Mad men who is don draper

While fighting in a trench in Korea, he inadvertently dropped his cigarette on a pool of gasoline. The ensuing explosion killed his lieutenant, Donald Draper. Draper's tour of duty in Korea was almost over, so Whitman — eager to get out of the war — switched Draper's dog tags with his own. He is assumed to be Draper by Army officials and is awarded the Purple Heart.

He was part of the delegation that delivers "Whitman"'s coffin to what remains of his family, but only Adam recognized him. Adam hanged himself shortly thereafter. Don took Anna's death in season four very hard. Sterling Cooper accounts staffer Pete Campbell discovered Don's past in season one, and revealed it to partner Bert Cooper in the episode "Nixon vs.

Betty tried to use to use this knowledge against Don in season five's "Dark Shadows," telling their daughter Sally to add Don's first wife "Anna" to a family tree she's making for school.

But Megan knew about Anna, and realizes that Betty is simply trying to hurt her and Don. Rather than confronting Betty about the disclosure, Don discussed the marriage with Sally, who concluded it's no big deal. He added that eating a Hershey's bar was the only thing that could make him feel like a normal kid, "the only sweet thing in my life.

Season six ends with Don and his children outside the brothel. The secret is important both in driving the plot — in season four, Don forced Pete to drop a defense contractor as a client because keeping them would entail background checks for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, potentially exposing Don as a deserter — and in establishing why Don is so effective as an adman.

Having successfully invented a whole new identity for himself, Don similarly excels at crafting artificial identities the sophisticated man who drives a Jaguar, the practical business traveler who uses a Samsonite suitcase with which to sell products. The show also contrasts Don's identity formation with that of other characters forced to reinvent themselves, like Peggy who reinvented herself as a copywriter from a secretary , Joan who transitioned from support staff to a major partner , and Michael Ginsberg who, like Don, purposefully obscures his past to his colleagues.

But the firm, in its latest iteration, is very young, and so it's important to understand the firms that evolved into it. Sterling and Cooper were the name partners in the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency in seasons one through three. Lane Pryce is probably the most important deceased character on Mad Men. That would release them from their contracts, enabling them to start a new firm. They offered Pryce a partnership as incentive to agree to the deal.

Pryce agreed, and was subsequently fired by Putnam, and the four established Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce with a number of Sterling Cooper staff members, including Campbell, who is promoted to partner.

In season five, Draper discovered that Pryce forged his signature on a check to pay back taxes in the UK, and asked for his resignation. Pryce commited suicide in response.

It and another small firm — Cutler, Gleason and Chaough — were both in contention to handle Chevrolet's promotion of its new model, the Chevy Vega, when Draper proposed a merger of the two firms to Chaough, on the grounds that the account required a firm of greater scale.

Peggy was assigned as Don Draper's secretary upon joining Sterling Cooper. After impressing senior copywriter Freddy Rumsen Joel Murray in a focus group for Belle Jolie lipstick, she was enlisted to write copy for the Belle Jolie campaign, and soon after promoted to copywriter, even taking Rumsen's office after he was fired.

In seasons two and three, she felt under-appreciated at Sterling Cooper, and briefly considered joining former Sterling Cooper president Duck Phillips Mark Moses at rival firm Grey.

She initially rebuffed Don when he approached her about leaving with him to start the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, but agreed to come along when Don promised that he would "spend the rest of my life trying to hire you" if she declined. Her and Don's relationship was tested early in season four when he won a Clio Award for a TV commercial for the floor waxing product Glo-Coat, a commercial based on an idea she had but for which Don received all the accolades.

In "The Suitcase," she brought this up while she and Don are working late on an ad campaign for Samsonite luggage, prompting a fight between the two. But they ended up bonding over Don's discovery of the audio dictations Roger Sterling made for his memoirs, Sterling's Gold , and spent the night in the office together non-romantically , drinking and discussing each other's personal lives. When Don Draper was forced to take a three-month leave, Peggy got his office.

Peggy slept with Pete Campbell, then an account executive at Sterling Cooper, twice in season one, in the series premiere and in "The Hobo Code. Her mother and sister helped her cover up the pregnancy, and she gave the baby up for adoption, with Don telling her, "This never happened.

It will shock you how much it never happened. Peggy rejected him, and told him she gave away his baby. In season three, she had a brief affair with former Sterling Cooper president Duck Phillips. For the first part of season four, she was dating a man named Mark, who dumped her in "The Suitcase" when she stayed late to work with Don rather than attending a surprise birthday dinner he threw for her and her family.

After a couple false starts, mostly due to Abe's vocal opposition to the advertising industry, they began dating, and moved in together in season five. She bought a place on the Upper West Side in season six, then still a fairly rough neighborhood, and moved there with Abe.

After Abe was stabbed — first in the street, then accidentally by Peggy when she checks out a mysterious noise in the apartment with a homemade bayonet — he broke up with her. Peggy was upset both because of the decision itself and because Chaough made it without telling her first. Peggy is the main vehicle through which the show explores the mass entry of women into positions of greater authority in the workplace during the '60s, and is often the brunt of sexist remarks and actions from her colleagues, clients, and acquaintances.

She comes from a traditional Catholic household in Brooklyn, and over the course of the show leaves the church and moves to Manhattan, actions which, within her family, at least take on great symbolic significance as signs she is becoming much to her mother's consternation a modern working woman. She is also the show's main point of intersection with the New York counterculture, through Joyce, Abe, and their artist friends.

Roger Sterling Jr. John Slattery is the son of Roger Sterling Sr. Roger joined his father's company after serving as a sailor in the Pacific Front during World War II, and rose to lead it along with Cooper after his father's death. Both Roger Sterlings are heavy drinkers, a habit that contributed to the elder one's death; he suffered his fourth heart attack while driving, crashed, and died. Roger Sterling waits for a TWA flight in this season seven promo photo. Roger prides himself on his ability to keep accounts and acquire new ones through personal charm, something he sees as lacking in colleagues like Don Draper.

In season four, he self-published his memoirs, titled Sterling's Gold , which becomes a running joke among his colleagues. He was hardly faithful, however, most notably engaging in a long on-and-off affair with Sterling Cooper office manager Joan Holloway that continued through most of season one. In season two, he began an affair with Don's secretary, Jane Siegel Peyton List , and eventually leaves Mona to marry her.

This estranged him somewhat from Margaret, as she and Jane are not too different in age. In season four, Roger and Joan now married reconnected, resulting in Joan's pregnancy. After seriously considering terminating it, Joan opted to carry it to term, and passes her new son Kevin off as her husband's. Roger, however, knows he is the biological father. In the morning, Roger admitted he no longer loved her and left, while Jane was clearly upset and regretful about her comments the night before.

Wasting no time, in the very next episode Roger hooked up with Don Draper's mother-in-law, Marie Calvet. Roger's mother and shoe-shine man both died in the season six premiere , which sent him on something of an depressive spiral, newly reminded of his own mortality. The show uses Roger at many times as a symbol of the past, resistant to changes in the ad business other firms embrace.

He sabotaged a potential deal with Honda, on the grounds that he doesn't want to do business with the country he fought in World War II, and is among more racially prejudiced members of the firm, resisting Pete Campbell's urgings to target the African-American market and even performing in blackface in season three. He is witty and chivalrous, treating Joan in particular with genuine care and concern, but can be cruel and brutal to employees and family members, whether by abruptly telling Mona he is divorcing her or by going along with Pete's plan to have Joan sleep with a Jaguar representative to secure them as a client though he refused to put up his own money to pay Joan as part of the scheme.

The newly minted "Don Draper" then accompanied the body of the real Don Draper back to the United States, to be interred in Pennsylvania in a grave labeled with Dick Whitman's name. Some time later, Lt. Draper's real wife Anna Draper , having been seemingly deserted by her husband, tracked down "Don Draper" and found Dick Whitman posing as Draper and working to sell used cars.

She was initially fearful of Dick, but he quickly put her at ease and confessed the truth of Lt. Draper's fate. Mad Men Wiki Explore. Mad Men Wiki Affiliates. Explore Wikis Community Central. Indeed, this series has pushed character development so far that they are the entire and only reason why this series is interesting. The actual events happening at the advertising agency is a pretext to throw more things at those characters and have them deal with it.

In fact, the characters are so interesting that there is practically no violence needed except a few minor events over 7 seasons to keep this series going. I find that tremendously respectable to be able to craft a series in this way, not using gun shots and bombs to make it lively.

Finally, I have not lived in the early 60's time period the series is set in, but I can only say that it's all seemed to me very interesting and all these "vintinge" props and costumes, hair style and such made it all the more fascinating to watch. Absolutely great work. FAQ How come no one can tell that Sal is gay? Do they really smoke all those cigarettes? In what month and year is Mad Men set?

Details Edit. Release date July 19, United States. United States. Official Facebook Official site. Lionsgate Television Weiner Bros. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 47 minutes. Related news. Those patterns could be anything from the liquor they kept in their desk drawers to the women they slept with to the larger worldviews that kept them anchored to their own pasts — and, more often than not, ensured they sank.

Mad Men always knew who world-weary Don Draper was, who petulant prepster Pete Campbell wanted to emulate, who cavalier heir Roger Sterling was thrilled to be. Sure, the writers and actors finessed their depictions along the way, but nothing about where each of those characters ended up by the series finale would have surprised anyone who met them in the first episode.

The women of Mad Men , however, are an entirely different — and far more dynamic — story. Eventually, all three women reveal rich inner lives their male counterparts never bothered to consider were there, and create the kind of lives they once assumed they never could have. For as much as Mad Men was about the cyclical frustrations of petty men, it was also about the determination and creativity of women. Just as much as Mad Men knew Don Draper would never change, it discovered that its women — especially Peggy and Joan — were destined to take the kinds of journeys he never could.

The more we get to know Don Draper — the man, the constructed myth, the self-destructive legend — the less surprising it is that he returns again and again to an Old Fashioned. Mad Men always brought Don to the brink of real change, only to yank him back again. He gives up drinking, gives in to drinking, gives it up and comes back to it all over again.

He expresses interest in being a more involved parent, then blinks in surprise when his daughter Sally appears to have grown up without him noticing. Once Betty becomes sick of his shit and presses for a divorce, he trades her for a more modern version of the model wife see: Megan — which also ends in divorce. He mentors Peggy, more by accident than design. He falls apart, and stumbles back up, and crumbles all over again, waiting for someone — usually, some woman — to come by and put him back together.

In the very last scene of the series, Don has run away to California — his place of choice to do drugs with hippies and escape himself — to try to find some semblance of peace.