Secret Sharer

As Mad Men starts its final season, its star looks homeward—and helps open a new theater in honor of his high school director.

Photograph by Nigel Parry/CPI Syndication

ASK JON HAMM A QUESTION ABOUT HIS PAST, and the commanding silence that follows will be familiar to any longtime Mad Men fan. Scripts call it a beat—the pause as the star inhales and the tension mounts and the founding partner of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce rearranges the DNA of a topic before speaking. A Duke University study last year equated the likelihood of long-term success with deep vocal timbre. When Hamm finally talks—in this case, about the John Burroughs School, in St. Louis, and his recent significant contributions to it—the slow rumble of his response befits a chief executive. "I've gone on the record various times as being a very big supporter of my school and the teachers there," he says.

Unlike Don Draper, who shrouds his origins, Hamm is an unabashed Midwesterner, and "big supporter" is typical heartland understatement. In fact, Hamm, class of '89, just helped spearhead a $45 million capital campaign that led to the construction of a state-of-the-art theater complex that includes a black box space named for his alma mater's longtime theater teacher Wayne Salomon, the man who first put Hamm onstage and who is retiring this spring.

Photograph by Andrew R. Newman

Hamm, already a star in football and baseball at that point, made his debut as Judas in
Godspell in his senior year. But even before he set foot inside Burroughs, a private school that takes students from grades 7 to 12, he was deeply invested in the place. His mother died when he was 10, but she had already made it clear that she wanted her only son to attend the school when he was old enough. After meeting several accomplished Burroughs graduates, "she thought it could make me the person she wanted me to grow up to be," Hamm says. "We have this situation in popular culture where the term elite is a pejorative now. I guess it's hokey to say that it was my mother's dying wish that I go to this school, but it's true in a very real way. When you're that young and you lose a parent, you really do think, What would my mom want?"

Despite his success on Mad Men, which is returning this spring for its seventh and final season, the actor is quick to minimize his own contribution to the fundraising. "I certainly didn't donate any large percentage of the campaign—I don't make Wall Street money," he says. "But I was helpful in going and talking to people who do make Wall Street money and convincing them that the theater is a valid part of the school." Hamm's self-effacement is refreshing—and atypical—in an age when schools compete to land record-setting bequests earmarked for massive buildings named after wealthy alums.

Drawings for a new theater at John Burroughs School, part of the $45 million campaign. Lawrence Group Architects St. Louis

He points out that he's not the only Burroughs grad to make it in Hollywood. His classmate and prom date Sarah Clarke was a key figure on 24; Beau Willimon, class of '95, is the show runner for House of Cards; Ellie Kemper, class of '98, appeared on The Office and in Bridesmaids. She was also a student of Hamm's when he returned, fresh from the University of Missouri, to teach at Burroughs. "Part of graduating with an English degree is that you realize that there aren't a lot of opportunities out there to make a lot of money," he says. So he persuaded Salomon to take him on to help out in the theater department. "Wayne was a big believer in encouraging people to try," Hamm says. "I think it's important that the theater is named after him, because a big black box theater is just that: It's nothing but possibility. And you imbue it with your creativity. Wayne has certainly done that with several generations of kids."


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