Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

'Mad Men' fans will give museum props

NEW YORK - You don't need to be mad about "Mad Men" to savor "Matthew Weiner's Mad Men" at New York's Museum of the Moving Image.

NEW YORK

- You don't need to be mad about "Mad Men" to savor "Matthew Weiner's Mad Men" at New York's Museum of the Moving Image.

This collection of hundreds of props, dozens of costumes, two full-scale sets and scads of notes and scripts from AMC's glorious drama series will surely thrill all "Mad Men" fans as they brace themselves for its final seven episodes (starting April 5).

More than a TV-focused spectacle, the exhibit is a resurrected world of Americana as frozen in time a half-century ago.

Item: When was the last time you saw an S&H Green Stamps Saver Book?

You may spy a couple of them among the many props dressing the Ossining, New York, kitchen of Don and Betty Draper (which, like Don's office, was transplanted to New York for the exhibit from the L.A. studio where "Mad Men" was shot).

Then turn your gaze past the vintage Lux liquid bottle at the sink and the ceramic knickknacks on the paneled wall over to the breakfast table, where a grocery list calls for such items as a can of peas, whipping cream and margarine.

To behold this intimate scene, which seems to breathe with life even absent its fictional residents, can make you feel downright voyeuristic.

Now don't forget and light up!

Among the curios at hand are a circa-'60s cigarette machine, numerous ashtrays and Don's totemic lighter, Betty's cigarette case and pack of Salems.

On a wall are ads from Don's agency, such as "We'll meet you anywhere. Hilton" and "Relax. Lucky Strike."

For evidence of how painstakingly detailed "Mad Men" alwayswas, note the TV Guide in the clutter on a secretary's desk: A label indistinguishable from the real thing designates the magazine's addressee as "Sterling Cooper & Assocs" on Manhattan's Avenue of the Americas - in type far too small for the camera to have noticed.

"Matthew Weiner's Mad Men "(a title that confers proper credit on the series' mastermind) has been a year in the works, according to exhibition curator Barbara Miller.

It runs through June 14. "Mad Men" ends for good May 17.