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Not Pretty Enough

Page 42

by Gerri Hirshey


  Even in other populations, Gould conceded, such “macho thrusting” and rape can cause vaginal lesions that let the blood-borne virus in. Gould’s presentation was sloppy at best; he did not even distinguish between the terms “HIV” and “AIDS.” He assured women that a “healthy vagina” was naturally protected from the disease. His scientific proof? If that weren’t the case, the number of infected women would be exponentially higher. In terms of science, the whole “reassuring” package was the dog’s breakfast.

  Soon after the article hit the stands in late December, AIDS activists fairly hugged themselves; Helen had teed up a perfect platform to call attention to the dangers of misinformation on AIDS. Maxine Wolfe, a longtime activist on women’s issues, was then a member of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and helped plan and implement a Cosmo protest. Because of her community work, Wolfe was knowledgeable about some of the earliest research and clinical work done on women and AIDS. She knew that women were getting AIDS from heterosexual intercourse. The ACT UP planners began by calling Dr. Gould to ask if they might meet with him to share their data and clinical experience on women and AIDS. He agreed, if reluctantly. “We also called Helen Gurley Brown and she would not even speak with us,” said Wolfe. “When we went to speak to Gould we brought Denise Ribble. She was a nurse practitioner at the Community Health Project, and she had started the first group for women with HIV and AIDS. She had been running those groups for several years already.”

  Heterosexual transmission was happening; Ribble had seen women showing up in her groups horribly sick, shunned and terrified. Often, they were misdiagnosed by doctors unfamiliar with the disease. Though the women presented Gould with evidence of these female HIV cases, he was insulting and dismissive. Before they were shown the door, his visitors asked: Why was there no peer review of his alleged findings? What were his sources? Why didn’t he disclose that he was a psychiatrist and not a practitioner of internal medicine? He refused to answer.

  To the barricades! Wolfe cued up a grainy video showing the scene outside the building housing the Cosmo offices, which were not then in the main Hearst Building but nearby at 224 West Fifty-Seventh Street. January 15, 1988, was a frigid day; protesters were braced against the cold and the encroachments of a phalanx of hired security guards. Signs read “For Every Cosmo Lie, More Women Die.” “The Cosmo Girl Can Get AIDS.” “Don’t Go to Bed with Cosmo.” Wolfe doesn’t think Helen was even in the building that day; she may have been tipped off by a “Page Six” item in the New York Post that had leaked word of a possible protest. As about 150 people convened outside the Cosmo building, it seemed clear that the private security force was prepared. “We couldn’t get into the building because they had hired goons to block the doors.” Picketing began; the police arrived. Trained in civil disobedience tactics, some protesters began taking badge numbers of officers, who began pushing them back. When one protester, Geri Wells, was placed inside a police van, others began chanting for her release and pushing at the van. They knew that Wells was the only one who couldn’t afford to be arrested that day. “Geri’s brother, who had HIV, was in the hospital,” said Wolfe. “He needed a blood transfusion that afternoon and she was going down there to give blood.”

  Wells was released and there were no arrests as the frozen protesters eventually dispersed. Cosmo got the sort of publicity any media company would cringe at, yet Helen did little to defuse the situation. She went on ABC’s Nightline with a stern Ted Koppel. “We have come so far in relieving women of fear and fright and guilt,” she said, “and now along comes this thing to scare the daylights out of everybody forever. And since there isn’t too much proof that AIDS is spread through heterosexual intercourse, I think our side should be presented, too.”

  Koppel pushed back: “When your readership, ten million mostly young women, read an article like that, and draw the conclusion that, therefore, maybe they don’t need to urge their partners to use condoms, do you feel entirely comfortable with that?”

  Helen said, “I feel quite comfortable with this.”

  In Cosmo, the contretemps got only a few lines in Helen’s April editor’s column; they were appended to an account of a trip to Washington for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Helen was a vigorous and longtime activist and fund-raiser for that group. Of the AIDS controversy she said only this: “Koppel is tough but fair. And brilliant!”

  Helen had also received a personal letter from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who complained of a substantial amount of misinformation in the article, then listed its errors in numbered paragraphs. Among his points: the majority of the 1988 incidences of AIDS contracted in heterosexual intercourse occurred in females. Helen’s chilly two-sentence response had all the concern of a form letter, but the surgeon general was persistent. Dr. Koop cited the Cosmo article during a Capitol Hill hearing. He told the lawmakers, “It is just not true that there is no danger from normal vaginal intercourse.”

  Helen never printed a correction or future in-depth articles that kept up with evolving AIDS information; she would even refuse the request of revered AIDS expert and activist Dr. Mathilde Krim to wear a red ribbon for the cause to the Academy Awards, telling her, “I have never been an active supporter in your cause.” Instead, in April 1988, a headline asked, “What’s Everybody Doing About Sex?” More solid Cosmo reporting on the big chill in the age of AIDS: the bar revenue at Pig Latin, a hot spot in the Hamptons, was down 40 percent as singles fretted about losing self-control. The worried barkeep had invented a new drink: “‘It’s called Safe Sex on the Beach,’ Steve says, ‘made with peach schnapps, vodka, and orange juice, and garnished with a condom.’”

  * * *

  There was another, more personal disruption in the Browns’ life two months later; David Brown and Richard Zanuck called it quits on their partnership after thirty years. The men were always close; Zanuck’s two sons were the Browns’ godsons. Helen and David were both very fond of the boys. Hollywood insiders laid blame at the feet of Zanuck’s third wife, Lili Fini Zanuck. She was invited to join the company by David, but the triad formation was ultimately divisive; soon she was generating the most column inches in industry press. The official word was “amicable.” Privately, Helen made no bones about blaming Lili Zanuck, but David was ever the gentleman. Explaining the split to the Vanity Fair writer Joanne Kaufman, he made it sound as though he just missed the “buddy picture” part of the long partnership, and his autonomy. “There was no breach of friendship,” he said; “I was just feeling that I was no longer as powerful as I had been.” He said he wanted to be like his wife: “Helen is the boss. Once a year she submits a budget to the Hearst Corporation. She doesn’t have to go to anyone.” David named his new production company the Manhattan Project, because, he said, “the Manhattan Project produced the world’s biggest bomb.”

  Amid the customary quips, David offered a bit of late-life introspection: “I am a very complicated older man who is knowing for the first time a degree of security and peace within himself owing to a great many mistakes. I’ve suffered many, many traumas, many bouts of joblessness, many bouts of being unloved. I’m not very secure socially. I’m always afraid of offending. I’m an incomplete person working against time. I guess you couldn’t say I’m that Cosmopolitan man.”

  Of course, he would be there in the klieg lights, beaming, as he escorted his wife into what amounted to a coronation of sorts. In 1990, Hearst threw Helen a twenty-fifth anniversary celebration that spared no expense. Helen’s fete was a black tie affair at the Rainbow Room; in the many photographs, her expression radiates utter joy.

  Helen was bejeweled and pulled together perfectly, ever-so-Helen in a short pink dress with a skirt that looked like shredded coconut. Her hair was glossy and full, her light pink stockings intact; she kicked off the gold strappy heels to dance most of the night and have her photo taken with some of the guests: The former Time manag
ing editor Henry Grunwald and his wife, Louise, were just back from a two-year residence in Vienna, where Ronald Reagan had appointed him U.S. ambassador. Merv Griffin and Zsa Zsa, Beverly Sills, Liz Smith, Barbara Walters. The prezzies were paramount: Helen’s vintage (1960) typewriter had been replated and a plaque affixed. A sleek Mercedes 550 SEL—silver for the anniversary—was presented with a paid driver, courtesy of Hearst. Dick Deems closed his remarks this way: “I’ve concluded that Helen is like Salome of the seven veils and if one is able to see behind one or two of the veils there is still so much mystery hidden by the others. She’s a paradox of perfection who understands the frailties besetting the human condition.”

  Within the year, David would have his glittering valedictory moment as well. In Oscar season of 1991, the Browns flew to Los Angeles and once again walked the red carpet outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That night David Brown and Richard Zanuck, partners no more, jointly received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in film, presented periodically to “creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” At age seventy-seven, David found himself amid the lions: Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Ingmar Bergman, Billy Wilder, Darryl F. Zanuck, as well as David’s beloved Buddy Adler. David walked offstage carrying the nine-inch statuette that weighed nearly eleven pounds; his guardsman’s mustache bristled above a wide smile. The future looked bright as well; Kit Golden, the young woman he had hired to help run the Manhattan Project, showed real talent and a good eye for properties.

  A couple of months later, in May, a sadness overtook the Cosmo offices. Everyone’s darling, a talented associate art director named Abelardo Menendez, had been hospitalized with AIDS and was desperately ill. In mid-May, Helen wrote to him at his West Village home:

  Abelardo dear:

  I miss you—dreadfully … you are a part of my life and always will be … I know you are battling very hard your particular illness and I still have faith that it can be bested. I’m sending some special newly-minted four-leaf clovers from my sister’s house in Oklahoma, said to be very potent!

  All my love for ever and ever.

  Abelardo Menendez died soon afterward.

  * * *

  The months passed uneventfully until late October, when Helen did it again—stuck her tiny Gucci sling-backed foot into her mouth at another national moment of excruciating sensitivities. The Wall Street Journal solicited comment from a few prominent women regarding the Senate hearings on whether the newly confirmed Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed Anita Hill when she worked with him on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

  It wasn’t as bad as the AIDS debacle, but Helen’s WSJ piece, “At Work, Sexual Electricity Sparks Creativity,” lamented the dearth of men on her staff who might harass women staffers; then she resurrected the Scuttle thing—that cute steeplechase at the California radio station when men stripped the underpants off young women. Harmless fun, right? Helen ended her piece this way: “Many people have suggested articles on sexual harassment to Cosmo. Though a devout feminist, I have resisted. I have this possibly benighted idea that when a man finds you sexually attractive, he is paying you a compliment … when he doesn’t, that’s when you have to worry.”

  Devout feminist? Public opinion cried blasphemy. For Hearst, it was another PR train wreck. The letters to the WSJ editor were bristling with condemnation and disbelief. The media coverage was universally damning and the industry tom-toms were beginning to thrum.

  Some of Helen’s strongest bulwarks against superannuation had been her hires who did their best to keep the editorial age-appropriate and au courant and the magazine’s bottom line tight and firm. HGB was no devil in Prada; she was not threatened by strong, savvy women; she sought them out and leaned on them. She welcomed her newly hired book editor, Betty Sargent, this way: “Okay, you’ve got the job. I just hope your brain is as beautiful as you are, dear.” In her sixteen years at Cosmo, Sargent oversaw a big chunk of the most valued editorial real estate. “Helen hired me herself,” said Sargent. “A quarter of the magazine came from my department every month, including nonfiction excerpts. We were doing a huge amount of fiction when I took over. We started out with one 25,000 word condensation, two 5,000 word short stories and then the rest of the nonfiction every month.”

  Sargent’s first imperative from the boss: forget expensive serializations of big books. “Helen was so smart. We didn’t need to be competitive. She realized that first serial didn’t mean anything to middle America. You could pick up a second serial within a month for $500, maybe $2,500 for something big. She saved a fortune that way.” Publishers were so eager to get their books into the magazine that Sargent needed more highly qualified young women to help to scout and edit: “I used to hire these brilliant girls from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, really the smartest women in town who went on to extraordinary careers.”

  Sargent’s thrifty and timely editorial encouraged pass-along readership. Advertisers liked the page proximity. Perhaps Dick Deems was right after all; Helen should just stay behind her desk. She was not helping herself or the magazine with her latest press. And she was looking a bit like her readers’ Auntie Mame. Helen was sixty-seven, twice as old as the upper age of her magazine’s demographic. Was she still, as her fervent admirer Irving Berlin had written, “a girl who really knows her onions”?

  31

  A Sort of Crisis

  It’s not true that the rest of life is the best of life. You’ve outlived your doctors and maybe a wife or two—even a child. You ache, you stagger, you repeat yourself and even you can’t remember what you said.

  —David Brown, Brown’s Guide to the Good Life

  IN OCTOBER 1993, David Brown was on location in Canada, producing Canadian Bacon, a comedy directed by the documentarian Michael Moore. Its cast included Alan Alda, Rhea Perlman, and John Candy. David Brown and Kit Golden were on their way toward a string of successes over the next decade: Chocolat, Angela’s Ashes, Driving Miss Daisy, and A Few Good Men. But at the moment, David had chosen to oversee mundane preproduction details on Bacon for a few weeks in the chilly Canadian fall.

  Filming had just begun when he got a call he had long been expecting from his executive assistant, Doris Wood, in New York. She was deeply upset by the message she had to deliver. Close to his fiftieth birthday, which would have been October 4, Bruce LeGacy Brown had died in Philadelphia. The cause of death, according to two of the people closest to David Brown at the time, was AIDS, believed to have been contracted from intravenous drug use.

  Bruce was long divorced from Kathy, who had remarried. Acquaintances of Bruce had heard that he had been dealing drugs as well as using them. Whatever his son had been up to during the years before his death, David had paid for treatment and caregivers during his illness. Checks were mailed from his production office by Doris Wood and sometimes by Kit Golden. Alex Birnbaum also knew of Bruce’s diagnosis, and confirmed that his death was from AIDS related to intravenous drug use. How long had David and Helen known? There is only one potential clue, in Helen’s book The Late Show. She wrote, “I weighed 105 for years, carefully maintained, but in the summer of 1989 I went from 105 to 95 in just ten days. A sort of crisis made me just not hungry … Then my hair fell out.”

  What worse crisis might there be than a death sentence for her husband’s beloved son, stricken with a disease that, in those days of misinformation and fear, had caused Helen Gurley Brown to commit the most public and irresponsible blunder of her professional life? What a fathomless and isolating grief it must have been for David Brown. This was a man who had wept for days at the loss of his collie. Bruce’s end had clearly been a death foretold for some time, and by then, his father had to know how agonizing it could be. The torments of an AIDS-related death were well documented; less than two months after Bruce Brown’s death, the sheer hell of it would reach the big screen in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks as a dy
ing lawyer and Antonio Banderas as his lover. Why was Bruce Brown in Philadelphia? Who was with him when he died? It is unknown whether David Brown saw his son between his diagnosis and death. Alex Birnbaum said she did not know, but that “they were long estranged.”

  For David, bearing the loss of his only child while on the set of a third-rate comedy production must have been ghastly. But it is just as conceivable that, as Bruce’s condition worsened, exile in the north was his father’s chosen, if bleak, way to distance himself from the inevitable. Just who saw to his son’s remains and their final disposition is unknown. The film David had been working on was also ill-fated; John Candy did not live to see Canadian Bacon’s release and critical drubbing in 1994. He died of a presumed heart attack in March 1994 at age forty-three while shooting his next movie in Mexico. Canadian Bacon grossed just $178,104 in U.S. box office sales, hardly justifying its $11 million budget.

 

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