An American advertising executive and restaurateur, Della Femina is also responsible for the book that inspired Mad Men. His book, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War introduced the public to the debauched behavior of advertising execs which, four decades later, was brought back to life, courtesy of Don Draper.

Della Femina was born in Brooklyn in 1936. He graduated high school and attended one year of night school at Brooklyn College, before dropping out to begin work as a messenger for The New York Times and Ruthruff & Ryan, an advertising company. Advertising piqued his interest: he spent the second half of the ‘50s trying to land a job. Finally, in 1961 he was offered a position as a copyeditor at Daniel & Charles. Della Femina bounced around agencies until he finally settled as a creative supervisor at Ted Bates Advertising. In 1967, at the age of 31, he and Ron Travisano, his former supervisor, launched Della Femina, Travisano & Partners. Their first account was for Squire, a hairpiece company; they went on to represent Blue Nun Wine, Isuzu, Beck's Beer, and Pan Am, among others. In 1985, Travisano left the agency and Della Femina was left in charge of 300 employees and a company that billed $250 billion annually. Della Femina sold the agency a year later to open another agency, but he eventually gave up on advertising and moved to East Hampton. Never one to relax, Della Femina opened his own restaurant, Della Femina, and began co-publishing East Hampton's weekly newspaper, The Independent.

Della Femina is married to journalist and TV host, Judy Licht. The two split their time between New York City, East Hampton, and Palm Beach. [Image via Getty]