(This is a transcript of today's radio program which you can hear here.)
On April 5, the final season of Mad Men will begin. Almost from the beginning, people have been
speculating about how the popular series will end, though like Dorothy’s ruby
slippers, the answer was right before us from the very start. Don Draper’s existential
crisis was encapsulated right into the series credits, showing the adman in
free fall, drifting down down down until right when it looks like he’s going to
crash, we realize our perspective is all wrong, and he’s landed safely, on the
outside of that terrifyingly empty, materialistic world.
What hardly anyone knows is that Matthew Weiner’s iconic
character is based on the life of a real person. By the mid-70s, Dick Whitman,
aka Don Draper, had entirely given up the essential falseness and materialism of
the advertising world for the natural world. Yes, it’s true. Don Draper left
advertising to become a birdwatcher, first doing pro bono work for the Audubon
Society and then spending his final years in the mountains of California
protecting California Gnatcatchers and the last wild condors.
I have here in the studio some of the only people on the planet
who know the true story. We’ll start with me, because in fact, I not only knew
the real Don Draper, but I’m his daughter. You heard that right—Laura Erickson
is the real Sally Draper. During my freshman year of
college, I got active in the 1973 Earth Day celebration. My best friend, Glen Bishop, got active in
environmental issues in high school and college, so naturally I did, too. But
the thing we cared most about was wildlife, and by April 1973 we were very
frustrated that we’d not made much progress at all on getting an Endangered
Species Act passed. So I talked to my dad, who was reaching a crisis in his
marriage to Megan and hated advertising and everything else about
his life. He was desperate to find something true to believe in. When I asked
him if he could help us find some effective ways of persuading someone to
introduce the bill in the Senate, he grabbed at the opportunity like a
lifeline.
HENRY FRANCIS: I’m Henry Francis. I married Sally’s mother
in 1964. Don and I hated each other for a long time, but despite his character
flaws, we grudgingly grew to respect each other. When Sally asked him for help
with getting the Endangered Species Act through Congress, he turned to me. I’d
been quite influential in New York state politics, and he thought my
connections could help. I didn’t know anyone in New York who would be willing
to get embroiled in the controversial act, but was good friends with Pete
Williams, the New Jersey senator who had already made a reputation with his
controversial Coal Mine Safety and Health Act and Urban Mass Transportation
Act. Pete was the one who introduced the
Endangered Species Act. Don got so involved in that, and was so happy to earn
Sally’s respect, that he started working pro bono for the Audubon Society to
educate the public about endangered species.
SALLY DRAPER: His helping with the Endangered Species Act
marked a sea change in my relationship with both my parents. My mom and Henry
started treating me with more respect, and my dad and I grew very close, and
stayed that way from then on.
SALVATORE ROMANO: I’m Salvatore Romano, former art director
at Sterling Cooper. The 60s were a horrible time for a gay man in New York, or
really just about anywhere. Lee Garner Jr. from Lucky Strike made a pass at me—Garner
was a repulsive man in every way, but he held so much power over Sterling
Cooper that I tried to be as polite as possible when I turned him down. But he demanded
that the agency fire me, and Don went along, even making a cutting remark about
“you people” to me. I was devastated. I disappeared into the seamiest elements
of New York City’s gay community, and I even fell into the drug
scene for a while. Matthew Weiner didn’t go into it in the TV series, but it
was Don Draper who pulled me out. He’d been having horrible nightmares about
his dead brother—he told me he was tired of being the cause of so much
devastation, and he begged me to let him help me since he’d played a part in my
problems, too. He bought me a first class ticket to San Francisco and used his
connections to set me up with some great job interviews, and even paid for a
couple of suits and a visit to his barber so I’d make a good impression. I’d
long since lost my portfolio, but he dug up a lot of my work and put it all
together to make me look pretty impressive.
If you didn’t want to hide in the closet, San Francisco was
way better than New York for a gay man back then. Thanks to Don, I got a great job
as an art director in the theater community, doing the kinds of real art that
an adman only dreams of. That got me involved in the local theater scene, too—after
a lifetime of misery, I was in heaven. Plus I crossed paths with the man who
has now been my partner for decades. Edward is one of the least artistic gay
men in the world—of all things, he was a birder, happiest out hiking in some godforsaken
landscape watching condors or tiny little gnatcatchers—but somehow we both
expanded each other’s worlds and settled into a very happy life together. When
Don started promoting endangered species, he looked up Edward and that’s how he
and I reconnected. Don Draper was certainly messed up for a while, but he was
one of the most fundamentally decent human beings I’ve ever known. I was proud
to be his friend up to the very end.
JIM BAKER: This is me, Jim Baker. I was a copywriter at McCann
Erickson in the early 70s. I thought I was the only birder in the New York
advertising world until one day during spring migration, out of the blue, who
do I run across in Central Park but Don Draper, looking up at a Cerulean
Warbler. Yep, he got me my lifer! This was 1975, and
by then he was out of advertising and doing work for the Audubon Society. Don
was still pretty much bicoastal at that point, but whenever he was in town,
we’d meet in Central Park before work. When I couldn’t take that life anymore
in the 80s, it was Don who helped me move my stuff up to Lake Superior to start
Baker’s Blue Jay Barn. And whenever he couldn’t hack how his life was going,
he’d hole up with me in the North Woods for a little R&R with Nature’s
Perfect Birds. By then neither of us had a telephone, but we wrote each other
about our bird sightings every Sunday. One week, his letter didn’t come. He was
working on his California Gnatcatcher project, and I knew some rich landowners
had threatened him, so I flew out. It was me who found his body—well, what was
left of it.
EARTH ANGEL: I’m
Earth Angel. My real name, of course, is Suzanne Farrell: I was Sally Draper’s
teacher. That was when Don’s marriage to Betty was falling apart, and it was a
very bad time for both of us. I stuck with teaching in Ossining for a few more
years, but after reading Silent Spring, I started working on environmental
issues and moved out to Oregon to do Spotted Owl work with my brother. Don and
I reconnected when he was helping Sally on the Endangered Species Act.
SALLY DRAPER: At first I hated that—it gave me the
creeps that my dad had had a relationship with my teacher and now was hooking
up with her all over again! But by then I was starting to see that even though
he was so messed up about women, my dad was a good guy, and Miss Farrell—I mean
Suzanne—was good for him and made him happy.
EARTH ANGEL: After Jim Baker found Don’s body, hundreds of
people came out of the woodwork to tell us how Don had changed their lives. We
received millions of dollars in contributions.
JIM BAKER: He never wanted any recognition for himself, so
we earmarked all the money to Don’s three pet projects: the Adam Whitman Environmental
Education Center in Illinois on the old farm site where Don spent his early childhood; the Lane Pryce National Wildlife Refuge and Jaguar
Protection Project in southeastern Arizona; and of course, the Bert Cooper Theater
in San Francisco.
EARTH ANGEL: Don explained all about Bert Cooper. After
Cooper died, his spirit started appearing to Don, always singing and dancing.
At first Don thought he was hallucinating, but little by little, he came to
realize that this really was the spirit of Bert Cooper. Bert Cooper
was sharing with his protégé his after-death realization that Ayn Rand was
wrong. How we deal with our fellow travelers, animal and human, on this
beautiful planet is how we are measured as human beings. That’s it. Don Draper spent
the rest of his life trying to live up to that simple message.
SALLY DRAPER: And that’s the true story of my dad, Don
Draper, aka Dick Whitman. You’ll find out all about it when Mad Men starts up
again, at least if Matthew Weiner sticks to the truth.
****
With the voice talents and support of Brad Adams, John Keenan, Karen Keenan, and Kat Steffens, and artwork by Michael Geraci.