What it was like to give Robert Morse, a veteran of the theater, such a poignant sendoff with Mad Men's “The Best Things in Life Are Free” dance — as told to devonsaysrelax
Photo: Justina Mintz/AMC For seven seasons, Robert Morse tenderly portrayed the eccentric ad honcho Bertram “Bert” Cooper on Mad Men. In mid-season episode “Waterloo,” his character dies after witnessing the moon landing, and despite his off-camera death, Bert returns to the Sterling Cooper offices one last time at the episode’s end in an ethereal sequence, singing and dancing “The Best Things in Life Are Free” to an awestruck Don Draper. Was it a hallucination? An acid trip? A dream? Who cares.
Because of Mad Men’s insane nondisclosure agreements, it wasn’t explained what I was doing when I went into the audition. A friend who’s a choreographer was working with Mary Ann Kellogg, who choreographed the piece. He was like, We’re workshopping this period piece, I can’t tell you absolutely anything else, but trust me, you want this role. Be here at this time. I showed up and when I walked out of the elevator, I was like, Oh my God, I can’t believe it, this is for Mad Men.
In the workshop, they presented us with what the scene was about and they had a recording of Robert singing the song. We played around with different ideas of what our movements would look like. Matthew Weiner came in a few times and was very collaborative: I like this part, but can we do something here more, because Robert likes moving his feet this way. I was shocked — well, not shocked, but excited — to see that Matthew was still so involved in the process.
We had a rehearsal with Robert the day before. It was delightful. He was so proud and excited to do the number. He brought in old CDs for us to listen to — Sugar was one of them. And photos of old shows he had done. It was really charming. You could tell he was so thrilled to be doing this dance and having this part of his past recognized on Mad Men. The filming day must have been 12 hours, maybe more. They had to shoot our side and then also shoot the reactions for Jon Hamm.
Robert was very humble about his dancing. He told me in between takes, “I was never a dancer. I remember when Gwen Verdon was trying to teach me choreography and I always felt like such an idiot.” He was a true showman and knew what to do. To this day, it was the most special thing I’ve ever worked on. The fact that he lived up to the legend and was also this humble, sweet, and kind man, who was so proud of all of the work that he did — and not in a braggadocios way — was surreal.
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