Enter Helen

by Brooke Hauser

  Modeling agencies courted her, and movie moguls called her. Famous men on both coasts made a point of meeting her. She began seeing the producer Robert Evans, and after they broke up, she started going out with singer Eddie Fisher, who was in the midst of a divorce from Elizabeth Taylor. She was also spotted around town with Warren Beatty, who once brought her to a dinner with the Kennedys. Everyone noticed Renata, including “Jack,” who excused himself from the table and said goodbye. “Ten minutes later, I got a call,” Boeck says. “I went to the phone, and that’s when he said, ‘Hello, this is Jack Kennedy.’ He wanted me to leave the party and meet him. I said, ‘I’m here with Warren, I couldn’t possibly!’ He was married. I said that to him, too. I wouldn’t see a married man, no matter what he was the president of.”

  In 1964 Renata became one of photographer Slim Aarons’s “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,” when he shot her wearing a monocle and reading the paper in bed at the Regency Hotel, a photograph he titled Monocled Miss.

  By 1965, Renata was a Girl of the Moment in a decade full of them—Twiggy with her little boy’s body and pixie haircut, Jean Shrimpton with her cute snub nose and blue eyes as big as Tiffany’s boxes—but she stood out among the rest. She was a solid C-cup, so busty that Eileen Ford used to tell her to strap her breasts down. Fashion editors wanted flat-chested girls, but Helen wasn’t a fashion editor, and she didn’t really care about clothes. She cared about what was underneath them.

  “She wanted cleavage, and she told me that I was the sexiest of all,” Boeck says. “I was the only one with breasts in those days. That’s why Helen Gurley Brown chose me.”

  WITH HER COVER girl chosen, Helen could zero in on putting together the rest of the issue. She eventually dumped dozens of articles that just wouldn’t fit the new format, but she decided to snatch a piece about estrogen therapy that had been commissioned for an earlier issue and slate it for July.

  In the piece, the writer, Lin Root, focused on the work of a New York City gynecologist, Robert A. Wilson, who was about to release what would become a bestselling book, Feminine Forever, in which he pushed hormone therapy as a natural cure-all for menopausal women. (“It is the case of the untreated woman—the prematurely aging castrate—that is unnatural,” he claimed.) The estrogen pill, Premarin, had been around since 1942, but Wilson popularized the idea that hormone therapy could be a continuous, lifelong treatment for women of all ages, “from puberty to the grave.” If taken regularly, he promised, estrogen would make the average woman feel younger, look more beautiful, and take greater pleasure in the act of sex—no matter what her age.

  Now that was information worth sharing with Cosmopolitan readers—and Helen intended to. She rewrote the article, describing the “femininity index” that Wilson had devised with a colleague to measure a woman’s level of estrogen, and explaining exactly what this “honey of a hormone” could do: In addition to ending period pain and the worst effects of menopause, it could act as a contraceptive or increase a woman’s chances of getting pregnant, all depending on how and when it was used. Perhaps best of all, the women who used it found that they had gotten their youthful glows, figures, and sex drives back. “My skin is fresher, my hair has more shine; the pill makes me feel and look more attractive!” one excited pill-popper shared.

  To this day, a misunderstanding about this article persists, and Helen is applauded for publishing a protofeminist piece about “the Pill,” one of the first to run in a mainstream women’s magazine. But read past the cutesy headline “Oh What a Lovely Pill!” and you’ll find that the story itself doesn’t promote sexual freedom so much as it is sells the scary and sexist idea that hormone therapy is a magic bullet for any woman wanting to feel “forever feminine”—not old and dried up like the “castrate” Wilson later described in his book.

  As it turned out, many of the millions of women who took “the youth pill” after reading about it would be forever damaged; years later, studies showed that some hormone replacement drugs increased the risk of cancer and strokes. It’s possible that Helen later regretted the role she played in spreading the gospel of hormone therapy, that she would have scrapped the story altogether if she had known about the long-term effects sooner. “I mainlined Premarin for years because I wanted to stay sexy and juicy and young,” she told New York magazine in 2002, fifteen years after being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of sixty-five. “If not for all those hormones, maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me.”

  FALSEHOODS AND PSEUDOSCIENCE aside, “Oh What a Lovely Pill!” encapsulated Helen’s vision for the new Cosmopolitan as a magazine that talked about sex openly and frankly. Above all, she wanted Cosmopolitan to feel personal, a magazine edited for a specific woman by a specific woman—much like a frank and sophisticated older sister. For the magazine to succeed, it was crucial to communicate this vision to her staff, and in the weeks and months ahead she would have more success with some of her editors than others. In a rush to fill the position of managing editor, she offered the job to the fashion editor, Harriet La Barre, who turned it down. The fiction editor, Bill Guy, rejected it next. Who was left? Just Cosmopolitan’s books editor, George Walsh, whom Atherton had planned to let go. A Catholic family man with the lean physique of a basketball player and the serious mind of an academic, Walsh brought considerable gravitas to the magazine, but he was hardly an ideal fit for the new Cosmopolitan, and over time, Helen would come to resent how he made her feel intellectually inferior.

  In addition to Walsh, several other editors had worked at the magazine for years, and she knew they knew more than she did, at least when it came to the technicalities of putting out a magazine. There were the two Tonys: Cosmopolitan’s production manager, Anthony Guzzardo, had been at the magazine for more than three decades, while Cosmopolitan’s Sicilian art director, Anthony C. La Sala, was approaching two, having started as a paste-up assistant. La Sala would be Helen’s guide through the portfolios of fashion photographers, designers, and cartoonists. He would communicate her preferences back to contributors: more color, humor, bosoms, and depictions of men and women together. No pictures of kids. (“For information on children,” Helen told Writer’s Digest the following year, “read Doctor Spock.”)

  Harriet La Barre, soon to be listed as fashion and features editor on the masthead, would help show Helen around the editorial side of the operation. A stylish, slender woman who was as hardworking as she was tightly wound (Helen used to call her “a white-knuckle girl”), Harriet had been at Cosmopolitan for more than a dozen years, covering a range of subjects including beauty and travel. Going forward, Helen would make sure that Harriet geared travel articles toward the single girl on a budget, but not too small a budget. “Don’t come at me with the inexpensive, off-season vacation story,” Harriet would tell potential freelancers. “Sure there are a lot of them, but who’s there? We like to talk about places where women can meet men.”

  Helen would get a similar message across to Bill Guy, a dark-haired, soft-spoken Virginian and former English instructor at the University of Richmond. Helen appreciated that Cosmopolitan had a rich history as a literary magazine—more recently, it had been publishing popular mysteries and thrillers—but now that it was a magazine for single girls, she wanted the fiction to reflect this new demographic. That meant more stories about girls in the city—no rustic or rural settings—and the girls should be unmarried. For the July issue, Bill brought her a titillating thriller about a secretary who gets strangled, and another tale about a plain sister who gets the upper hand over a pretty one. (Helen had a preference for stories with happy endings.)

  With his connections to established writers and his passion for finding new talent, Bill was a powerful asset. So was Cosmopolitan’s entertainment editor, Liz Smith, whose job included writing film reviews, assigning celebrity profiles, and finding freelancers to work for the magazine. Months before Helen walked into the offices at 1775 Broadway, Liz had been writing about movi
es and movie stars for Cosmopolitan’s previous editor. She had cut her teeth as an editor for Modern Screen when the magazine was at its peak and she had experience on her side, but in many ways she was still the same tomboy who had grown up riding horses and watching movies in Texas, where her father was in the cotton business. Having been raised in Fort Worth during the Depression, she was as starstruck as Helen. “She was just a little girl from Arkansas like I was just a little girl from Texas,” Liz says. “We had a lot in common: poor upbringing; nice people, but no money; living through the Depression. We had left home, shaken the dust off our feet, and we were living the high life. I mean, I was in Paris with the Burtons—it doesn’t get any better than that for a writer.”

  Before Helen’s appointment, Liz had written the magazine’s cover story about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—a feat in itself, considering that the most famous couple in the world were trying to avoid the press. Liz eventually tracked them down in Europe, where they were filming The Sandpiper, and embedded herself in their entourage. She turned in a profile of Mr. and Mrs. Burton, whom she described as being “like icebergs—only partly visible to mortals,” that melted off some of those layers, at once humanizing and flattering the famous lovers. “As always, she was breathtakingly implausible in the flesh,” Liz wrote of Taylor. “A cloud of long black hair, the ultraviolet eyes, the famous face, and she was quite petite—much slighter than screen size. She was wearing cream-colored flat shoes, tight khaki slacks, a purple top that covered her waistline. But she wasn’t fat. I knew everybody would ask.”

  Like many of her colleagues, Liz Smith had come in to work expecting to be fired by her new boss. After getting a glimpse of Helen, who seemed so helpless in her new position, she even considered doing her a favor by simply resigning. Instead Helen invited Liz into her large office, which she was in the process of redecorating into a ladylike drawing room with pillows, candles, and scarves draped over lights to create a soft glow. She soon added personal touches wherever she could, bringing in potted houseplants; framed pictures of herself with David; assorted crystal vases and ceramic dishes to hold flowers, pens, and paper clips; a Japanese-style hand fan that she tacked up to the bulletin board along with pages from the magazine; and a large, plush tiger that sat on the floor.

  “Well, Lizzie, what shall we do with you?” Helen asked sweetly, making Liz think of the actress Billie Burke, who played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  Before Liz could respond, Helen told her exactly what she wanted to do with her. In her soft, breathy voice, she told Liz that she loved her writing and asked if she would consider staying on to help her turn Cosmopolitan into what it should be—“a glorious unfettered, sexy and seductive paean for aspiring young women who wanted to unleash their ambitions, have sex with the same careless abandon as men, make silk purses out of sow’s ears that we all mistake for romance, marry millionaires, etc.,” as Liz recalled in her memoir, Natural Blonde.

  Liz leaped at the opportunity. Little did she know that Helen Gurley Brown, the first and only woman she would ever work for, would be the toughest, most demanding editor she ever had.

  “I’ll never forget—she was so shy and deferential, like she wouldn’t dream of succeeding,” Liz says now. “Of course, we were all taken in by that innocent act.”

  ( 20 )

  TECHNIQUES

  1965

  “In an ideal world, we might move onward and upward by using only our brains and talent but, since this is an imperfect world, a certain amount of listening, giggling, wriggling, smiling, winking, flirting and fainting is required.”

  —Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office, 1964

  In her first month, Helen made a few hiring decisions that would impact the magazine, and her personally, for years to come. One was promoting George Walsh to managing editor. Another was hiring Walter Meade.

  A copy chief at the ad agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), Walter was already known around Cosmopolitan’s fiction department as a talented writer who had published short stories in the magazine, and Bill Guy thought he would be good at dealing with other writers and making assignments.

  “We need an articles editor,” Bill told Walter around the same time that Helen started. “Why don’t you come and do it?”

  Walter was interested in the job, but not in pretending he was qualified for it. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

  “We have a new editor, Helen Brown, and she doesn’t know anything about it either,” Bill replied, “so why don’t I tell her about you, and we’ll go from there?”

  Walter considered his options. He wasn’t long for the advertising world. Before he got the call from Bill, Walter had just been through a somewhat life-altering experience. He had been walking down Forty-Fifth Street with his boss, a workaholic who was also a husband and father in his mid-forties, when his boss said, “Oh my God, Walter,” grabbed his arm, and then dropped dead. Unsure of what to do, Walter chose the most practical route: He went into a nearby store, asked for a furniture blanket, and put it over his boss’s limp body before the cops came. When the shock of what had happened subsided, he realized that he had to get out of the advertising business.

  That was the mind-set Walter was in when Bill called and said that Cosmopolitan was looking for a new articles editor. After Bill described the position in more detail, Walter thought, Yeah, I can do that.

  And that’s how he found himself sitting across from Helen Gurley Brown in her office. Right away, he told Helen that he had never been an editor before. “I don’t know what I’m doing either,” she said, “and I don’t really know how I got this job.”

  Then she told Walter the story of how David had essentially gotten it for her, encouraging her to apply in the first place. Listening to Helen recount the whole process, Walter thought she was the most direct person he’d ever met, and possibly the most flirtatious.

  It certainly didn’t hurt that Walter, thirty-five years old to her forty-three, was good-looking: dark-haired, tall, and cool in a tan poplin suit. Helen soon began her process of sinking in. She did not sit behind her desk, but rather joined Walter on her sofa. As they talked about a starting salary, he couldn’t help but notice how she didn’t so much sit as curl like a kitten, despite the fact that she was wearing a short, slinky dress. “Her gestures were extremely feminine,” Meade says. “She talked very quickly and very smartly. She was never at a loss for words. And she called me ‘Pussycat.’”

  Over the years, Helen would call countless people Pussycat, her favorite term of endearment. (Later, an illustrated pussycat became something of a mascot for Cosmo, similar to Playboy’s Bunny.) And yet, sitting in her office on that spring day, Walter Meade may as well have been the only man in her world. He had come in for what was essentially a job interview, but now that he was here it felt more like having a drink with an old girlfriend. Walter wasn’t sure how she did it. She was not a beautiful woman, not by a stretch, and yet he felt drawn to her—physically attracted to this petite, plain woman with her kittenish purr. And that was really something because Walter was gay.

  In fact, Walter knew he would like Helen before he even met her. He had heard the rumors that she was just a silly dumb broad who couldn’t possibly edit a magazine if her life depended on it, and who would fall on her face; it was only a matter of time. He hadn’t read her books, but he knew she was adored by single girls and ridiculed by the press, and he admired her because the press was often wrong. Bill Guy, for one, thought she was a natural. Even with her lack of experience, he believed she had a strong vision and that she could turn Cosmopolitan into a success.

  As Bill and Walter would soon learn, Helen was very feminine in her manner, and she wanted a similar feel for the magazine: sexy but respectable, with a certain patina of properness. But she was also Machiavellian, and to get to her ladylike ends she had no problem resorting to unladylike means.

  Before the meeting in Helen’s office, Bill showed W
alter a written response that Helen had given to a short story he had submitted to her—about a young couple who were deeply in love. “They went to a Tunnel of Love thing in an amusement park and the tunnel had its way with them—in an erotic way,” Meade says. “The Tunnel of Love itself became an erotic experience, and they had sort of a threesome with it.”

  Meade never forgot the memo that Helen sent back with the manuscript. “The note was all in lowercase, and it said, ‘bill, dear, i do think we have to draw the line somewhere—and being fucked by a machine is it.’”

  EVEN AS SHE brought on new people, Helen lived with the constant threat of losing her staff to other jobs. But at least one former staffer wished she had never left in the first place when she heard that Helen Gurley Brown was Cosmopolitan’s new editor.

  Before Liz Smith took over her position, Lyn Tornabene had been the magazine’s entertainment editor under Robert C. Atherton, and she witnessed its decline firsthand.

  At a low point in circulation and staff morale, a few of the editors got so desperate that they started assigning each other freelance articles just to subsidize their meager salaries. They tried to be sneaky about it, writing under assumed names—Harriet La Barre wrote under “EMD Watson” for “Elementary, my dear”—but management eventually found out about it. Dick Deems called Lyn into his office, slapped her on the wrist, and told her that she’d just have to stick with her salary of thirty-eight dollars a week. Lyn quit, moved to Connecticut with her husband and daughter, and started freelancing. But when she heard that the author of Sex and the Single Girl had replaced her old boss, she felt compelled to write to her. “If I had known you were coming,” Lyn told her, “I’d have stayed.”