Way back when I studied acting it was years before the internet came along. So you’d hang out at the Samuel French bookstore on Sunset Blvd. flipping through plays searching for a monologue that you hadn’t seen 100 times. (“I coulda been somebody…) There were also a few books that had collections of monologues.
I remember doing monologues by Clifford Odets, Michael Weller, Sam Shepard, and Tennessee Williams. (“I have tricks up my sleeves….”)
One of my best acting scenes ever was to an audience of one. It was monologue I gave to a film school friend named Fred at a restaurant in Hollywood. I’d been working on it in a for a class and decided to see if I could pass it off to him as a first-person experience. Success, even on a very small scale, is satisfying.
Actors love monologues. And I heard one over the weekend that’s one of the best I’ve heard in years. As I inch my way through finally completing the Mad Men series I watched a monologue over the weekend that’s gold. It’s at the end of In Care Of —season 6, episode 12 on Netflix.)
It’s as advertising executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm) pitches two executives of the Hershey Company.
“Every agency you’re going to meet with feels qualified to advertise the Hershey bar because the product itself is one of the most successful billboards of all time. And its relationship with America is so overwhelmingly positive. Everyone in this room has their story to tell. It could be rations in the heat of battle, or in the movie theater on a first date. But most of them are from childhood. Mine was my father taking me to the drug store after I’d mowed the lawn and telling me I could have anything I wanted. There was a lot and I picked a Hershey Bar. The wrapper looked like what was inside. And as I ripped it open my father tasseled my hair and forever his love and chocolate were forever tied together. That’s the story we’re going to tell. Hershey’s is the currency of affection. It’s the childhood symbol of love. . . . (Long beat.) I’m sorry, I have to say this because I don’t know if I’m going to see you again. (Another beat.) I was an orphan. I grew up in Pennsylvania…in a whorehouse. I read about Milton Hershey and his school in Coronet magazine or some other crap that girls left by the toilet. And I read that some orphans have a different life there. I could picture it. I dreamt of it—of being wanted. Because the woman that raised me looked at me everyday like she hoped I’d disappear. Closest I got to feeling wanted was from a girl who made me go through her Johns’ pockets while they screwed. If I collected more than a dollar she bought me a Hershey Bar. And I would eat it alone in my room with great ceremony. Feeling like a normal kid. It said sweet on the package. It was the only sweet thing in my life.”
Don Draper
If you want to write actor bait study that monologue and actor Jon Hamm performing those words. An emotional scene that doesn’t just stand on its own and fit within the episode, but one that’s integral to the entire Man Men series.
That episode was written by Carly Wray and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner.
I couldn’t find an HD version of the Hershey scene online but if you want to see how the scene played out on the show, here it is:
P.S. After I saw the Hershey episode, I bought a Hershey Bar—for maybe the first time in over a decade. (The power of television and advertising.) On the wrapper was a mention of the Milton Hershey School that Don Draper referenced.
On the Hershey Company website it says of Milton and his wife Catherine that, “Although the Hersheys never had children, they established a boarding school for orphan boys and came to think of the boys as their family. The Hershey Industrial School for orphan boys, today called the Milton Hershey School, now educates nearly 2,000 underprivileged boys and girls. The unique school continues to consider each student and staff part of the family. Before his death in 1945, Hershey transferred the bulk of his considerable wealth to the Milton Hershey School Trust to ensure the school’s continued success.”
Related posts:
Mad Men (and Women) Writers
More Mad Women
My ‘Mad Men’ Father
Mad Men Diet & Workout
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles
Screenwriting from Iowa 