With Mad Men out of the game this year and not expected to make a return until spring 2012, television networks are going head to head to see who can fill its gap. ABC is joining the mile high club with their upcoming Pan Am series, while NBC are heading to Chicago and the opening of the first Playboy Club.

I am intrigued by both shows and I am curious to see if any of them can possibly rival Mad Men’s great writing, style and attention to detail. The Playboy Club premiers September 19, 2011 on NBC.

As long as they have been in public life, the Kennedys have been associated with the press, making their first fan movie magazine appearance in the September 1927 issue of Photoplay. By the early 1960s, there were upwards of forty fan magazines, including Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Screen, and TV Radio Screen. The forerunners of the modern “celebrity magazines” such as Us Weekly and In Touch, the movie mags covered the misadventures, tribulations and lifestyles of television and film stars.

In the wake of the Red Scare and the advent of television, movie admissions and, thus, the movie magazines’ revenue from advertising had dramatically decreased. In response, tabloid editors used Jackie Kennedy’s image with unabashed frequency.  Much as popcorn kept movie theaters afloat after the advent of television, so Jackie stories salvaged the movie magazines. Life in the White House had become the world’s most exciting movie and the movie magazines were committed to covering it.

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The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington is nearing the end of a temporary exhibit called “Style in the Aisle: Flight Attendant Fashion.” The exhibit first began in 2008 and has become so popular that the museum has added new uniforms to the exhibit. Travel Channel has a great photo compilation of “Style in the Aisle” with captions describing each of the photos. The exhibit shows fashions from the mid-1930′s to today’s current fashions and will end May 30, 2011. Some larger photos can be seen at Amusing Planet. There are only a couple weeks left before it’s too late!

Since the turn of the 20th century, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been fighting to capture the hearts and taste buds of America’s youth. Fifty years into the great carbonation beverage battle, cola companies decided to look for new opportunities and target demographics. In an attempt to lure in diabetics, the cola companies began developing and marketing low-calorie, sugar-free alternatives. As early as the 1950s, Royal Crown and Dr. Pepper distributed dietetic versions of their beverages. But it wasn’t until the early 1960s that the major players entered the diet cola market. In 1963 Coca-Cola released Tab and Pepsi introduced Patio.

In the Mad Men world, the Patio account comes to Sterling Cooper in the hopes of attracting female sippers. The client wants a commercial similar to the Ann-Margret’s performance of Bye Bye Birdie. The men justify the idea with the theory that “Men want [Ann-Margret] and women want to be her.” Peggy remains unconvinced, arguing that, once again, women were being sold a product based solely on the desires of men.

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Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss star in Howard Hawks’ film Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964). This screwball comedy is a loose remake of Hawks’ earlier film hit Bringing Up Baby (1938), which starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. The plot for this film is relatively complicated for a comedy. Rock stars as Roger Willoughby, a salesman at Abercrombie & Fitch – your grandfather’s Abercrombie & Fitch of yore when you could buy a safari set-up of rifles, zebra skins, ammo, and tents. Roger is a celebrity in fishing circles, known for his bestselling book, “Fishing Made Simple.” He can tell customers the perfect times to fish, the right lures for all occasions, and the proper way to cast a line. But Roger is hiding a dirty secret – he hates fishing and can’t stand being around fish.

Paula Prentiss co-stars as Abigail Page – a sarcastic woman on the go. She meets up at Abercrombie & Fitch with her girlfriend, Easy, played by the amazingly beautiful Austrian, Maria Perschy. (Perschy later had less film success, landing the lead in the 1973 film House of Psychotic Women, which happens to be #21 in my Netflix queue.) In case you missed it, her character’s name is Easy. Since her character is pretty wooden throughout the movie, I guess you had to be there.

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As of 1965, women’s liberation has not yet pervaded mainstream culture. In season four of Mad Men, we get a taste of what’s to come as women become more independent and empowered. Despite the increase in seemingly independent women, including budding feminist, copywriter Peggy Olsen, most of the ladies inhabiting fictional 1960s NYC are marriage-minded and family-oriented.

When SCDP (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) lands the Pond’s cold cream account, Peggy pitches the idea of skin care ritual as indulgence, a way for women to focus on themselves rather than improving their appearance to attract a man. It’s an idea we’ve seen in countless modern-day advertisements—from chocolates and bubble bath to yogurt and laundry detergent. In opposition to Peggy is freelance copywriter Freddy Rumsen, who suggests positioning the product as a tool for matrimony, “Use Pond’s and you’ll get married.” Don approves Peggy’s “Indulge Yourself” campaign but submits to a focus group to determine whether regular women (SCDP secretaries) buy into it. An emotional focus group prompts Dr. Faye Miller, a market research consultant to second Freddy’s notion that women just want to get married. It remains unclear which direction SCDP went with Pond’s but it seems Freddy wasn’t too far off the mark with his idea…just 20 years too late.

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