What's Wrong With This Picture?

[brib68]

Double percolators

I don't know that having a pair of percolators is necessarily an odd thing. Granted a family of lesser means would probably choose one and use it until it died, but having the option of a stove-top Corning or an electric to use was a nice little luxury that wasn't extravagant. The Corning would be easier to clean (submersible) but would be more suited to immediate consumption. I think the electric would have kept the coffee warm for multiple cups during the day. The electric was probably the one used for entertaining as well.

As for the Brady residence...in the earlier seasons (shall we call them the Thermador stainless years?) Alice did most of the coffee serving from a very large patterned avocado green coffee pot that never seemed to go on the stove. Perhaps it was an insulated coffee server? It seemed extremely big around compared to a normal percolator or coffee pot.

 

[tomoldcars]

My son builds TV and movie sets and was on the last few weeks of Mad Men production. I asked him about it and he said they were pretty anal about period accuracy. The producer would not allow any Phillips head screws for fittings such as door hinges in sets that would be in the era of slotted screws. I, being a Ludite, just recently migrated from an antenna to cable so I haven’t watched Mad Men. AMC is running an encore starting last Sunday, I’ll try to watch. A bit of pride; he’s been building sets since Seventh Heaven, most recently, Monk, Dexter, California Power Ball commercial and is now building sets for The Voice. As a result, I get to spend a lot of time in Hollywood. I don’t think I could be paid enough to live there.

 

[neptunebob]

Maybe so, but I will bet that Jon Hamm is wearing Dockers.

 

[danemodsandy]

Tom:

"....he said they were pretty anal about period accuracy."

Mad Men got a lot better about accuracy as it went along. They got a lot of heat the first couple of seasons, and I think it forced them to up their game. By the fifth season, inaccuracies are small, mostly some kitchen/tabletop items in Don and Megan's penthouse.

 

[brib68]

More double percolators

We watched some Brady Bunch last night from season 2, and noticed they had a Corningware blue cornflower percolator on the back counter, but I've never seen it in use.

 

[cadman]

Sandy, I don't necessarily disagree, but you and I both know working Selectrics can be picked up for peanuts on ebay and Craigslist. Just send an intern out with a couple hundred bucks and you're set for the season ; ) Don't even bother with the work of making replicas.

The earlier machines are tougher to find and heaven forbid you want them to work reliably. This past spring I restored a Model C Executive; I have another on the bench right now. Compared to the Selectric mechanism there's about a million things that stick, bind, bend and go out of adjustment. Plus you can fake typing in the background on a Selectric without it plugged in, whereas that carriage better be moving on the other machines. I did notice in later seasons where they actually had a budget that you saw some of the older typewriters in the private offices, so they eventually got it right.

Know what really bugs me? Every time you see someone watching a TV set the picture is snowy, rolling, ghosting and the horizontal is about to go out of sync, even on Don Draper's expensive new set. It's all done digitally, of course. Do they just assume the picture has to look like crap because "it's old"? Ugh.

 

[NYCWriter]

Brian ...

"The Corning would be easier to clean (submersible) but would be more suited to immediate consumption."

Actually, I have the EXACT model electric percolator that Betty Draper had in that house. Mine is a 1965 Hoover (rebranded Presto), that is, in fact, completely submersible with removable cord (but of course not dishwasher safe).

 

[NYCWriter]

The Brady kitchen ...

... even as a child, I wondered how Alice could keep the bricks around that built-in grill next to the double oven so pristine.

Then I realized I never actually saw them COOK on it ...

And then the Hollywood bubble burst for me.

 

[brib68]

Matt

I bow to your firsthand knowledge of that percolator. My mom's electric was a Westie and I think it had a detachable cord, but the controls were built into the pot, which seems pretty common for coffee pots, electric skillets etc from the 60s. (Or maybe we were just poor! Yeah, that's probably it.)

It wasn't until fairly recently that I really clued in on the Bradys' (and the Stevens') indoor grills--both unused. I never even saw my first Jenn-Air until the late 70s. Fun Fact: I now own a mid/late 70s vintage Jenn-Air cooktop (came with the house) and can see WHY Alice (and Samantha) never grilled inside the house. Cleanup is a beyotch!

Come to think of it, I don't think the Bradys ever used their built-in outdoor grill, either.

 

[davey7]

Their cooktop and oven look between the fridge and dishwasher in age. But wouldn't they have had a matched set? I mean, being in advertizing, wouldn't he had gotten deals on new appliances (and certainly not from SEARS! He would have gone to Friendly Findlay's!) and in those days an exec needed to entertain clients a lot more (shoot, my dad wasn't even in business but my parents entertained his colleagues a lot more than happens today among mine) so the house would have had to look good, though the guests, except some of the ladies, would have avoided the kitchen. Just like Samantha and whathisname, Derwood?

 

[danemodsandy]

Davey7:

Don had only been pulling in an ad exec's salary for a few years at that point, plus he had a wife and two children. The house was an expensive one, in a very good Ossining, NY neighborhood.

Added to that, the midcentury years weren't the credit-card society we have today; credit was not as easy to get. You typically had to apply in writing and furnish three local references, which were closely checked, plus a local bank reference. The idea behind granting credit then was to have as few losses as possible and to entice customers with an attractive interest rate. Today, easy credit makes easy profits through high interest - particularly from those who pay minimum payments - and fees for everything. A greater amount of loss is considered acceptable because profits on the rest are staggering.

People then did not charge complete new kitchens as often as happens today because of that. In 1959, my parents rebuilt our house after a fire, and courtesy of the insurance company, most of the kitchen was new, including a 1958 GE Combination (my mother's usual last-year's model savings strategy) that was the envy of the neighborhood. But they couldn't justify a new range, because the old 1948 Frigidaire RK-70 40-incher was still perfectly good, if stylistically outdated. Mom lived with that situation until 1974.

It was a different time, and people then did not put themselves in hock over non-essentials as readily as people do today. One or two luxuries on time payments was okay. Not everything in your house, plus two cars and everything on your back, plus vacations.

 

[vacbear58]

MM

As a Mad Men fan, this has been a fascinating thread.

The picture of the Draper's kitchen is actually an intermediate one, initially there was no dishwasher on the set (see 1st screen grab below) so it would not necessarily have matched the other appliances and, although I am certainly not an expert on US dishwashers, even to my eye the dishwasher looks far too modern to be 1961 or so.

The fridge got changed too, by season 3.

Again I am no expert but it seems to me like the original fridge would have been somewhat older that the oven and cooktop although I guess that they changed pretty dramatically with the (or so it seems to me) sudden transition from rounded bodies to squared off. As the kitchen was mostly in place at the start of the series it could have been that it was a reflection of their lower income when first married (and presumably they moved into the house shortly after they married) that they might have used an older fridge or "last year's" model. As I recall Don joined the agency in 1955 at which time he knew Betty but was not married to her although it could not have been too long after that they did marry given Sally's age.

By the time we join the story they seem to be much more prosperous as later on Betty has a complete makeover done on the living room (with a designer as I remember it) without even asking Don about it.

Its been brilliant reading everyone's opinions and thoughts on the show

Al

 

[warmsecondrinse]

TV controls and purchases on credit

Great! Now I have to add Mad Men to the list of shows I have to see one day.

"Know what really bugs me? Every time you see someone watching a TV set the picture is snowy, rolling, ghosting and the horizontal is about to go out of sync, even on Don Draper's expensive new set. It's all done digitally, of course. Do they just assume the picture has to look like crap because "it's old"? Ugh."

Even as little kids my friends and I were amazed at how few adults actually knew what those "Horizontal" and "Vertical" knobs were for or how to use them. The "Fine Tuning" knob was a mystery to quite a few as well....

Credit Purchases:

My dad once per month (maybe less often?) by Haskins & Sells so most purchases were made on credit and painstakingly monitered so as to incur minimal finance charges. However, BankAmericard and MasterCharge were not nearly as widely accepted in the '60's. Most stores took only their own charge cards. My dad literally had 2 wallets, the larger just to hold all the charge cards.

Anyone remember Jordan Marsh? Where I grew up it was everyone's first card because the only requirement as I recall was to have a job, any job. The starting credit limits were comically low (like $50) but went up quickly as long as you paid on time.

Jim

 

[danemodsandy]

Sandy Presents:

The Case of the Peripatetic Servel.

This is not an error, but rather something that shows good use of HTF midcentury props:

The Servel fridge seen in the Draper garage also was used in Peggy Olsen's first apartment, seen in Season 2. The wear-through marks in the paint of the door are identical in this shot and in the garage shot at the top of this thread.

Most viewers would never spot this, but I'm trained to see stuff of this kind. This is not the only example of a "roving" prop on Mad Men; there's an orange sofa that appears in more than one office at the ad agency in later seasons.

And this use of the Servel is spot-on; Servels were a frequent choice by landlords of the era, because they were silent in operation and usually went a long time without repairs. The last apartment my family lived in before we got our first house had a Servel in it.

 

[NYCWriter]

"Snowy" pictures ...

"Every time you see someone watching a TV set the picture is snowy, rolling, ghosting and the horizontal is about to go out of sync, even on Don Draper's expensive new set."

It all depends on the cameras used to film or tape the show.

TVs and computer monitors are actually all blinking at superfast speeds called "refresh rates". Depending on equipment and modes, those refresh rates can range from around 30 to 90 cycles per second.

When you record, your video camera also has a refresh rate that may or may not be at a similar frequency, but nevertheless will rarely be synchronized.

Unless it's perfectly synchronized with the monitor being recorded, you will see flickering and that "roll bar".

This is why, even in today's news reports, when they shoot a cutaway of an office or classroom, the computer monitors all appear to be flickering (or even rolling), but in real life, I doubt any of us have seen in person a flickering or rolling computer monitor!

Now, there are some sophisticated cameras out there that can eliminate this effect, but they are expensive (even by institutional broadcast standards) and relatively rare.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

I don't think you get it NYC. It's not about what camera was filming the scene, it's about the portrayal on how TV reception was back then.

 

I remember how it was. The DuMont in the living room was plugged into the buildings central antenna. Never an issue, all channels came in crystal clear. The Admiral in my folks room  used a set top Rembrandt antenna. My sisters Panasonic and my Zenith used the built-in telescoping antennas. Sometimes you had to fiddle with them for some channels, But at the end they always came in steady and clear. None of this constant rolling, ghosting bullshit MM is trying to portray. I complained about that on AMC's website. Another surprise was that no one had color TV prior 1966 or so. I also mentioned that the GE was about the same age as the garage refrigerator, which made no sense.   One thing I noticed about MM that as the seasons wore on, they backed away from period music. I guess they didn't want to pay the royalties.

 

[NYCWriter]

Ultramatic ...

... I DO get it.

As I explained, unless the director was using one of those highly sophisticated cameras that can capture a video screen in perfect clarity, even a clear TV picture is going to look flickery, snowy, and with a rolling bar.

And as far as the "portrayal", back in the pre-cable era, depending on where you lived, with a good enough antenna you were either blessed with clear pictures on all channels with a minimum of adjustment (as was the case in New York City, which is relatively flat, with all TV stations broadcasting from one place ... the Empire State Building ... and then later, the World Trade Center), or you had a monster of a time constantly re-adjusting the directional antenna each time you tuned in a different station.

This was the case in other cities, like Pittsburgh, which were challenged by mountainous topography and network affiliate stations scattered in all directions.

It's not inconceivable that the signal out in Ossining could have been flaky as well, depending on the weather.

 

[whirlcool]

I don't think that there was a BankAmericard(Visa) or a Mastercard around in 1963.

I remember the first general purpose credit card was a set called "First Card, Town & Country and Charge It!". These cards were sponsored by banks. Around 1965 or 66 those cards disappeared and depending on which card you had depended on if you got a Mastercard or BankAmericard which later turned into Visa. I remember my parents had a Town & Country Charge card from Continental Bank of Chicago and eventually that was replaced by a MasterCard.
In the beginning they were not widely accepted. Car Rental Companies, Restaurants, Hotels and some retailers took them. But as far as retailers went, most of them had their own credit cards. So there was no need for a "national" credit card there. I would say that wide acceptance of MC or Visa credit cards didn't start until the early to mid 70's.

 

[DADoES]

 
Per Wikipedia (taken for what it is), merchant-specific charge devices began in the late 1800s.

The first general-purpose card accepted by a variety of merchants was Diners Club in 1950, then Carte Blanche and American Express in 1958.  These all required the balance be paid on each statement.

BankAmericard launched revolving credit in Sept 1958.  Master Charge in 1966, which later became MasterCard.  Citibank's Everything Card launched in 1967, which merged into Master Charge in 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card

 

[cadman]

Matt, in this case it's not an issue of a refresh-rate mismatch as the images shown were done in post-production. The horizontal tearing, the random loss of vertical sync, the snow that comes and goes and distorted linearity...it's all deliberate and not representative of a stationary set with a fixed antenna system. Now some ghosting or diathermy machine noise I'd buy ; ) As a TV collector/restorer it just drives me nuts. -C