Mad Men Note: Al Cavalieri
When Don complained that the two-day Rome junket to which “Connie” Hilton summoned him meant that he would see the Colosseum from a taxi, I leaned over to Kathleen and whispered, “Just like your Rome trip!” Boy, though, what a couple of mukluks we were. Hello, Hilton. When Betty and Don sashayed into their room and the view was identical to the pictures that Kathleen took from just about the same balcony, we died laughing.
A couple of years ago, Kathleen went to a conference at the Hilton Cavalieri, which is set up in the hills behind the Vatican, in the middle of nowhere really. It’s a spa/resort — why else would you stay there? She didn’t see the Colosseum from a taxi, but it was from a taxi that she saw the Spanish steps. Her crew buzzed into Rome proper for a dinner. Then they buzzed back. I was not jealous when I saw the pictures. If there is one kind of view that does not thrill me, it is the vista with altitude. Every goddam oil club in Houston was perched on the top floor of one of downtown’s highrises, as was the Bankers’ Club in New York before that. If you visited enough of those attic eateries, you began to understand the fragility of the executive eagle. I mean ego. Flying too high with some guy in the sky is definitely my idea of a non-culinarylunch.
Is it too soon to say that Windows on the World was a terrible, terrible idea?
Something else that they say about birds in general that must hold “even more true” for large birds of prey concerns something that is not done in the nest. Peter Campbell’s misadventure with the neighbor’s au pair was difficult for us to watch, and hard to interpret as well. On the one hand, where did he grow up? On the other, perhaps it was in one of those one-flat-to-the-floor buildings, where you never run into strangers. Most New Yorkers know better than to ring a doorbell within twenty minutes’ walk of your own.
Of course, the episode was set up to look like an infidelity in which Pete would be juicily entangled. But it was really all about Joan. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it: when Pete asked to “speak to the manager” at Bonwit Teller, the manager was going to turn out to be Joan. And, Joan being Joan, I knew that the dress would betray Pete by being the wrong size. Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t got a crystal ball. I’ve usually been wrong about Mad Men; remember, the first season, when I was sure that Don Draper’s awful secret was that he was Jewish. What I wasn’t ready for, though, was Joan’s unhappy maquillage. She looked so unhappy! All the power had drained from her goddess face. But only from her face. She handled Pete expertly.
Speaking of makeup, it wasn’t just Betty’s Roman hairdo that was 1963. I can remember when pretty women went in for that waxy, dead look. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the first to go zombie. It was glamorous, I suppose, if your idea of fun was an evening of disco at Madame Tussaud’s. But it sure turned Don on, and that was sweet. Since turning Don on always turns Betty on, I worry about the Peekskill Road reservoir.
Another name that they got right was “Saltaire.” That’s where Pete’s secretary was headed for the weekend. You don’t hear much about Saltaire, and that’s just how they like. It’s a very spruce little community at the hither end of Fire Island, oceans away from the Pines.
Perhaps the deepest pleasure of Mad Men for me is the fabulosity of its detail. The names and the places are the names and the places that I grew up with, and Mad Men always gets them right. It’s delicious, slightly vengeful compensation for a childhood of television spent in fictional burgs that always turned out to be California dreams. Nothing would make my day brigher than seeing Jerry Mathers in one of these episodes. That would right a lot of wrongs.
What was so stupid was our not seeing that the Cavalieri “location” would make it so easy to fake a trip to Rome while making it look quite authentic. A view out the window — what could be simpler? Here’s what could be simpler: counterfeiting a room in a Hilton hotel.