CLEVELAND, Ohio - Three-martini lunches. Afternoon trysts. Bars in the office. Lightning-bolt ideas that strike in meetings. Women and minorities openly discriminated against.

Those were different times indeed. But how real was the 1960s advertising world as presented in "Mad Men," which begins its final season on AMC Sunday? And how much does it have in common with the Cleveland advertising world of the 1960s, when firms such as Lang, Fisher & Stashower and Wyse Advertising attracted major clients, downtown department stores filled newspapers with ads that lured large crowds, and clubs like the Theatrical, the Pewter Mug and Purple Tree Lounge were hot spots for Mad Men, their wives and clients?

"The lifestyle of Mad Men that is depicted may have been somewhat exaggerated for New York," says David Stashower, retired chairman of Liggett Stashower.

"It was grossly exaggerated compared to Cleveland."

He should know. He lived through the era, but he was no Don Draper. Or Roger Sterling.

Stashower spent 43 years in the ad world at Lang, Fisher & Stashower and Liggett Stashower. Their clients included Carling Black Label, Cleveland Trust and its successors, the Illuminating Co. and Evenflo.

Stashower says it's the way the business is portrayed in "Mad Men" that he finds least realistic.

"In all my 43 years, I never saw things happen like that. I saw people get inspired, but not just when they were going into a meeting not knowing what the hell they were going to do and lightning strikes. That never happened. It also bothers me the way they present that all clients are dumb and that you could come up with an idea in a meeting and save the day.

"And we weren't doing that kind of drinking, and that blatant sexual harassment would not have been tolerated anywhere."

Still, Stashower admits that some of "Man Men's" milieu is true to experience.

"Though my agency was pretty diverse, in New York in particular Italians and Jews were not welcome in the 1950s and '60s. ... There were not many minorities in any kind of business-to-business agency, though in consumer agencies that was less the case."

Having led his agency through the 1960s, Stashower was on the front line for many of the changes in the turbulent and culture-shifting era. He saw more than a few Peggy Olsons.

"From 1960 to 1969, the biggest change was the emergence of women in the creative department first, then in account management."

Jim Jensen worked as direct mail ad manager at May Co. and suburban ad director for Higbee's at a time when department stores were still THE places to shop, and had big budgets to lure their increasingly suburban clientele.

He says some aspects of "Mad Men" hit quite close to home.

"The drinking was quite accurate, as was the emphasis on cigarettes," says Jensen, who is now retired in Palm Springs, Florida. "And it didn't seem the women's movement had yet started."

Though Jensen said the show has "good emphasis on sponsor-driven advertising, the ad world was made more glamorous than it really is."

Former Clevelander Marilyn Miller Skylar, a one-time reporter for the Cleveland Press and The Plain Dealer, has just penned a book about her time in the ad world. Her book takes more of the Betty Draper perspective, though. (A much nicer Betty Draper.)

It's called "Tales From A Mad Man's Wife," and the bubbly tome pays homage to her husband, David Skylar, one of the youngest members of the board at the elite Griswold-Eshelman and a vice president at age 33. The agency's clients included GE, Sherwin-Williams and Penton Publishing. She dishes on what life was like for an ad man's family at the time, from the offer of a shockingly large $25,000-a-year salary, to live-in help that cost $43 a week at their $54,000 Shaker Heights home.

"David considered entertaining clients a major part of his advertising work," she writes. She considered it her job to help him.

She describes a three-hour lunch with a client from BF Goodrich during which David was forced to match his client martini for martini. "In one of the earliest moments of his career, our hero had to consume a lot of alcohol," writes Skylar.

But as he rose the ladder and the city changed through the '60s, the Skylars did much of their client entertaining at home. The author describes elaborate dinner parties, with themes and entertainment. "It was not uncommon to see three or four babies laid down to sleep in one king-size bed" for those who could not get sitters, she adds.

Just as "Man Men" touches on the darker side of the '60s underneath the sleek style, so does Skylar. In one passage, she tells of a troubled colleague of David's known for drinking too much. Later he came out as gay, and eventually killed himself after leaving his family. It's not unlike what happened to Sal Romano on the show.

Overall, though, Cleveland Mad Men were not that much like the program, she says. They were too busy working and raising kids in the suburbs. "No ad man was as dissatisfied as the present-day TV portrays them."

Stashower also says home entertaining took off with clients, especially as the '60s wound toward the '70s and Cleveland's mass exodus began.

"In the later 1960s, there were not many very good restaurants downtown, so we would entertain at home. We also did much of our entertaining at lunch, at the Theatrical or Monaco's or Pierre's. But most Saturday night were home dinner parties."

Jensen saw the flight to the suburbs first-hand in his role as suburban ad director of Higbee's from 1969 to 1971, and before that at the May Co.

"With the closing of the theaters [Playhouse Square closed in 1969], downtown became a ghost town."

The department-store Mad Men did what they could to bring crowds to the city for shopping.

"At May's, our Night Sales for a while brought big crowds downtown. And Higbee's had its Import Fair parties. That helped, too.

"Noontime was always busy," he added. "The free Halle shuttle bus helped draw crowds to Playhouse Square."

Entertaining began to happen at suburban venues such as The Shaker Tavern and the Red Fox in Gates Mills.

As Cleveland changed, so did the advertising world. Sometimes for the better, as in the case of women and minorities. Sometimes not, as in the decline of downtown.

"There were a lot of interesting times in the 1960s and '70s in Cleveland," says Stashower. "We didn't have a lot of time for sitting around drinking."