SEXIEST MAN LIVING 2007 by Joan Walsh The year's hottest man! Who: Jon Hamm Age: 36 Know him as: Don Draper on AMC's "Mad Men" Watching AMC's "Mad Men" is a sensual feast. Matthew Weiner's devotion to getting 1960 right means we feel Joan's girdle and Peggy's scratchy dresses, taste the rye and the steak and the oysters, glory in the pastels of Betty's peignoirs; our eyes water at the end of every episode from all that cigarette smoke. The sexual politics are remarkable; the sex is even more interesting, and the hot center of it all is Jon Hamm, who plays Sterling Cooper creative director Don Draper, haunted, predatory, at the top of his game, miserable. I assumed I'd missed Hamm in other roles, but he hasn't had a lot of other major roles. (He was in a half-dozen or so episodes of "What about Brian?" "The Unit," and "Providence," and about a dozen of "The Division," none of which I'd ever seen.) His Wikipedia entry is marked a "stub," which seems to invite readers to help fill in more details. I wish I had more details to fill in. My favorite fact about Jon Hamm is that he was a schoolteacher before he became an actor -- that's my idea of sexy. But I think it's possible that some of Hamm/Draper's hotness is how little we know about both the actor and the character. Certainly it's the way he manages the secret at the heart of Don Draper's story that makes Hamm so compelling on "Mad Men." The mystery builds intensity: Draper meets strangers on his morning commute who call him by a different name. A long lost brother shows up and introduces a whole new story line. (In the best episode Draper brings a mystery package to his brother's hotel for a final meeting, and the scene is claustrophobic with dread; Hamm's darkness combined with Weiner's "Sopranos" history makes you worry Draper's going to whack the poor guy, but in fact he's packing $5,000 and tries to send him away.) It turns out Draper is really Dick Whitman, the son of a prostitute, adopted and abused by his miserable father and stepmother after his real mom died; he exchanged dog tags with a fellow soldier who died in Korea and stepped into the dead man's privileged life as Don Draper. (We need more flashbacks in Season 2 to fill in the postwar, pre-Sterling Cooper Draper years.) When we meet Draper he's married to beautiful, seemingly batty Betty, but he cheats on her compulsively, almost sadistically. Yet we forgive him because he's so tortured ... and so hot. Hamm has glossy movie star good looks, great bones and a killer smile, made riveting by Draper's pain and artifice. He's the unhappy adman selling happiness. He's in on the big con, and yet he's not, entirely; in fact, he's dying to believe in what he's selling. He's the misfit Organization Man, an elitist egalitarian; he makes conformity seem sort of brave and sexy. Hanging out with Mistress No. 1, Midge, he helps us see her beatnik friends as spoiled kids, their bohemian life as much of a pose as his Madison Avenue persona. With Mistress No. 2, Rachel, he's the WASPy outsider, worshipping her exoticism, her Jewishness, her sexy rich-girl self-reliance and hint of need. Friends and I were briefly convinced Draper's secret was that he was Jewish, especially after the episode that ended with a coffeehouse folk band doing the haunting "Babylon." (God, I'm going on about this plot. Maybe it's Matt Weiner who's America's sexiest man…) Draper is never more likable than when promoting Peggy's copywriting ambitions or busting little rich-kid bully Pete Campbell down to size. When he stands down Campbell's threat to reveal his tacky secret past to the ad-firm's founder, he's the picture of manhood to Campbell's sniveling boy. Before that, when he tries to flee, and begs Rachel to leave her life and run away with him, he's a coward and a cad. But the dressing down Maggie Siff's Rachel gives Hamm's Draper is in its own category of hot. At the end of the season finale, after all Don Draper's suffering, it was a relief to see Hamm's unlined face and gorgeous smile at the cast party in the footage that followed. The happy-looking actor, who lives with actress/director Jennifer Westfeldt, might be even sexier than his tortured character. Might be. It was certainly nice to see him without a haze of cigarette smoke. We're awarding Sexiest Man of the Year honors to Jon Hamm but we have to acknowledge: It might be Don Draper who's won our hearts. Source: http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2007/11/15/sexiest_man/index1.html