353Harrington went to an editorial meeting at Ms.: Ibid.
353“What is romance?”; “Women’s obsession with romance”: Ibid.
354“I am a survivor”: Ibid.
354The letter was signed “Emma Bovary, Yonville Parish”: Ibid.
354Helen regularly critiqued foreign editions: Per Linda Cox, interview with the author, June 2015.
355“as riveting as the telephone directory”; its “coverpersons”: Stephanie Harrington, “Ms. Versus Cosmo: Two Faces of the Same Eve.”
355“More than twice as many Ms. readers as Cosmopolitan readers”: Ibid.
355“Before the press conference we went to the ladies’ room”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, July 1974.
355“She was the most unconfident, ingratiating person”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
356“Helen really created a little money-printing press for Hearst”: Pat Carbine, interview with the author, January 2014.
356“reassure us that you and the other leaders”: Helen Gurley Brown to Gloria Steinem, April 11, 1974, HGB Papers, SSC.
356“She would say, ‘Now, your movement says this’”: Pat Carbine, interview with the author, January 2014.
356a former Esquire secretary, Julie Roy: Julie Roy and Lucy Freeman later wrote a book about Roy’s relationship with Renatus Hartogs, Betrayal (New York: Stein and Day, 1976); reviewed by Susan Braudy, “Betrayal,” New York Times Book Review, August 8, 1976.
357“Gloria, you have to do something”: Steinem recalled this story and conversation in interview with the author, December 2013.
357“I do not remember feeling angry at her”: Ibid.
357“it felt like breaking the picket line”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, interview with the author.
357“I wasn’t surprised by the accusations”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, email exchange with the author, October 2014.
358Hartogs later was found guilty: “N.Y. Psychiatrist Ordered to Pay $350Gs for Sex,” Jet, April 3, 1975; and AP, “Patient Awarded $350,000,” republished in Milwaukee Journal, March 20, 1975.
50: ERA AND YOU
359“The advent of the women’s movement”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
359David sweated in his seat: Account of screening Jaws in Dallas is from David Brown, Let Me Entertain You (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990), p. 15. Additional background on the plagued production is from Jeff Labrecque, “The 20 Best Summer Blockbusters of All Time: ‘Jaws’ is No. 1,” Entertainment Weekly, www.ew.com, April 9, 2014.
359“The audience screamed and screamed”: David Brown, Let Me Entertain You, p. 15.
360in part, he had Cosmo to thank: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 206.
360“She knew that he had to go. He knew that he had to go”: Walter Meade, interview with the author, July 2015.
360“it seemed to me there were no guidelines”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, February 1975.
361Helen relished the chance to ask Letty: Helen fondly recalled her lunch with Letty in her April 1975 “Step Into My Parlour” column in Cosmopolitan.
361“We used to go to lunch for old times’ sake”: Letty Cottin Pogrebin recalled this conversation with Helen in interview with author, January 2014.
361“If she hadn’t created her own trademark”: Ibid.
362Helen eventually did identify as a “devout feminist”: Emanuella Grinberg, “Helen Gurley Brown’s Complicated Feminist Legacy,” CNN.com/2012/08/17/living/helen-gurley-brown-legacy/index.html (August 19, 2012; (post includes a link to the 1996 video).
362Helen promised to try to reel in the help of John Mack Carter: Helen Gurley Brown to John Mack Carter, December 30, 1975, HGB Papers, SSC.
362“This may not be a subject you feel passionately about, John”: Ibid.
362Each magazine devoted a part of its July 1976 issue to the ERA: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 195.
363“Puzzled and confused”: Linda Wolfe, “ERA & YOU,” Cosmopolitan, July 1976.
363“We cannot hope to grab all the goodies”: Ibid.
363Ratification of the ERA proved to be a long and continuing battle: Background from Adam Clymer, “Time Runs Out for Proposed Rights Amendment,” New York Times, July 1, 1982; and Roberta W. Francis, Chair, ERA Task Force, National Council of Women’s Organizations, “The History Behind the Equal Rights Amendment,” www.equalrightsamendment.org.
363“She seemed to understand long before anybody else”: Erica Jong, interview with the author, January 2014.
364The two magazines shared freelance writers, contributing editors, even article ideas: Mary Thom, Inside Ms. (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), p. 41.
364“I regarded the call as the consummate compliment”: Pat Carbine, interview with the author, January 2014.
364Helen wrote Gloria long fan letters: Collected letters from Helen Gurley Brown to Gloria Steinem, HGB Papers, SSC.
365“I can imagine the same woman reading both our magazines”: Gloria Steinem to Helen Gurley Brown, September 21 (possibly 1978; no year provided), HGB Papers, SSC.
365“That you made the first call was especially important”: Gloria Steinem to Helen Gurley Brown, September 11 (no year provided), HGB Papers, SSC.
365“She came to an editorial meeting once”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
365“She called me up and said, ‘My staff needs to understand the women’s movement’”: Ibid.
366“excruciatingly awful”: Mallen De Santis, interview with author, October 2012. Barbara Hustedt Crook and Linda Cox also talked about these celebrity visits to Cosmo.
366“I was trying to explain . . . that this was not a reform”: Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
366“We are all sisters”: Helen Gurley Brown to Gloria Steinem, August 10, 1978, HGB Papers, SSC.
26: SELF-PORTRAIT
51: HAVING IT ALL
367“Having It All sounds so fucking cliche to me”: Helen Gurley Brown, letter to Joni Evans and Michael Korda, July 29, 1982, HGB Papers, SSC.
367Helen began with a tour; “I think I was a darling baby”; “I am wearing falsies”: “Gloria Steinem in Conversation with Helen Gurley Brown,” A Moment in Time: Conversations with Legendary Women, Enduring Freedom Productions, Starlight Home Entertainment, 2006.
367“This is my family”; “This is the first cover of Cosmopolitan”; “I got the sexiest picture I could find”: Ibid.
368Cut to Helen and Gloria sitting down across from each other: Information and dialogue that follows are from video, “Gloria Steinem in Conversation with Helen Gurley Brown.” Author used the unedited transcript of the interview, part of the HGB Papers at SSC; some quotes that appear may not be in the edited version. Author edited and condensed parts of the interview to include here, but all meaning is kept intact.
373twenty people from Estée Lauder were waiting at a restaurant: Ibid.
EPILOGUE
375“Home. I’ll go home”: Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, 20th Century Fox, 1940.
375would eschew the word girl and be known as “the largest selling young women’s magazine in the world”; “I don’t think the advertising should talk like that anymore”: Stuart Elliott, “‘That Cosmopolitan Girl’ Won’t Be a Girl Anymore,” New York Times, January 4, 1993.
375“It became known as the Cobra Look”: Harry King, interview with the author, September 2014.
376In the United States, Cosmopolitan is the bestselling magazine for young women: Statistics per Hearst, www.hearst.com/magazines/cosmopolitan.
376“There is almost no danger of contracting AIDS”; “a healthy vagina”: Robert E. Gould, “Reassuring News About AIDS: A Doctor Tells Why You May Not Be at Risk,” Cosmopolitan, January 1988.
377“The Cosmo girl CAN get AIDS”; “Say No to Cosmo”: Backgroun
d from ACT UP: Oral History Project, a program of MIX: The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival, 2003; and video of actual protest, www.jeancarlomusto.com/doctorsliars&women.html.
377was reported that only 4 percent of AIDS patients: Associated Press, “AIDS Risk Articles Criticized,” New York Times, February 20, 1988.
377“We have come so far in relieving women of fear and fright” and following: Helen Gurley Brown interview with host Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline, January 21, 1988; referenced by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, “Cosmo’s Deadly Advice to Women About AIDS,” Seattle Times, July 31, 1993.
378“People would always say to me ‘How can you work for her?’”: Liz Smith, interview with the author, May 2013.
378downplayed sexual harassment in a decade full of high-profile charges: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 223–24.
378“I certainly hope so”: Helen Gurley Brown quoted herself in her op-ed, “At Work, Sexual Electricity Sparks Creativity,” Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1991.
378“I know about sexual harassment”; “While all this was going on”: Ibid. Shortly thereafter, Roger Simon wrote a column about Helen Gurley Brown’s Wall Street Journal column, quoting her in horror, “Odd Ideas from the Original Cosmo Girl,” Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1991.
379replaced by a much younger editor, Bonnie Fuller: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, pp. 226–28.
379“I think it was difficult for her”: Laurence Mitchell, interview with the author, October 2013.
379“If it gives you any satisfaction” and following excerpt: Helen Gurley Brown to Patrick Reilly, February 2, 1996, HGB Papers, SSC, in response to his article “Spiked: Helen Gurley Brown Finds That ‘Nice Girls’ Sometimes Finish Last,” Wall Street Journal, February 1, 1996.
379In addition to giving her a car and a new office: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, p. 227.
380“The company has been insanely good to me until these last 15 minutes”: Helen Gurley Brown to Walter Meade, February 1996, HGB Papers, SSC.
380“I don’t have children, and it sort of hurts me to think that I just have to throw it away” ; “I feel I have a home”: Helen Gurley Brown to Sophia Smith Collection, donor file.
381“ashamed of being sort of from the sticks and not having an education”: Erica Jong, interview with the author, January 2014.
381Helen visited Smith, and the college made her an honorary member of the Class of 1962: Per Smith College website, www.smith.edu.
381“I don’t know that she counted her own reality”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
382“Because she had to raise herself”: Lyn Tornabene, interview with the author, November 2014.
382On February 1, 2010, David died at home: Bruce Weber, “David Brown, Film and Stage Producer, Dies at 93,” New York Times, February 2, 2010.
382By then, the Browns had amassed a fortune: Katherine Rosman, “Who Owns Helen Gurley Brown’s Legacy,” New York Times, August 22, 2015.
382“Helen talked to me about Cleo in her old age”: Lou Honderich, email exchange with the author.
383“Take me to the Ozarks”: David Brown, Let Me Entertain You (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990), p. 259.
383“I think she just remembered it as being so pretty”: Background on Helen and David’s burial arrangements per Lou Honderich, interview with the author. 383 “She always wanted her makeup on”: Ibid.
384“A few years before she died, she was very heavy”: Laurence Mitchell, interview with the author, October 2013.
384Helen looked for meaningful ways to allocate: Rosman, “Who Owns Helen Gurley Brown’s Legacy.”
384after visiting with the dean of the Columbia Journalism School: Ibid.
384She was ninety years old, “though parts of her were considerably younger”: Margalit Fox, “Helen Gurley Brown, Who Gave ‘Single Girl’ a Life in Full, Dies at 90,” New York Times, August 13, 2012.
384In October, a who’s who of the city’s media elite: Mike Vilensky, “Cosmo Girl’s Homage.”
385“In the back of my mind, Helen would say ‘Do it, do it!’”: Patricia Myles, interview with the author, September 2013.
385Mayor Bloomberg credited Helen for changing the world: Mike Vilensky, “Cosmo Girl’s Homage.”
385“never had children and never regretted it”; “She believed she didn’t have to follow a traditional path”: Ibid.
385“Can you see me on all fours under the table at La Caravelle?”; she “threw her nickels around like manhole covers”: “A fond earful for Helen,” PageSix.com, NYPost.com, October 21, 2012; and Abigail Alderman, “David & Helen Gurley Brown Institute Comes to Life,” Hearst.com, November 15, 2012.
386“It’s not a joke”: Lou Honderich, interview with the author.
386“She made me feel so great”: Ibid.
386“‘What is, what was, Helen really like?’”: Liz Smith, eulogy for Helen Gurley Brown, posted under “Liz Smith Remembers Helen Gurley Brown,” wowowow.com/culture/liz-smith-remembers-helen-gurley-brown/, October 24, 2012.
386“She may have thought she had it all”: Liz Smith, interview with the author, May 2013.
387“I’m afraid we continue in life to be who we were”: Helen Gurley Brown, I’m Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 63.
387wearing her favorite perfume, a Pucci dress, and a purse containing a twenty-dollar bill: Per Lou Honderich.
387The relative who oversees the cemetery: Ibid.
387The day of Helen’s burial, it snowed in Arkansas: Ibid.
388When Lou asked Helen for the names of David’s closest relatives: Ibid.
388“As far as I know, Helen Gurley Brown didn’t read a lot of what we call Holy Scripture”: Rev. Roger Joslin, burial sermon, May 3, 2013.
388“and the language is every bit as erotic”: Ibid.
388“Your lips are like a crimson thread”: Song of Solomon 4:3.
389“skinny is sacred”: Helen Gurley Brown, I’m Wild Again, p. 157.
389“Helen’s fierce honesty”; “I’ll let the ‘Song of Solomon’ give voice to former lovers”: Rev. Roger Joslin, burial sermon, May 3, 2013.
389“You have ravished my heart”: Song of Solomon 4:9.
389“MARRIED TO HELEN GURLEY BROWN”: Gravestone of David Brown, Sisco Cemetery, Osage, Arkansas.
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
Aarons, Slim, 148, 296, 298
abolitionist era, 366
abortion:
advice in women’s magazines, 123
and birth control, 87, 88
legislation about, 300, 333
and Redstockings, 300, 301
Roe v. Wade, 312, 355
as social taboo, 36, 87–88, 301–2
and women’s liberation, 284, 300–302, 309, 312, 335, 363
and women’s right to choose, 363
Abzug, Bella, 313, 317, 324, 327, 343, 355
Abzug, Martin, 317
ACT UP, 377
Adams, Cindy, 17, 73
Adams, Junius, 242
Adcraft Club of Detroit, 235
Adler, Buddy, 58
AIDS, Cosmo article on, 376–78
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 20
Alexander, Shana, 316
Alford, George, 320–21
Alford, Mary Gurley, see Gurley, Mary Eloine
Alger, Horatio, 54
All About Eve (film), 27, 274
Allen, Steve, 239
Allen, Woody, 242, 366
Aly (Slater), 209–10
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 303
American Weekly, The, 48, 67
Amory, Cleveland, 371
Ander
son, Dick, 180
Anuszkiewicz, Richard, 222
Aronson, Harvey, 262
Associated Press, 138
Astaire, Fred, 176
AT&T, 210
Atherton, Robert C., 129, 138–39, 150, 158, 164
Atkinson, Ti-Grace, 306, 311
At Random (TV), 46
Auden, W. H., 77
Auger, Claudine, 218
August Is a Wicked Month (O’Brien), 218
Bacall, Lauren, 121, 226
Baker, Diane, 44
Balsam, Martin, 67
Bancroft, Anne, 47
Bantam Books, 47
Bara, Theda, 57
Barbizon Hotel for Women, New York, 220
Barnard College, 275–77
Barnes, Debra, 286
Barr, Candy, 29
Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), 155–56
Baxter, Anne, 274
Beatles, 108
Beatty, Warren, 147, 148, 163, 255, 341
Bedazzled (film), 258
Behr, Peter, 275–77
Belding, Don, 25, 134
Benchley, Peter, 360
Bennack, Frank A. Jr., 382, 385–86, 388
Bergman, Ingrid, 14
Berlin, Richard Emmett, 207–8, 214, 299
Bernard Geis Associates, 45
and fireman’s pole, 18
and Helen, 46, 235
and promotions, 17–18, 43, 44, 51, 103–4, 116, 262
and Susann, 103–4, 234
see also Geis, Bernard “Berney”
Bernbom, Lene, 242, 290, 337
Best of Everything, The (film), 44
Best of Everything, The (Jaffe), 43, 77, 82, 219
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (film), 318
Biltmore Hotel, New York, 314
Bitter End, Greenwich Village, 20
Bloomberg, Michael, 385
“Blowin’ in the Wind” (song), 76
Bodden, Kim St. Clair, 388
Boeck, Renata, 147–48, 368
Bogart, Humphrey, 226
Bond, James (fict.), 74, 108, 218, 340
Bouvier, Jacqueline, 97
Boyd, Stephen, 58
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (film), 16, 21, 67
Brides, 243
Enter Helen Page 42