Travels in Cyberspace: The Monday Report - In Transit Blog ...

by By Stuart Emmrich

The AMC show “ Mad Men ” certainly seems to have an affinity for the travel industry. Last year’s plotline involved an attempt by the Sterling Cooper agency to win an airline’s lucrative business. This year, the famed hotelier, Conrad Hilton, turns up as a key character — one who approaches Don Draper about taking Hilton Hotels on as an account and then slowly insinuates himself into the adman’s life.

In an engaging essay in The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend section last Friday, John Meroney reveals that the idea to weave the real-life character of Conrad Hilton into this year’s plot actually came from Hilton executives, who met with the series creator Matt Weiner over lunch in Beverly Hills. In addition to briefing him on the company’s history, they gave Mr. Weiner Hilton’s 1957 autobiography, “Be My Guest” — copies of which used to be in every Hilton room, along with the Gideon Bible.

It may be no surprise that Mr. Weiner was intrigued by what he read: The rags-to-riches saga of Hilton, who died in 1979, has the kind of dramatic moments that might appeal to a television writer, particularly the years of the Depression when his empire almost went under, and, as Hilton wrote, “Men were jumping from hotel windows, my hotel windows.”

The article makes it clear what a pioneer Hilton was in the hotel industry — transforming places that once just offered a clean bed for the night into corporate and entertainment centers, with glamorous nightclubs and restaurants attracting locals and visitors alike. According to Mr. Meroney, Hilton “even put early versions of voice mail into the rooms.”

Want to read more? Used copies of the 1984 paperback edition of “Be My Guest” are available through Amazon, with prices starting at one cent .

When Travel Was an Adventure

These days, travel — whether it’s a weekend getaway to Reykjavik or a two-week safari in South Africa — is seen as part of our normal routine, a welcome diversion from our day-to-day working lives. But back in the Victorian era, as The Guardian newspaper points out in a recent article , travel was a big deal, the stuff of romance and adventure, and perhaps something that would only be undertaken once in lifetime.

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