When you go to the Museum of the City of New York to see the Eero Saarinen show (as you must: stop to watch the film of Aline Saarinen on the Today show talking about TWA, and the final triangular section being inserted into the St. Louis Arch), be sure to go upstairs. Tucked away in the south side of the second floor is the show Only In New York: Photographs from Look Magazine a small exhibit that could have been a lot bigger, showcasing Gardner Cowles Jr.’s picture magazine’s vision of the city from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. (There’s even a connection between the two shows, via Florence Knoll, who designed the Look offices.) There’s a lot of excellent photography, as well as the oscillation between the witty and the gritty that I associate with New York Magazine.
Times Square showgirls, socialites and top models all get warts-and-all treatment very different from the icy imagery I associate with beauty at the time (the very image Betty Draper is always trying to live up to on Mad Men). There’s a very clever portrait of MoMA director Rene d’Harnoncourt, master of all the miniature modern icons he surveys (Matisse, white china, that ball bearing from the first Industrial Design exhibit). And the photo above, a counterpart to the one snapped at the Beaux Arts Ball of 1931, where the architects of the Chrysler Building, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Museum of the City of New York and others dressed as their famous creations. Look simply had the architects stand behind shimmering cut-outs of their buildings in 1957—that’s Gordon Bunshaft on the far left, with Lever House; Ely Jacques Kahn appears in both photos.
If Mad Men were only about the corporate architecture of the 1960s (which it is not, and thank god for that, as even I need a romance plot under the hung ceilings… Speaking of which, didn’t it look as if they had lowered the ceiling in Roger Sterling’s rarely-seen office? Just to increase the feeling Sterling, Cooper and Draper had of being literally boxed in?) the last shot of the very satisfying season 3 finale, “Shut the Door. Take a Seat,” would have been Roger Sterling and Don Draper staring back at the rows of desks, the grid of lights, and the pink and blue office doors, all receding into infinity, that were the scene of their greatest glories and disasters. That’s it, the shot seemed to say, on to something less hierarchical, fleeter-footed. Out with the old, in with the 1960s. The scenes of all our fan favorites packed together in a hotel room was merely a prelude to what I hope is the magnificent new architecture of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (Campbell Olsen) offices. In reality it took some years to shake off the SOM model, and in truth it never really went away. But if Matthew Weiner’s minions are looking in the right sources, SCDP could owe a debt to the Ford Foundation, a project bridging the gap between the buttoned-down and the opened-up. Or could they emphasize the temporary nature of the new group’s arrangements (and that same forward momentum) by using some of Herman Miller’s Action Office? Both would require a jump forward in the timeline to 1968, which I don’t think will happen, but he’s fudged the design dates before (see Selectric).
I love the show, but this was not my favorite season (and I am not just backlashing, as I have no water cooler about which to kibitz). I did not like the way Weiner hermetically sealed his characters in their own plots, acting as puppeteer, thumping us over the head with his themes, and occasionally forgetting their characters entirely (Peggy and Duck, really?). I felt like I never got to see enough of the characters I loved. I now see that that sense of stasis, the inability to advance the plot was part of his plan. Until the final episode the characters were really no further than they were at the start of the season (false new beginnings abounded), allowing this episode to explode with the drama of people actually doing something. It was like Mission Impossible, assembling the team. When Roger says, “Let me make a call,” and we know it is to Joan, I felt a little ping! of pleasure. I still think he delayed our gratification too long, but I can’t wait for season 4.
In “Souvenir”, Mad Men welcomes back Joan, looking lovely. I am pleased Bonwit Teller had the sense to make her a manager. I am also pleased at the thought that Rachel Menken might return. Placing Joan in the parallel universe of the department store makes sense, as she is an operator primarily in the world of women (she never defeated Moneypenny), and now she has perfumed stairs to climb. It also underlines a point many have made in discussing her character: she is a throwback, with her Marilyn curves and feminine wiles, and can’t see that Peggy (might) be able to make it plain. Joan’s life plan is disintegrating along with society as the 1960s wear on.
The department store is also a throwback, the late nineteenth-century equivalent of the mid-twentieth century corporation (to which Sterling Cooper is an adjunct and replica in miniature): a production machine in which people are cogs, but a meritocratic one, a civilizing influence, and a world in which women actually have an edge. That’s the story, at least, in Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, one of my favorite books, with architecture, shopping, societal upheaval and romance all mixed together in one potboiling novel. I’ve rarely met another fan, but if you’ve recently reconsidered Dickens, it should be next on your list. And on Masterpiece Theater’s as well.
