• by September 5, 2008

....Besides pantyhose and door-to-door air conditioning salesmen, the only key inaccuracy in "Mad Men" is that lots of women already were big-time successes in the ad business....

Phyllis Robinson had been copy chief at DDB from its founding in 1949; Bernice Fitz-Gibbon and Shirley Polykoff were big stars; I think the copywriter of the famous Lemon ad may have been a woman -- my memory fades for the name. Right about that time, too, Paula Green launched the great Avis campaign with Helmut Krone. I think advertising -- other than show business, nursing, and primary school education -- was the first industry to accept women not only as equals but as superiors. Of course making that argument only makes for a documentary, not a terrific TV show with legs, sans or avec pantyhose.