Robert Morse performs. NY Times photo on May 27, from their review of Mad Men, Re-posted. Originally 2014.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
This past Sunday, May 25, 2014 was the end of 6 1/2 seasons of the HBO series Mad Men, the wildly popular period piece about the advertising business in the 1960’s. It’s been a very serious show, and one of the stars has been 83 year old Robert Morse, who plays the beloved senior partner of the firm McCann-Erickson who dies during this episode. However Matt Weiner, the show’s creator, never forgot that Robert Morse, as a young actor, performed as a Tony winning song and dance man in the film/Broadway show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
So it was a thrill when, at the conclusion of a superb final episode for 2014, a moment of TV magic occurred as Robert Morse got to do a musical/dance number as part of a fantasy sequence. It was such a wonderful surprise, something like a Woody Allen movie when a bunch of hospital patients break out into song in Everyone Says I Love You. I was mesmerized and enthralled by the scene, wishing that it could go on longer.
The song “The Best Things in Life are Free” cast a moment of musical wisdom and joy onto the ending (for now—7 more scenes in 2015) because it is a lyric with a message that is so special, especially in the context of the Mad Men story.
A commenter on the YouTube video, Molly, said, “This was so beautiful and had me smiling the entire time. When I noticed he wasn’t wearing any shoes I started to tear up; Mad Men is flawless.”
Here is the review from today’s NY Times:
