MM@M: Look Like Hayley Mills. Feel The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Mad Men @ the Movies investigates cinema references... a fancy excuse to talk about tv's best series.

Episode 4.5 "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
In this episode SCDP attempts to win the Honda campaign but Sterling still hates the Japanese from his WWII days. Meanwhile, it's Draper Vs. Draper again as Don (Jon Hamm) and Betty (January Jones returns.) hurl hate at each other. Tween daughter Sally tries to tune them out by misbehaving i.e. engaging in perfectly normal behavior like masturbating. Uh oh! In one sequence Sally cuts her own hair, sending her babysitter and her father into hysterics.

Don: Why would she do that?
Babysitter: She probably wanted to look older or like Hayley Mills. I don't know."

Heaven to hear 60s child star Hayley Mills (a personal fav) referenced on Mad Men. Hayley is best remembered today for the back-to-back family friendly classics Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961). She was actually the last actor to win the Academy's intermittently awarded Juvenile Award (you know the one-- the only Oscar Judy Garland ever got. Grrrr.) Mills would have most definitely been an idol for Sally's generation.

The previous summer moviegoers had enjoyed Hayley in The Moon Spinners (64) and she had two films in theaters for 65: Disney's That Darn Cat (pictured up top) and The Truth About Spring. This episode takes place in 1965 which happened to be the last year Mills could be referred to as a teenager...

Hayley Mills leaving her teen years. 18 in 1964 (left) & 19 in 1965 (right)

She was exiting adolescence just as Sally was entering it. In 1966 she actually played a young married woman in The Family Way.

Nevertheless, for the family friendly Hayley memories this particular episode conjures, the pop culture reference that leads to the most adult-specific hysteria is not from the movies but from the small screen. Sally watches television's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (from its debut season '64-'65) while at a sleepover (her friend is already asleep). In the scene, David McAllum is tied to a chair, and his masculine pheromones are doing a hormonal whammy on confused Sally. (Or maybe Sally's just going to be into bondage as an adult.)

poll by twiigs.com

Further reading?
In case you can't get enough Mad Men the morning after...

• The Medium and the Message an ad man on what our obsession with the series means and the penetration of message in advertising.
• Esquire War of the Sweaters. Knitwear as counter culture?
• GIF Party Peggy on a Honda. Vroom.
• Who is Dr. Lyle Evans? Yes there was a spike on Google.
• Basket of Kisses on the same question.
• Basket of Kisses on Miss Blankenship's Crossword Puzzle