Mad Men, New Series About the Golden Age of Advertising, Premieres July 19th

AMC TV is hoping that writer and executive producer Matthew Weiner of The Sopranos can produce another hit series. This one is Mad Men, and it's set in 1960, in the "golden age" of advertising, when ad men ruled and women were toys and typists. The 13-episode, one-hour original program produced by Lionsgate premieres Thursday, July 19 at 10 PM.

My parents had friends from this world, and they sure did like to party. A friend's husband, who was an art director when art directors were Madison Avenue gods, once told me that he never made more than $100K a year at any point in his career. Yet you could live like a king on that money then, and they did.

These were the days when advertising convinced us to buy cars from our enemies, to vacation in war zones, and to believe that smoking was sexy, even though the surgeon general's report was already public.

Says Weiner, the ad men, like Tony and his boys, are fascinating and disgusting at the same time. The music is great, and the trailers -- watch a sneak peak here -- look like big fun.

Win one of two Madmen martini shakers by being the first two people to email me with the name of the star who plays Don Draper.

UPDATE: 8:30 pm - Randy Lawrence won the first Mad Men martini shaker. One more to go!

Tracy Sheridan won the second one! That was fun!

Posted by B.L. Ochman