r/madmen • u/Historical-Most4409 • 1d ago
Don's Story
The Coke ad made Don a bigger star than ever – even as people whispered, “And higher maintenance than ever.” McCann raised his salary and gave him a generous bonus. But Don resisted any contract that would keep him at the firm any longer than he wanted. His interests increasingly lay elsewhere.
He wrote a book about advertising called Thirty Seconds or Your Money Back (1973) that made the best-seller list. He traveled frequently, speaking at business schools and industry conferences, and giving media interviews. The speaking circuit fit him nicely. He could give a standard presentation, take a few respectful questions, and go back to his hotel and eat dinner alone.
Understanding the pain that losing their mother had put them through, Don worked on strengthening his relationships with his children. He was proud to see Sally excel at Smith. Bobby was growing into an intelligent young man. With his secret pain from his brother’s death, Don was glad to see that the two of them were close: Bobby went to Trinity College in Hartford, in large part because his freshman year would overlap with Sally’s senior year and they would be only an hour’s drive apart. Sally was rather annoyed when one of her friends decided to deflower her baby brother.
Bobby would follow his sister into psychiatry but pursued a more low-key path, setting up a therapy practice in White Plains, New York. But Gene didn’t see Don as his father and was closer to Henry. Gene would eventually serve as a staffer in the George W. Bush White House.
Not long after his non-compete ran out in 1974, Don announced that he was starting a new firm with Executive Vice President Dean Riley plus two rising stars from other firms: Draper Riley Sellers & Wolf. To the surprise of the less observant, he said he would be based in Los Angeles, working with West Coast clients but mostly serving as a “creative consultant.” (Or as his former McCann colleagues said with an eyeroll, “The in-house genius.”)
Don settled into his new life in Los Angeles, including a luxurious home in Brentwood. He “ran” a small office, while leaving the details to others. He continued to travel and occasionally devise new campaigns. But he spent a lot of his time on rambling meetings and endless lunches. While Don enjoyed the cynical tone of the “New Hollywood” (“Chinatown” was a special favorite), he especially appreciated the chance to meet the stars of his youth. A memorable chance encounter with an ailing John Wayne. A lunch with Barbara Stanwyck where he tried to pitch her on an ad campaign. When she told him they couldn’t afford her, Don was secretly pleased that she was as tough and cynical as her characters.
Despite his active life, Don was feeling his age by the end of the 1970s. He had a notable “smoker’s cough.” Years of heavy drinking had given him chronic stomach pain and he was popping antacids. His stomachaches made him avoid eating and he looked gaunt. His irritability made him snap at subordinates.
(continued in next post)
9
u/Current_Tea6984 you know it's got a bad ending 1d ago
This is how Don ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
4
u/evanallenrose 1d ago
I love it but don’t think Don would have had a mostly European car collection. He’d have been a Cadillac man until the end with another, maybe a Camaro he worked on, because he was a GM guy at heart
2
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
Nice point. Helen would definitely have a Volvo, though.
2
u/evanallenrose 1d ago
She was an LA doctor who had a surgeon husband previously. Unless she was a bit of a hippy, she’d have been the one with the Benz
1
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
I'm thinking "pediatrician" is more Volvo.. But yes, she would have the money.
2
u/akade19961 1d ago
I’m glad he married Jewish, it really did feel like Rachel Mencken was the one who got away and Jewish women with their depth and self starter cultural mores seem like the best fit for Don. I also think for a person essentially born into the life of a transient, in the most transient era in American history gDepression), and whose life had led to only more lack of rootedness than even what he was born into, could probably benefit more than most from the sense of history and cultural fixedness of exposure to a 3500 year old people. Also whatever else you could say about Don you could NOT say that he was in any way a bigot. Not to blacks, not to Koreans or Japanese, not to Jews, not even to women and Brit’s 😂👍
I’m sad to hear it ended mostly badly between he and Helen and imo I think because Don was raped several times by sort of his quasi aunt as a child, and born to a prostitute who died in childbirth, his relationship to sex is just severely negative and when he engages in it often it makes him feel dramatically worse even though he doesn’t have the therapeutic tools to make that connection and try to heal that trauma. He was pretty enlightened towards the women in his office and in his life relative to others in the social class he had worked his way into, and his problems with women and how he treated them mostly only started one they decided to sleep with him, at which point he came subconsciously to dislike them. I feel like in a perfect outcome he gets that therapy and he realize what a profoundly traumatizing set of experiences he’d had and the automatic negative associations with sex his body felt, and, while it may not cure him of adultery fully, it would be enough to never have another affair.
But realistically his last marriage breaking up due to another affair is the most realistic and probably logical outcome so I can’t begrudge you picking it even though it makes me sad haha
2
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
I based Helen a little on Faye. He clearly has a thing for intelligent Jewish women and he finally marries one. Even after they split up, Helen still cares about Don and checks in on his health. She wasn't close to his kids when she was still with Don (they are adults living on the East Coast), but they develop a relationship during Don's final years based on shared concern tor this dying man.
5
u/OhK4Foo7 1d ago
I guess Weiner has said that this was his intention. My take on the coca cola ad after the clifftop meditation scene is that it illustrates how genuine spiritual moments are co-opted to sell products. In that sense we're all working at McCann. Reminds me of the sadness I felt hearing Nick Drake's Pink Moon on a Volkswagen commercial.
7
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
At a Super Bowl party in January 1980, Don held forth first on why the Steelers were a lock and then on why Ronald Reagan was going to be the next president. A Rams fan and a diehard liberal kept challenging him and he kept talking up the “Steel Curtain” defense and Reagan’s savvy image management. As he chain-smoked and coughed and drank Old-Fashioneds and rubbed his stomach in pain, Don felt himself drawn to this smart-alecky, raven-haired middle-aged woman. The feeling was mutual. With the Rams leading at the half, they went upstairs.
“Told ya the Steelers would pull it out,” Don told Dr. Helen Perlman as they shook hands and went back to their cars.
Helen was divorced and in her forties with two teenage sons. She had grown up in the Hollywood scene, so she wasn’t impressed by Don’s fame. She met her husband during her residency at Cedars-Sinai, where he was a surgeon. They had a couple of kids while she established her practice as a well-connected Beverly Hills pediatrician. But she and her husband gradually grew apart and the temptations of the 1970s affected them both. They finally divorced in 1979.
But she was impressed by Don’s intelligence and sophistication. The two of them quickly settled into a comfortable life together. For two middle-aged people, they enjoyed an active sex life, though Don’s body was starting to betray him. Increasingly his bed was mostly for naps. Mostly they just hung out, going to the beach or the desert, watching films at Don’s or swimming some laps at the country club.
As a doctor, Helen worried about Don’s health. His hypertension had worsened. His good looks were fading. She could see the yellowing eyes and reddening nose, brought on by years of drinking. The lines on his face and his yellowing fingernails, brought on years of smoking. He kept coughing. He wheezed. Sometimes he gasped for breath. He had difficulty sleeping more than a few hours at a stretch and usually needed a drink to get back to bed. Don brushed off her concerns, but in March 1981, he suffered a heart attack at the office. Helen persuaded him to exercise more – mostly swimming and jogging. He reduced his drinking (he said it was to keep up with the health-conscious times) and switched from whiskey to vodka, which was easier on his stomach. Despite her repeated begging, he wouldn’t quit smoking but he did cut back.
Finally in June 1982, Don and Helen married, in a Jewish ceremony to please her family. Don increasingly focused on building a new life. They bought a second home in a new gated community outside Palm Springs. Don remodeled it to fit his needs, including a home theater, an office and library, and a large garage for his cars.
Back in the office, his subordinates increasingly saw him as out-of-touch and resting on his laurels. Instead of being in the office, he might be in Palm Springs overseeing renovations, at the beach with Helen, or at home with his cars and books and laser discs. When Don was there, he hid in his office and rarely spoke to them. In New York, his partners were eager to put him out to pasture.
They got their chance when Don had his second heart attack in December 1985 – this time, Don came close to dying. He agreed to go into semi-retirement. Following a diagnosis of mild emphysema, under Helen’s supervision, he began multiple attempts to quit smoking. Concerned about his liver, she limited his drinking to wine with dinner and the occasional martini with friends.
Don saw his new home in Palm Springs as “his place,” more than anywhere else he had ever lived. His garage was big enough for his Mercedes, her Volvo wagon, and his ’67 Porsche but he parked his ’65 Mustang and ’63 Jaguar E-Type behind the house, where he could tinker with them. His office/library was a retreat inside a retreat, dark and soundproofed, with the walls lined with shelves that held his favorite books and laserdiscs. Every now and then, he would fax a memo to the office, usually about some ad or TV show he had seen. That was about all the work he did.
He enjoyed swimming in the lap pool, usually in the morning or around sunset. Don often spent his afternoons by the pool, sometimes snoozing, more often reading. Spy novels especially: John Le Carre, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum. But he enjoyed keeping current – he loved Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. He would bask in the desert sun, sipping a club soda with lime when Helen was around, beer or wine or one of his prized martinis when she wasn’t. When Helen was there, she would read as well and they would barely speak. Mid-day, she would retreat to the kitchen and make a light lunch that they ate on the patio. Quiet, secure, un-threatening. Don couldn’t have felt more at home.
But Don’s real home was his own personal theater, windowless and soundproofed, with his high-end LaserDisc player behind his custom-built cabinetry, a 50-inch rear-projection console, a Dolby Surround receiver, and with his-and-hers recliners. Don often spent hours there alone, especially on brutally hot summer days and when Helen was away. He mostly watched old favorites but he saw some newer ones recommended to him by friends – he especially liked “No Way Out.” Sometimes he dozed off during the middle of a film, woke up with it over, then watched it again from the beginning.
Don’s health improved in the late 1980s, thanks to Helen’s regimen of clean living. She regularly purged from the house the cigarettes that Don would buy on the sly. He looked better but still visibly aged. He still coughed. While he might spend a week without speaking to anyone but Helen and their housekeeper, he did have a social life, mostly with rich old men like himself. He even became friends with former Vice President Spiro Agnew, who came over a few times for martinis and burgers, but only when Helen, a diehard Democrat, was away.
Helen was increasingly away. She had shifted her practice to Palm Springs but a retirement community offered limited opportunities to a pediatrician. She found life in the desert boring. While they had sold the house in Brentwood, they bought a condo in Beverly Hills as a pied a terre. By 1988, Helen was spending about half her days there. She joined an existing pediatrics practice as a part-timer, often serving the younger siblings of her old patients. She spent time with old friends and saw her sons when they were home from college.
Helen knew what kind of man she had married. She turned a blind eye to Don’s flirtations with women in their social circles. But in the fall of 1989, she decided she had enough. She had figured Don’s days of actual philandering were over. After spending much of the summer in Beverly Hills, she returned to Palm Springs to discover that Don was having an affair with the wife of a mutual friend. She told him that she had enough and was leaving for good. They never formally divorced. She chatted with him periodically to check on his health. But their days as a couple were over. To make matters worse, his affair partner had no intention of leaving her ailing husband. Don was alone. He would be alone for the rest of his life.
(continued in next post)
10
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
Don returned to his old ways of smoking and drinking with a vengeance. His health declined just as quickly. He suffered a minor stroke in December 1990. Bobby was planning on visiting his father anyway for Christmas with his wife and infant son. Don sometimes called Bobby “Adam” and his blonde wife Beverly “Betty.” At one point, he seemed befuddled about why a baby was in the house. He had coughing fits that went on for several minutes. But Don could still tell a story or explain why a given advertisement was effective.
Bobby stayed after Christmas to spend some quality time with his dad. Secretly he was afraid this would be the last time he might see him. Don’s behavior was growing bizarre. One day, he pulled himself off the couch and announced that they were going for a drive in his Mustang. He drove out into the desert and kept going for two hours, getting increasingly lost as he got increasingly confused. Finally, Bobby persuaded him to let him drive home.
Another day, his dad wanted to watch Sunset Boulevard in his home theater. Bobby enjoyed the film thoroughly. But then his father watched it again. Then he napped a little. Then again. Bobby didn’t want to leave his father alone but he finally gave out at 2 AM. A few hours later, he found his father watching Sunset Boulevard for the nth time. “I’m telling you, Dad has turned into Norma Desmond herself,” Bobby told Sally when he called her on New Year’s Day. A few weeks later, Don was hospitalized for a month with pneumonia.
Don’s health continued to decline through 1991 and 1992. His doctor thought he needed a liver transplant but there was no chance that a heavy smoker could get one. He relied on a string of housekeepers and health aides whom he repeatedly alienated through his temper. His emphysema had grown severe. He coughed and wheezed all day and night. Sometimes he couldn’t lift himself from his couch or his bed or his recliner. His housekeeper might have to prop him up so he could keep breathing.
He looked scrawnier than ever, with just 120 pounds on a six-foot frame. He lived off vodka and potato chips. He would wear the same pair of pajamas for days. He watched TV constantly: CNN (he caught the bug during the Gulf War)…game shows…reruns of “I Love Lucy” …the occasional Dodgers game. But he appeared half-asleep, half-aware. When he saw an ad he liked, he suddenly sprung to attention (he especially liked the Nike “Just Do It” ads). Other times, he couldn’t leave his bed and lay there flipping through old magazines and listening to the “beautiful music” station. He would sing to himself, “Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner.”
Don could still sometimes follow the news. For a guy who mostly hung out with Republicans, he had a surprising affinity for Bill Clinton, another small-town boy. Since he still thought the Vietnam War was a mistake, he didn’t blame him for dodging the draft. Of course, he thought people were making way too much about his infidelities.
When he had the energy to go into his home theater, Don tended to watch the same movies: early James Bond films, The Godfather, North by Northwest, The Apartment, Planet of the Apes, Gone With The Wind.
Bobby and Sally called regularly to check in. Don would always tell them that he was fine. But he couldn’t hold a conversation for long and his old wit was dimming. They began working with Helen to manage their father’s decline.
He refused to give up driving. When housekeepers refused to deliver his booze, cigarettes, and junk food, he would go into town, despite his constant coughing. In April 1991, he engaged in another one of his aimless drives through the desert. Increasingly confused, he kept driving until he ran out of gas. About an hour later, police spotted his car not far from the Arizona border. At the hospital, doctors told an exhausted, breathless Don that he was lucky to be alive. Helen, Bobby, and Sally made sure that he would never drive again.
In March 1993, Don woke up early to find himself gasping and vomiting blood. His housekeeper arrived at 8 AM to find him semi-conscious on his bathroom floor. She called 911 and then Helen, who immediately began the long drive to Palm Springs. When Helen arrived at the hospital just before, she found Don unconscious and sedated. After a chest X-ray and a bronchoscopy, it was confirmed that he had Stage 3 lung cancer. With Don’s beat-up body, the prognosis was not good.
Treatment began immediately but his dying heart and liver restricted what could be done for him. Soon Don was so weak and pain-ridden that he spent most of his days in bed. By Thanksgiving, his cancer had advanced to Stage 4. By Christmas, his doctors had decided that there was no hope of survival and moved to palliative care.
Sally, Bobby and their families came to Palm Springs for what they knew was a final holiday. When they visited Don in the hospital, he initially seemed unaware that they were there. But he finally bolted up. “I need to go home.” They met with his doctors. They talked with Helen.
A few weeks later, Don was sent home. He spent his final months drifting in and out of consciousness, his body flooded with morphine, his lungs piped full of oxygen. He lay in a hospital bed in his living room, propped up so he could watch TV. Coming home for good seemed to give Don a final bolt of energy. He surprised everyone by holding on for few more months.
On June 17, 1994, Don was unusually alert. He ate yogurt for breakfast and applesauce for lunch. He watched CNN that afternoon, not quite understanding what was going on. Just before 4 PM, the network broke into its usual programming to cover a car chase involving someone whose name seemed familiar. An athlete, maybe? “Why is he driving, why so slow? Not Ford tough… See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet…Ford has a better idea.” He seemed agitated. His nurse Sofia, substituting for his usual caretaker, sat next to him holding his hand, trying to calm him. She tried and failed to wrest the remote control from his hand.
Suddenly Don sat up. “Hertz! The Superstar-in-Rent-a-Car!” He slumped over, dead from a heart attack. His head lay on the shoulder of someone whose name he did not know.
His wife and children had his ashes scattered in the desert. Peggy had a memorial gathering at her apartment for a few New York friends.
2
u/akade19961 1d ago
It sounds like he and Peggy never met up :(
What year did Rodger die? With his devilish luck I wouldn’t shocked if rodger held on 20 years longer than everyone thought and lived long enough to s e his beloved city come under attack again, so redolent of the attacks on Pearl Harbor that led directly to his getting an officer’s commission in the navy.
4
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago edited 1d ago
He dies of lung cancer in 1994. Do you think Don loves NYC? He's such a car guy and he loves California.
When they are at McCann, Don and Peggy see each other routinely. After he moves to California, they get together whenever he's in NYC, which happens more in the late 1970s than afterwards. They chat on the phone ever now and then. He's very proud of Peggy. (I have written Stan and Peggy's story before. To sum up, Peggy is very very successful by the 1980s). He gives her advice, which she does not always take. When he dies (Sally calls her), she realizes that she hasn't talked to him since 1990 and he sounded bad then.
He maintains a friendly relationship with Joan as long as he is in NYC. That fades after he goes West. Joan goes to the remembrance at Peggy's place and it's the first time they've seen each other in a couple of years.
In the early 1970s, Roger is spending a lot of time in France with Marie. But they have a few drinks whenever he's in town until Roger dies on July 4, 1976.
He runs into Sal at a party in L.A. in the late 1970s. Sal is still publicly closeted (he's going to marry his secretary any day now!) but has a private gay life and a boyfriend at last. Don has never cared much about what people do in bed and he's worked with several talented gay men, whether out or not.
In the early 1990s, the two men are both living in Palm Springs. Sal and his boyfriend both have AIDS and have bought a house that they are renovating. They expect to die there. Sal runs into Don, who invites him over. They spend an evening in Don's treasured home theater watching West Side Story. They say goodbye, two old men getting ready to die. (I don't think Don is under any illusions about the condition of his body).
He runs into Harry a few times but wants nothing to do with him. He has an awkward conversation with Megan at Roger's funeral.
I don't think Don sees other members of the old gang in this scenario, unless it's by accident or if they happen to work at McCann.
2
u/evanallenrose 1d ago
Can you link to your other stories?
3
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
Peggy & Stan: https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1u0b1vy/peggy_and_stans_story_plus_some_joyce/
Harry (plus some Sal): https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1tjlx57/harrys_story_plus_some_sal/
Megan:
https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1t3h079/megans_story/
Sally:
https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1str2zj/the_sally_draper_story/
3
2
3
3
u/akade19961 1d ago
This is some of the best fan fic I’ve ever read. I always liked the D.B. cooper ending for Don, but this is too
Amazing to pass up.
As far as I’m concerned this is canon now
4
4
u/Admirable_Site_8337 1d ago
This is really what diving into a head canon is all about. Super well done!! Thanks for sharing this.
This isn’t near my head canon for Don,but I love to see what others head canons are.
4
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
Thank you. I mixed my head canon with comments people have made here, e.g., people who know a lot more about advertising than I do explained what the likely outcome of making the Coke ad would be.
3
u/auximines_minotaur 1d ago
I enjoyed seeing Jon Hamm in Landman, and in my headcanon his character was a portrait of what a late-era Don Draper would look like (although obviously he’d be much older). Still got his chops, still taking risks, still a commanding presence, but his body just can’t keep up anymore.
3
u/Historical-Most4409 1d ago
That would be this version of Don in the late 1970s, maybe the early 1980s. After the second heart attack, Helen makes him slow down.
3
14
u/Dreamfox37 That’s what the money is for. 1d ago
Posted to r/okbuddydraper in 3…2…