Jerry Della Femina may have helped inspire Mad Men, but the legendary ad executive insists that the AMC TV series makes the 1960s ad industry look tamer than it really was, said Will Dean in the London Guardian. Della Femina’s 1970 memoir, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor, has just been reprinted to capitalize on Mad Men‘s popularity, and it’s a reminder that the fun of working in a creative ad office back then only began with the three-martini lunches. “We made Mad Men look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” Della Femina says. “We were much wilder, we drank more, we carried on more.” For 25 years, Della Femina’s agency even ran a secret holiday contest in which everybody voted for the person they would most like to sleep with. The winners were given a weekend together at the Plaza Hotel.
Della Femina doesn’t wish for a return of the casual bigotry of the early ’60s, said Katie Roiphe in the Financial Times. As a young copywriter, he was once told that Ford Motor didn’t want “his kind” working on its account. But he does miss the fact that no one had to feel guilty about smoking a pack a day or pouring scotch at their desks. He especially misses the advent of the sexual revolution, and the creative flowering it inspired. “The advertising business went wild,” he says. “I encouraged it because nothing got creative people to come in early and leave late better than the prospect of a sexual adventure.”
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