons, the kid wouldn’t get piano lessons.
Sorry, but the accordian was seen in the early part of the 20th century as much lower middle class, working class, and ethnic, usually, if not exclusively, Polish.
Slightly cheesy. As late as the ’60s Polish jokes were still widely told, (poles were stupid, hairy, etc.) it wasn’t conceived as a middle class ethnicity, although it may have been.
And a “middle class childhood adversely affected by depression conditions” isn’t middle class.
Joan is a striver, one of the reasons why she’s married to Dr. Rapey: his profession was supposed to be her ticket, permanently, out of the poverty and the lower middle or working class. She didn’t see some of his personality failings, because he seemed to be her dream.
Like Don, she has put on the trappings of the middle class, and may be more competent than her supposed betters, but she’s come from nothing and hard work and determination is what got her where she is.
Joan doesn’t seem to have family. She is a people person at work but lonely at home. I get a bi-sexual or sexual confusion vibe from her. While Betty may have been abused by her father, Joan has probably young sexual experiences with both men and women. Big wall around Joan. There is safety in being (not loving) someone you can’t have (Roger).
Joan will take the economic security over love. She likes the idea of love….furs, flowers, etc., but seems frozen inside — like Don. Joan perhaps was hurt. Her marriage is an “arrangement” with a ring. She is not head over heels in love with this guy.
Don is thawing out, maybe from the emotional overload of losing Anna. It forces him to feel again. Maybe Joan and Don are destined to connect. They, are really kindred spirits.
If Joan could love she would be amazing. A private spanking from Joan? Sign me up.