MM@M: Look Like Hayley Mills. Feel The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Mad Men @ the Movies investigates cinema references... a fancy excuse to talk about tv's best series.

Episode 4.5 "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
In this episode SCDP attempts to win the Honda campaign but Sterling still hates the Japanese from his WWII days. Meanwhile, it's Draper Vs. Draper again as Don (Jon Hamm) and Betty (January Jones returns.) hurl hate at each other. Tween daughter Sally tries to tune them out by misbehaving i.e. engaging in perfectly normal behavior like masturbating. Uh oh! In one sequence Sally cuts her own hair, sending her babysitter and her father into hysterics.

Don: Why would she do that?
Babysitter: She probably wanted to look older or like Hayley Mills. I don't know."

Heaven to hear 60s child star Hayley Mills (a personal fav) referenced on Mad Men. Hayley is best remembered today for the back-to-back family friendly classics Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961). She was actually the last actor to win the Academy's intermittently awarded Juvenile Award (you know the one-- the only Oscar Judy Garland ever got. Grrrr.) Mills would have most definitely been an idol for Sally's generation.

The previous summer moviegoers had enjoyed Hayley in The Moon Spinners (64) and she had two films in theaters for 65: Disney's That Darn Cat (pictured up top) and The Truth About Spring. This episode takes place in 1965 which happened to be the last year Mills could be referred to as a teenager...

Hayley Mills leaving her teen years. 18 in 1964 (left) & 19 in 1965 (right)

She was exiting adolescence just as Sally was entering it. In 1966 she actually played a young married woman in The Family Way.

Nevertheless, for the family friendly Hayley memories this particular episode conjures, the pop culture reference that leads to the most adult-specific hysteria is not from the movies but from the small screen. Sally watches television's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (from its debut season '64-'65) while at a sleepover (her friend is already asleep). In the scene, David McAllum is tied to a chair, and his masculine pheromones are doing a hormonal whammy on confused Sally. (Or maybe Sally's just going to be into bondage as an adult.)

poll by twiigs.com

Further reading?
In case you can't get enough Mad Men the morning after...

• The Medium and the Message an ad man on what our obsession with the series means and the penetration of message in advertising.
• Esquire War of the Sweaters. Knitwear as counter culture?
• GIF Party Peggy on a Honda. Vroom.
• Who is Dr. Lyle Evans? Yes there was a spike on Google.
• Basket of Kisses on the same question.
• Basket of Kisses on Miss Blankenship's Crossword Puzzle
  

MM@M: Jean "Peggy" Seberg

Mad Men at the Movies In this series we discuss the film references on Mad Men. And now for Season 4 we're also discussing the show in general. Previously: Live From Times Square, 60s Box Office Queens, Catherine Deneuve and...Gamera?

Episode 4.4 "The Rejected"
In this episode Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) faces both personal joy and career drama and combines them in cunning fashion. He sure is a 'high WASP'. Don's secretary Alison gets a smashingly played exit scene (goodbye Alexa Alemanni. We hardly knew ye. But we liked what we knew. Pssst Mad Men will work wonders on your reel. You were great.) And Peggy attends an underground party winning both male and female attention. Plus, Ken Cosgrove returns (yay!).

Right before Ken's name surfaces, Pete and Harry are arguing about the printing of a newspaper ad.

Pete: I don't care if she looks like a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican girls buy brassieres.
Harry: Not that they need to. I saw this one on the subway in one of those striped Jean Seberg shirts, red rag in her hair. Nipples.
Pete: I'm not in the mood.

Jean Seberg wore that famous striped shirt in Breathless (pictured above) which hit US screens in 1961, four years before this episode takes place. The Jean Luc Godard film became one of the most iconic films in the French New Wave, a film movement which had already peaked by 65 but had definitely affected New York culture.

Though Seberg is most remembered for the French Breathless today and made other foreign films, she was an American actress (born in Iowa) and made many movies at home, too. She was not only a fashion icon but a political activist of some notoreity (hence an interesting if tossed off reference name ... since we know much political turmoil is coming as this show explores the 1960s). She died at only 40 in Paris from an overdose.


In early 1965, concurrent with this episode, Seberg was a Golden Globe nominee for Lilith (1964), a film about a woman in a mental institution. (Maybe both Jean Seberg and Lilith would've related to Mad Men's frustrated women?) The AMPAS voters passed Seberg over for a nomination but she wasn't the only snub. The Oscar lineup (as follows) was actually composed mostly of the Globe comedy nominees (that doesn't happen anymore) with only the Drama winner making the cut.

• Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins (Globe winner, Comedy)
  
• Anne Bancroft, The Pumpkin Eater (Globe winner, Drama)
• Sophia Loren, Marriage Italian-Style (Globe nominee, Comedy)
  
• Debbie Reynolds, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Globe nominee, Comedy)
• Kim Stanley, Seance on a Wet Afternoon
  

Enough 1965 history. Back to 1965 fiction.

Favorite Moment
Revisiting Kenny & Pete's rivalry. Pete apologizes for gossiping and then tells Kenny he's going to be a father. After Pete's weak olive branch, Ken offers a delicious stealth-bitchy compliment: "Another Campbell. That's just what the world needs."

Best Intangible Something
Every single thing about the centerpiece sequence worked superbly. A group of women are corralled by Joan (not invited due to being "old and married") to be focused tested about beauty regimens while Don & Peggy watch from behind glass. The repercussions ends up rippling through the office, violently. The multi-scene sequence is all composed of people looking at each other from a glassed off protected distance whether comical (Peggy spying on Don) or dramatic (Don wincing at Allison's tears) or through doorways. It's full of entrances and exits (almost like bedroom farce) with everyone carrying their painfully open baggage into each room and when they exit, they've left articles behind. Amazing.

Best (Shouted) Exchange
Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) rejecting a lesbian advance from Joyce (Zosia Mamet) at a party.

Peggy: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND
Joyce: HE DOESN'T OWN YOUR VAGINA.
Peggy: NO, BUT HE'S RENTING IT.

Please note that Peggy is wearing a not un-Seberg like striped shirt for this sequence. Mad Men is nothing if not self reflective.

Best (Silent) Exchange
Peggy and Pete, former lovers, saying their goodbyes (through glass again). For a show that's so often about inchoate feelings it sure is emotionally acute.

Further reading?
I like to read a wide range of reaction to movies and tv, don't you?

• Lylee's Blog "I can't fix anything else" on last week's episode but I think it's insightful.
• Parabasis great piece on Peggy rising and Don descending in the mid 60s.
  
• GIF Party & GIF Party. Two funny Elisabeth Moss bits. For all her personal troubles (Peggy's not Moss's) one sometimes senses that Peggy is the one character that's going to be all right. Don Draper on the other hand...
• HitFix has a thorough recap with detailed end notes.
• Atlantic Peggy's brush with the mid sixties and the episode's comic tone
• The New Republic on the "effortless" feel of the episode, and lessons for series television in general
• Cinema Talk on Jean Seberg and Lilith
• Film Quarterly Seberg and notes on women and depression
• Vulture John Slattery on directing his first episode.
• The Bastard Machine on all the rejection in this episode. Aptly titled.
• Antenna Mad Men's female fashion and the mise-en-scène in this episode.
  

MM@M: Deneuve & Godzilla Gamera, Cinema Giants

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Patricia Neal (1926-2010)

Sad news. The Oscar winning actress Patricia Neal (Hud) has passed away at 84. She had been battling lung cancer. Neal had a memorably husky voice and something like tragedy in her beautiful eyes. And that was even before tragedy hit.

She first hit screens in the late 40s but the 1960s were a particularly volatile time for the great actress. Consider the Everest sized career peaks and tragic personal valleys: In 1960 she was co-starring with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in the Broadway hit The Miracle Worker (she didn't travel with them to the film version); Her infant son's carriage was hit by a taxi in 1961 (he survived); her seven year old daughter died suddenly in 1962; in 1963 Hud was released; In April 1964 she won the Oscar for that indelible housekeeper role (she did not attend the ceremony); in 1965 while pregnant with her fifth and last child, she suffered a multiple stroke that put her in a coma for three weeks. Miraculously her daughter was born healthy months later. But Neal had to learn to walk and talk again. She felt she had to pass on The Graduate (which became a classic role for former co-star Anne Bancroft) due to the recovery period but she returned to film twice in 1968 for the short documentary about her rehabilitation Pat Neal is Back and the drama The Subject Was Roses. She received her second (and last) nomination for Best Actress for the latter.

Neal didn't work so often late in life but made a memorable appearance as the title character in Robert Altman Cookie's Fortune (1999). Her death in that film -- was it a murder or suicide? -- causes abundant family infighting (Glenn Close is such a bitch!) and comic confusion (Julianne Moore is rather dim).

How many Oscar winners get to be played by other Oscar winners? Not even Katharine Hepburn got that (since Cate Blanchett hadn't won yet when she acted out the role in The Aviator). Neal's life was dramatized in 1981 for a telefilm called "The Patricia Neal Story" starring two time winner Glenda Jackson.

Glenda Jackson as Neal and Dirk Bogarde as her husband,
author Roald Dahl (yes, that Roald Dahl), in "The Patricia Neal Story"

Do you have any favorite Patricia Neal movie memories? Please share them as I need viewing tips. Apart from the 1960s films, I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with her work.

With co-star/lover Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead (1949)
And with Paul Newman in Hud (1963)

Please tell me you've seen Hud (1963), though. If not, it should be your absolute tippity top rental priority. I don't care what your priority was before. Guy Lodge recently called Hud 'hard, precise, ineffably sad' in a tweet and I marvelled at his own precision with that description. The movie is insanely good and should've won the Best Picture Oscar (that it wasn't nominated for). It's one of the best movies of the 1960s... or any decade for that matter. Though her screen time is limited, Neal is magnificent in her crucially observant sideline role.
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Save Me Elmer Gantry, Save Me!

Fifty years ago today, Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) started preaching to moviegoers. He started howling "Repent! Repent!" and multiple beautiful women started moaning "Save me! Save me!" to paraphrase a line from the satiric 1960 Best Picture nominee.


Elmer Gantry, a Richard Brooks adaptation of the novel by Sinclair Lewis, introduces us to a drunk womanizing salesman and churchgoing Christian who finds his calling when he decides to combine the two, hawking old timey religion with Sister Sharon (Jean Simmons), a revivalist. She's been making quite a name for herself converting the common folk wherever she pitches her tent. It goes without saying that once Elmer spots her, he also pitches his.

Once Sharon and Elmer have joined forces, there's no stopping them. They develop a perfect good cop/bad cop salvation routine: Elmer provides the sweaty fire and shouty brimstone and Sharon swoops in later to offer the soothing sotto voce God is Love denouement. (How anyone hears her quiet words in a huge tent with all the shouting and live musical accompaniment is a mystery the film never explains.) Sharon resists Elmer's sexual swagger at first but eventually succumbs like all the other women.

Of course, if you want your sweaty god-fearing rants to be charming and your aggressive "Repents!" to actually convert women into horny disciples, you'd better look quite a lot like Burt Lancaster, one of the manliest of film stars.


In fact, I suspect how one feels about Elmer Gantry the movie would be closely tied to how one feels about Lancaster as an actor/star. It neatly boils down to which of these two arguments you agree with.

1. A Doubter. Bill, Sharon's manager, doesn't trust Elmer. "Everything about you is offensive," he says to the new revivalist star. "You're a crude vulgar show off. And your vocabulary belongs in an outhouse."
2. True Believer. Sharon herself, finds him disarming and charming. "You're so outrageous! I think I like you. You're amusing and you smell like a real man."
   

So which side of the argument do you fall on with this sweaty, loud, extremely physical actor? I'd like to know but, for myself, I'm agnostic. I can't choose a side. I fall in and out of love with Lancaster but I like him best when he's dialing it back a little to assess how well Elmer is performing his (usually successful) seductions OR when he can't control his impulses at all and just lets Elmer carry on like a mad men. It's the inbetween stuff that's hard for me to take. It's in those moments when he's merely laughing too loud, smiling too big, or talking too much that he's a crude vulgar show off to me ... unless he's so outrageous that he's amusing. It's then that I think I like him.

Being a loud show off or playing one successfully is a great way to win an Oscar, which Lancaster did for this preacher man star turn. Another great way to win an Oscar is to show up in a movie that's well under way and breathe new bracing life into it (See Frances McDormand in Fargo and Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain for polar opposite examples of the same trick.) I had never seen Elmer Gantry before and I was shocked that Shirley Jones, who won for playing Lulu the hooker, doesn't even show up until almost exactly the halfway mark. It's a two and a half hour movie! Lulu's revenge plot (Elmer has skeletons, y'see) derails Gantry's burgeoning success until Lulu reveals that heart of gold. She's a hooker so you know she has one. It's the movies!

Lulu's schizo back and forth between loving and hating Elmer and her strange waffling between Christianity and sacrilege (in one scene she'll make a dirty joke about God, in the next she'll talk about the Bible with a beatific look on her face) is perfectly in keeping with the movie's indecision about whether to join true believers or mock them.

The movie actually starts with a too-careful disclaimer, suggesting that it's not going to have much satirical bite. Hollywood loves to play to as many demographics as it can which means that satire is not their strong suit. I'm not sure what the political/religious climate was like in 1960 when the film premiered but it was a hit. The film can't seem to make up its mind (at all) as to whether or not these preachers are hypocritical con artists or benevolent spiritual leaders. The only gospel Elmer Gantry seems truly comfortable selling is the gospel of showmanship.

And that, dear reader, it sells well. Lancaster's sermons still play like gangbusters in 2010. They even feel timeless. It was impossible not to see today's politician/preachers in his antics. Sarah Palin's winking 'lamestream media' anti-intellectualism was instantly recognizable in one pointed private moment between Elmer and a reporter (an excellent Arthur Kennedy) which plays out in a public forum.

"I admit I'm not smart like some of them -- some of them smartalecky professors, wiseguy writers and agitators. I don't know the first thing about philosophy, psychology, ideology or any other ology. But I know this. With Christ you're saved. And without him you're lost.

And how do I know there's a merciful god? Because I've seen the devil plenty o times.

Lancaster's sizzle in the sermon scenes has the unfortunate effect of making Sister Sharon seem like a dud in the charisma department. It's hard to suspend disbelief that she is the bankable person on their joint ticket. Could that be why the arguably miscast Jean Simmons was denied an Oscar nomination despite the Academy's love for the film?

The movie's finale is weirdly botched, opting for something like holy sentiment mixed with you-get-what-you-deserve moralizing while also trying to take one last dig at the salvation through donation con game. There are so many competing agendas and you cannot serve both God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24). B-

<-- Lancaster and Taylor with their Oscars in April 1961.

Since it's a muddled effort, is it sacrilegious to suggest that Elmer Gantry really deserves a remake? It's totally topical. Perhaps the novel needs a new set of filmmaker eyes on it. No matter, I suppose. We'll have to make do with a Paul Thomas Anderson double feature starring huckster preachers Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Untitled).

Have you seen Elmer Gantry?
I'd love to hear other perspectives on it.
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Gloria Stuart Centennial (And The 25 Oldest Living Oscar Nominees!)

One hundred years ago on this very day 30s actress Gloria Stuart was born in Santa Monica. Happy birthday Gloria! Stuart made her name on James Whale's pictures like The Old Dark House (fun movie) and The Invisible Man before her screen career petered out in the 1940s. Then, über famously, James Cameron resurrected her to play the 100 year old survivor of Titanic. And the best part... she's still with us today!


Were you confused like Britney Spears when she tossed the Heart of the Ocean back into it in Titanic? Do you think Kate Winslet hopes to grow up to look just like her?

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
-Woody Allen

Since Gloria is not the oldest living Oscar nominee, it's list time. Who's still with us? (If I forgot anyone, do let me know in the comments.)

The Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

1. Robert F Boyle (Honorary Winner and 4 time nominee as Art Director Fiddler on the Roof) is nearing 101.
   Update: August 1st, 2010 (RIP). What a career he had.
   
2. Luise Rainer (2 time winner The Good Earth & The Great Ziegfield) is 100½.
3. Gloria Stuart (nominee Titanic) is 100 exactly.Update Sept 26, 2010: (RIP). a long life well -travelled.
   
4. Douglas Slocombe (3 time nominee) cinematographer of Raiders of the Lost Ark among other classics.
5. Kevin McCarthy (nominee Death of a Salesman) is 96.
   Update: Sept 11, 2010: RIP
6. Olivia de Havilland (2 time winner The Heiress & To Each His Own) is 94. Yes, she still hopes to publish memoirs and no, she's not the only surviving Gone With the Wind cast member.
   
7. Kirk Douglas (Honorary Oscar and 3 time nominee), Spartacus himself, is 93.

8. Ernest Borgnine (winner Marty) is 93.
9. Celeste Holm (winner Gentleman's Agreement) is 93.
10. Joan Fontaine (winner Suspicion) is 92. Yes, it's true. She and sister Olivia de Havilland are still not speaking.
11. Tom Daly (5 time nominee) this Canadian producer nominated in short film and documentary categories just turned 92.
    
12. Joyce Redman (2 time nominee Tom Jones) is 91. [Trivia note: Tom Jones is the only film to have ever won three nominations in Supporting Actress. Pity that Robert Altman's Nashville didn't repeat the trick.]
    
13. Dino de Laurentiis (Thalberg winner and a producing winner for La Strada) is almost 91.
14. Michael Anderson (nominee, directed Around the World in 80 Days) is 90.
    
15. Ravi Shankar (nominee, the co-composer for Gandhi) is 90.
16. Ray Harryhausen (Gordon Sawyer Award recipient), the f/x legend, just turned 90.
17. Mickey Rooney (Honorary Oscar and 4 time nominee) is 89.
18. Joe Mantell (nominee Marty) is 89.
    
19. Carol Channing (nominee Thoroughly Modern Millie) is 89. "Razzzzzbbberrries!"
    

20. Hal David (winner "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is 89.
21. Deanna Durbin (Juvenile Award winner) is 88. She was only 18 when she won her Juvenile statue (shared with Mickey Rooney) but she retired from the screen just nine years later.
    
22. Doris Day (nominee Pillow Talk) is 88. There's a few Facebook groups trying to get her an honorary Oscar. Filmmaker Douglas McGrath pushed for it, too. [Trivia note: There is some controversy about Doris Day's exact age. But most sources now claim she was born in 1922 so she would have turned 88 this past April.
    
23. Mihalis Kakogiannis (3 time nominee, all nominations from Zorba the Greek) just turned 88.
    
24. Eleanor Parker (3 time nominee Caged) just turned 88. She's best remembered today as the (not totally) wicked would be stepmother in The Sound of Music but that doesn't paint the whole picture at all. Isn't it time for renewed interest in her career? Smart cinephiles think so.
    
25. Blake Edwards (Honorary Oscar and nominee for Victor/Victoria), aka Mr Julie Andrews, is almost 88.
26. Norman Lear (television giant who was Oscar nominated for writing Divorce, American Style), one day younger than Blake Edwards, is also almost 88
27. Jackie Cooper (nominee Skippy) is 87. Trivia note: He is the youngest Best Actor nominee of all time, having been up for the prize when he was but 9 years old. He's likely to keep that Oscar record. The closest anyone ever got was Mickey Rooney -- also on this list -- at the age of 19.
    
    but I couldn't stop there. Partially because I missed a handful of people. Partially because I definitely have undiagnosed untreated OCD. Carpal tunnel syndrome here I come. It's a top 40!
    
    
28. Arthur Penn (3 time nominee, directed Bonnie & Clyde) is 87. I know I've given this book a million plugs but you must read "Pictures at a Revolution" for a detailed fascinating account of how that landmark movie was constructed. Choosing a director wasn't the least bit simple. And directing Warren Beatty isn't so simple either. Penn did it twice.
    
29. Juanita Moore (nominee Imitation of Life *see it* It's a beauty) is 87.
30. Valentina Cortese (nominee Day for Night) is 87. She holds the extremely rare honor of a supporting acting nomination from a foreign language film. Those are so very infrequent.
    
31. Franco Zeffirelli (2 time nominee, director of Romeo and Juliet), another Italian (!), is 87.
    
32. Charles Durning (2 time nominee, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) is 87.
33. Richard Attenborough (2 time winner, director of Gandhi) is 86.
34. Cliff Robertson (winner Charly) is 86.
35. Glynis Johns (nominee The Sundowners) is 86
    We're glad she got that one last burst of mid 90s comedy gold in While You Were Sleeping and especially The Ref. Well done, Sister Suffragrette ♪ ! Unfortunately, she's been little seen since.
36. Arthur Hiller (Hersholt Huminatarian winner, nominee for Love Story) is 86.
37. Ron Moody (nominee Oliver!) is 86. For a recent article on this underappreciated sixties musical, click here.
38. Stanley Donen (Honorary Oscar) is 86. He's one of the best musicals director, most famous for that thrilling barn sequence in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the entirety of Singin' in the Rain.
39. Sidney Lumet (Honorary Oscar, plus 5 time nominee) just turned 86 last week. His classics include 12 Angry Men, Network, The Verdict and Dog Day Afternoon and he's also the man behind the extremely undervalued Running on Empty (1988). The best part is that he's still active. He recently made Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
    
40. Eva Marie Saint (winner On the Waterfront) turned 86 today, so we'll bookend with this other birthday girl. Happy birthday, Eva! Don't forget your gloves when you leave the party tonight.
    

Big screen actress icons I had to pass up for this list included Jane Russell, Maureen O'Hara, and Esther Williams. All are still among the living but none were ever Oscar nominated and haven't been given Honorary Awards. What a world, what a world. Christopher Lee, is another biggie that's never been nominated. He still works so consistently at 88 that it's possible they'll yet find a way to nominate him. Next up for Lee is Martin Scorsese's The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Carol Channing for Exit Music!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Further Reading? Try this substantial Gloria Stuart tribute at Ehrensteinland and if you're in LA, please note that AMPAS will be honoring Stuart's centennial at the Samuel Goldwyn theater on July 22nd.
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Splendor in the Blog

It's my birthday in just three days and I've been feeling so down, largely due to pet stress. I've also misplaced my creative mojo. I don't want to say I've lost it. ("It must be here somewhere," he says with budding panic in his voice.)


My first birthday gift arrived early: Nick reviewed Natalie Wood's Oscar nominated Splendor in the Grass (1961) performance. That's one of my very favorite performances, Oscar-nominated or otherwise by one of my favorite movie stars. When feeling blue, it's a good idea to lose yourself in actressing. My birthday gift to myself was The Michelle Pfeiffer Star Collection. My pronounced film obsession doesn't translate to DVD ownership (I know some people find that odd... but that's just the way it is) so I didn't have any of these yet, not even The Fabulous Baker Boys! I know, I know. I think I was holding out for the European version which I'd heard had better extras.

I think I'll just keep this old gif of 100 favorite actresses (I'll update it someday -- it definitely needs major revisions) on perma-loop to the top right corner of my screen.

Whenever I glance up, some talented beauty will be appearing and then vanishing, only to be replaced by another. The actress mojo is never lost or misplaced, and ever increases.

MM@M: Liz Taylor and BUtterfield 8

Mad Men at the Movies. Season 3 is hopefully in your DVD player and Season 4 debuts on Sunday July 25th, so we have a lot of catching up to do. We return to that movie-loving 1960s based series. If you're just joining us, the idea and personal motivation behind this series are explained here and you can also visit the season 1 recap in case you'd like to refresh your memory. Even if you've never seen the show, enjoy the movie history!

Now... back to Season 2 of Mad Men which kicks off on Valentine's Day, 1962.


2.01 "For Those Who Think Young"
In the first half of the episode, Don and Betty Draper (Jon Hamm & January Jones) are at the Savoy for the holiday when they run into an old roommate of Betty's, Juanita (Jennifer Siebel Newsom) out with a much older man. They exchange small talk and Betty asks for Juanita's phone number. Awkwardness ensues. Don has to inform his wife, inscrutably naive about sexuality as ever, that her old friend is "a party girl".

Betty, who loves to gossip, embellishes this encounter for her best friend Francine (the wonderful Anne Dudek) the next day.

Betty: ...she was in the lounge of the Savoy. She didn't look cheap except for this two carat stone. But she wasn't with a date. She was with... a companion.
Francine: I don't understand.
Betty: Don agreed with me. He was an old man. She's a call girl.
Francine: Really?! BUtterfield 8. I wonder what that's like?

True to form the Mad Men writers don't explain the time capsule reference but for movie buffs and Elizabeth Taylor devotees this particular movie note is well detailed.


BUtterfield 8 as a movie title refers to the phone number of call girl Gloria (La Liz). It's fitting then, that this subplot begins with an inappropriate phone number request. The sexually scandalous hit film opened in November 1960. Famously La Liz wears only a fur coat in one scene and what is Betty Draper's valentine's gift from husband Don but a fur coat. During their girl time gossip session, Francine teases that if prostitution means fur coats from Don than sign her up!

BUtterfield 8 may have been pop culture shorthand for "prostitute" in the 1960s but if people recognize the title today it's usually only as an Oscar footnote. Though the film isn't anything like a "respected" classic, its enduring infamy is as a major chapter in the career of one of the all time great stars. By the time BUtterfield 8 premiered, Liz Taylor was already more scandalous than her character Gloria "the slut of all time!" would ever be and in 1962 when this episode takes place she was still the subject of endless headlines. In our 2010 tabloid culture this is the norm but none of our modern stars can match Liz Taylor for sheer sustained bang for tabloid buck.

Consider just five years in her life and try to imagine how mammoth she'd be today given the 24 hour news cycle. I bet she'd dwarf any other star including Angelina Jolie (who is occasionally compared to her)

• 1957 Liz marries producer Mike Todd and turns 25 years old. She's already been famous for more than a decade and this is her third husband. The newlyweds attend the Oscars where he wins Best Picture for Around the World in Eighty Days (pictured left). In the summer she gives birth to a baby girl, her third child.
  
• 1958 She receives her first Oscar nomination for Raintree County. Four days before the ceremony, Todd is killed in a plane crash. Later that year she begins an affair with Eddie Fisher (also a huge star at the time), Todd's friend and the husband of her friend and fellow movie star Debbie Reynolds. As if that weren't enough drama for one year, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof hits movie theaters.
  
• 1959 She marries Eddie Fisher.
  
• 1960 Liz becomes the highest paid actress in Hollywood history signing on to Cleopatra for a cool million (the salary will balloon). BUtterfield 8, in which she co-stars with Eddie Fisher, is released but production on Cleopatra shuts down when she becomes ill.
• 1961 She receives her fourth consecutive Oscar nomination for BUtterfield 8 and during the Oscar voting period she has life threatening health complications. She is even pronounced dead at one point. She wins Best Actress while still in the hospital prompting Shirley Maclaine's famous quip "I lost the Oscar to a tracheotomy". Filming on Cleopatra resumes.
  

As you can imagine, the scandals and high-drama lifestyle didn't stop there.

Enter Richard Burton....


There never was a star like La Liz and there never will be again.

Suggested related post
78 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate Liz Taylor

Other cultural references in this Mad Men episode
Cinema: Pinocchio, Gone With the Wind | Books: Meditations in an Emergency | Celebrities: Jackie Kennedy | Special thanks, as always, to Mad Men fansite "Basket of Kisses" for goading this series into being.

Lynn Redgrave (1943-2010)

Very sad news today. The Redgrave acting dynasty has lost another famous and beloved member. Lynn Redgrave was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 (shortly after this photo to the left was taken). She succumbed yesterday at the age of 67 after a valiant seven year battle. The New York Times featured an amazing photojournal of her treatment process awhile back, photographed intimately by her daughter Annabel Clark in 2003 which you can still see here. Beautiful work.

Our hearts go out to Redgrave family.

Vanessa Redgrave, the eldest sister of the famous family is still with us (thank God) and still churning out amazing work...But Vanessa, one of the great actors of all time, has had a wrenching couple of years losing both siblings (Corin, Lynn & Vanessa's brother died just one month ago) and her daughter who died tragically fourteen months ago.

Though they only shared the big screen once, the sisters were close. They rose to fame with near synchronicity. Lynn will forever be known for Georgy Girl (1966) for which she was Oscar-nominated. Appropriately enough, given the family name, she shared that "first nomination" experience with her elder sister who was also honored with her first nod that year for Morgan.

Lynn Redgrave in 1966

In a joint npr interview in 2005 in which the sisters display plenty of respect and affection for each other, they discussed that breakthrough year.

Reporter: Was it hard to be in competition with each other in that way?
Vanessa: Not at all.
Lynn: It was lovely. I remember we kept being asked because the last set of sisters had reportedly -- which was Joan Fontaine and Olivia deHavilland -- been a little at odds with each other... Of course it makes a better press story for sisters to be jealous and hate each other. Just not true. We were -- we really couldn't believe that we were both going to the Oscars with our mum!

Young movie buffs will probably know Lynn best for her frequently indelible supporting performances in pictures like Gods & Monsters (1998, she was Oscar nominated) and Kinsey (2004). She never stopped working, even after her diagnosis. In te latter film she had just a short cameo but proved so moving in her closeup monologue that there was "nomination worthy!" rumblings at the time.

Vanessa and Lynn sisters offscreen and on for The White Countess (2005) --->

The last film I personally remember seeing Lynn in was Merchant/Ivory's The White Countess (2005) which starred three members of the family: Vanessa, Lynn and Natasha. The film is sadly becoming one of those properties that accidentally eulogizes several things at once; it's a gorgeous multiple swansong. It turned out to be both Ishmael Merchant's last film and Natasha's last leading role in a feature. It was also, as it turns out, the first and last movie collaboration between Vanessa and Lynn.

Rest in peace, Georgy Girl.