Jersey Shore Meets Mad Men In 1960s Promotional Video

Thanks to MTV’s Jersey Shore, the humble little town of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, is now the center of the pop-culture universe. The show has been the subject of protest, controversy, mockery, and obsessive recaps by Steve Krakauer. The town is getting a priceless amount of free advertising, albeit to drunken, promiscuous, brawl-prone twenty-somethings.

What was the the town like in the time of this year’s other pop-culture phenom, Mad Men? Mediaite has the goods on “Jersey Shore: 1960.”

While researching another Jersey Shore post, I came across this fascinating, frozen-in-time promotional film for Seaside Heights. The film extols the virtues of Don Draper-era Seaside Heights, but in the kind of wooden, faint boasting ad copy that the fictional ad exec would have been trying to usher out. Over and over, the narrator brags about restaurants and shops that are “clean and well-lit,” which makes me wonder if there was a serious problem with dim filth-holes in 1960s resort towns.

There are other amusements to be discovered in this 16-minute buried treasure. I don’t know about you, but I love this kind of arcana. If you really like it, you can also buy a DVD of the film.

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