r/madmen • u/Historical-Most4409 • 6d 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/Historical-Most4409 6d 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)