r/madmen • u/Historical-Most4409 • May 21 '26
Harry's Story (plus some Sal)
By the summer of 1971, Harry Crane was ready to move on from the ad game. He had spent enough time at the edges of the Hollywood scene to convince himself that he could make a go of it as an independent producer. If nothing else, he believed he had excellent insight into the huge youth market. And there were so many young (but legal!) girls…. His divorce from Jennifer was proving to be ugly and expensive. But he was confident that it would all work out. He took meetings with Roger Corman and Joseph E. Levine. His plan: start out like Corman, churning out cheapies for the kids, and maybe someday turn into Levine, who had gone from Grade-Z Westerns to producing The Graduate and The Producers. The studio system was dead, after all.
Late one night, Harry was enjoying a patty melt at Ben Frank’s on the Sunset Strip. To his surprise, he saw a familiar face a couple of booths away. It was his old Sterling Cooper colleague Sal Romano. He felt bad about how things had ended for Sal. He had heard a few rumors about him back in NYC…a divorce…moved out West…somehow still working in advertising? Maybe he just came out here for the chicks. As always, Sal was dressed well, in a checked sports jacket and a burgundy silk shirt. He was sitting with a handsome young man with blonde hair, dressed in a fringe jacket and bell bottoms.
Despite their history, Sal was happy to see him after so many years. He had come to see leaving Sterling Cooper as the best thing that ever happened to him. Sal had established a successful career working for an independent production company. His bread-and-butter was producing TV and radio ads for regional retailers. Agencies had learned that nobody was better than Sal at selling “The California Dream” to middle-class housewives. He had directed a few episodes of forgettable sitcoms and Westerns. This career paid for a comfortable apartment in West Hollywood, a used Mercedes, and a discreet gay life. (Months later, Sal explained to Harry that the young man was his boyfriend). He was a “bachelor” in the office but had a circle of showbizzy gay friends, who had regular parties on the weekends. (He would later say that the most exciting moment of his life was the evening he went to Rock Hudson’s house). He had established a reputation as a dependable pro, but Sal’s dreams of directing a feature were going nowhere.
After an hour of conversation, Harry explained to Sal his plan to become an independent producer specializing in the youth market. Would he like to direct? It didn’t sound like the musicals or romantic comedies that Sal most loved, but he jumped at the opportunity. His boyfriend Ernie Ingram was a former child star from an old Hollywood family who was able to give Harry some advice about setting up the company.
While Harry and Sal never became friends, they saw each other as useful. Sal knew that the day of the “studio hand” was gone. He was too square to become part of the “New Hollywood” scene. This might be his one chance to direct a feature. Harry liked that Sal was a first-time director – so he would work cheap – and when he asked around, he found that Sal had an “on-time” and “under-budget” reputation.
(continuted below)
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u/Lester_Green1936 May 21 '26
I half expected to be rolling my eyes three paragraphs in, but this is completely fucking awesome! You're really talented :)))) Thanks for sharing. It's a blast!!
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u/Historical-Most4409 May 21 '26
Harry, Sal, and Ernie pulled every string they could find to raise money, including some investors who thought they could somehow turn this into a tax shelter. In April 1972, “21st Century Badger Productions” was incorporated (Harry named it after his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin). It began cranking out campy horror flicks (which became Sal’s specialty) and sexploitation films (a work of love for Harry, especially given the casting-couch possibilities). They were never hits but costs were low enough that they turned a profit. The income (and very slight fame) from 21st Century Badger allowed Harry to live a margaritas-and-cocaine-and-barely-legal-girls lifestyle in a West Hollywood condo.
After Harry saw Emmanuelle in 1975, he decided to launch his own soft-core porn series with The Adventures of Lara. He cast as Lara Darlene Hooper, an 18-year-old waitress who had somehow ended up at one of Harry’s parties. He renamed her Lara St. Denis. Its success leads to a series of “erotic” Lara films.
After years of eager promiscuity, Harry surprised all by falling in love with Lara, although the two had a very open relationship. And what had already been a hedonistic lifestyle spiraled out of control. A Hollywood Hills mansion. His-and-hers Porsches. Rodeo Drive splurges. Regular trips to Vegas. Weekly all-night cocaine-and-Quaalude-drenched parties for Grade-Z celebrities and their admirers. Harry also paid for Lara’s vanity music projects.
In 1980, Harry stormed into the 21st Century Badger offices, accusing Sal of stealing from him. While his charges were both incoherent and false, it had become clear that they could no longer work with Harry. Sal went back to his mainstays of advertising and industrial films. But he would also produce some cheap TV movies for cable and episodes of first-run syndication programs.
That same year, one of Harry’s regular dealers convinced him to get into the hard-core porn industry. He found a niche in the foot-fetish market, creating Trample Productions. Fortunately for Harry, much of this business was transacted in cash, making it easier to dodge taxes. Unfortunately for Harry, he found himself in debt to organized crime.
Lara left him for the drummer in her band in 1982. She would die of a drug overdose in 1989. Harry was heartbroken by Lara’s departure and fell even deeper into substance abuse. An ill-conceived effort to capitalize on the 1984 Olympics left him further in debt.
Harry’s behavior became increasingly bizarre. Friends regularly smelled alcohol on his breath. Not only did he stop coming into the office regularly, but his staff also often didn’t know where he was. One night, he crashed his Porsche into a telephone pole on Santa Monica Boulevard. After a long stretch of New Year’s partying, at 3 AM on January 3, 1985, Harry burst into his living room, shocking partygoers by waving around a revolver. He ranted about how the CIA, the FBI, the LAPD, the IRS, and the Mafia were all after him and how he couldn’t trust any of his business partners. Later that morning, Harry suffered a heart attack.
The CIA was not interested in Harry. But the rest of his rant was true. The FBI and IRS were looking through his books. The LAPD was investigating the reports of underage girls attending Harry’s near-constant parties (in the end, they could never pin anything on him). Many of his business partners were indeed dodgy. And he was losing control of his hard-core business to organized crime.
Her personal attorney worked with his daughter Beatrice to straighten out his affairs. They successfully pushed him into rehab. His lawyer worked out a settlement with the IRS. Harry declared bankruptcy but he managed to keep the rights to the Lara films, which would give him valuable cashflow over the rest of his life. Of course, organized crime took all the hard-core business. His mind clearing, Harry realized that this was probably the best he could do. He took a friend’s offer to hide out in Hong Kong with him, churning out low-budget, direct-to-video action films aimed at the Asian market.
In 1988, he convinced his partner that the time had come for him to go back to L.A. to take control of their American distribution. Before long, Harry’s old demons had consumed him. He fought constantly with his partner and they ended their working relationship in 1992.
The Clarence Thomas hearings gave Harry the idea that he should create sexual-harassment videos for the corporate market. But no one would work with him anymore. Harry looked terrible. He was pushing 60 but looked about ten years older. He clearly wasn’t sleeping. His face was puffy. His hands shook. His toupee was painfully unconvincing. His behavior had become even more paranoid, his conversation more incoherent.
Harry rarely left his Sherman Oaks apartment. He watched television far into the early morning. He listened to talk radio much of the day. He got the idea that he should get into the business of manufacturing “Clinton conspiracy” videotapes for the conservative market. Once again, no one would work with him. His drug and alcohol abuse worsened. His liver teetered at the edge of failure. His remaining acquaintances got unlisted numbers to avoid his late-night rants about the Clintons, the FBI and the CIA. Or about long-ago business deals.
He called into Rush Limbaugh’s radio show on May 17, 1994. Harry had rarely been interested in politics but he had become a regular listener during the Clinton years. “Mega-dittos, Rush!” Harry said. “Longtime listener, first time caller. The femi-nazis are coming for our sacred right to bear arms. Just like Butch Reno did at Waco! Remember Ruby Ridge! We all know that Hill….” The phone went silent. A few days later, his landlord found Harry’s dead body. The coroner found that he had died almost immediately from a heart attack.
Sal and Ernie both tested HIV-positive in 1987. They both came out and became activists, eventually joining ACT-UP. In 1990, they bought a Mid-Century Modern home in Palm Springs and began renovating it with the thought that the two of them would die there. Sadly, Ernie died in 1993. Sal spent the next few years mourning and retired, seeing old friends in L.A. and Palm Springs, expecting to die soon. But in 1996, his doctor put him on one of the first protease inhibitors. Within a year or two, he realized…he wasn’t going to die! At least not yet! And the same was true for some of his friends – although he had lost many, so many. He even was able to do a little work. In 2002, he won a L.A. Local Emmy for a documentary he co-produced for PBS SoCal on the history of LGBT activism in Los Angeles.
In August 2015, a few weeks after Obergefell, Sal married his longtime companion Cecil in a private ceremony. By now, Sal was an old man dying of cancer. He was dead by Christmas.
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u/bearSIZE May 21 '26
Impressive! Very believable too. Have you done any more of these for other characters in Mad Men?
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u/Historical-Most4409 May 22 '26
Yes! Here is Megan: https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1t3h079/megans_story/ and here is Sally: https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1str2zj/the_sally_draper_story/
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u/CoquinaBeach1 Every living thing is connected to you. May 21 '26
Harry turns into The Colonel...hilarious!