Not Pretty Enough

by Gerri Hirshey

  My God, the woman was stubborn about some things. Cheap? Don’t get Rivers started. She recalled a day when she was in a cab and noticed Helen at a bus stop, trying to juggle overstuffed work satchels. Rivers rolled down her window and hollered at her:

  “Helen, calm down and take a cab! Your husband made Jaws!”

  Epilogue: “Take Me to the Ozarks”

  Helen didn’t tell women how they had to be. She offered them a choice. With a cherry on top, a push-up bra, an often overlooked pragmatism, and plain good horse sense.

  —Liz Smith, at HGB’s memorial service

  “HAVE YOU HEARD? Helen is coming home.”

  There was some talk in Osage in the fall of 2012 when two new tombstones popped up in the Sisco cemetery. Nothing else happened until the spring of 2013. The local potter Newton “Newt” Lale can generally see and hear the funeral home’s backhoe from Osage Clayworks, his store and studio, if the machine is chewing up turf in the Sisco plot. But there had been no activity to indicate an imminent burial. He asked Jim Smith of the Smith funeral home, the family firm that had received David’s ashes two years earlier. Smith told Lale that he just drove out one day and dug the small hole himself to accommodate Helen’s ashes, spading up the turf just feet from the resting places of Cleo and Mary.

  The Sisco family home where the Gurley girls spent their summers had been torn down for general decrepitude and its appeal to feral cats. While it was still standing empty, Helen paid the late Frank Stamps, who owned the adjoining property, to keep the yard mowed. By arrangement, Stamps sent her pictures of the finished work before she sent his check. Helen still insisted on Value.

  The family cemetery is a well-shaded, peaceful plot defined by a neat stone wall that separates it from undulant fields and the winding two-lane road, Arkansas 103. There is a barn up the hill and on a quiet day, when the uphill grind of semis hauling poultry feed subsides, the bleat of livestock drifts down. When she brought Mary and Cleo here from Oklahoma, where they died, she had them laid side by side near Cleo’s parents, Alfred and Jennie Sisco.

  None of the many Brown friends interviewed for this book, save Liz Smith; David’s production partner, Kit Golden; and Alex Birnbaum knew where the mortal remains of two New Yorkers honored as Manhattan “Living Landmarks” were laid to rest.

  On such matters, Helen and David had remained as private as ever—sort of. They didn’t discuss their final marriage bed with others, but of course one of them wrote about it. The decision to rest here was made sometime before 1990, the year David mentioned it in his memoir. He remembered it this way: “In a macabre exchange, Helen wanted to know whether I would agree to be buried with her in the hills of the Ozarks in Arkansas, where I’ve never been. Or, she asked lovingly—what a loving girl she is—would I prefer to be buried in Southampton, Long Island … No, I replied, take me to the Ozarks. I want to be wherever you are, and besides, I’ve always liked to go to new places.”

  A while after David’s funeral, Kit Golden was back in the office, working at winding up loose ends. “I remember there being some discussion of sending David’s ashes out. Someone said, ‘Well, you’re going to fly them out first class, right? David would have insisted.’ It’s hard to imagine him in Arkansas but where else would he be? He’s got to be with her.” Alex Birnbaum was surprised to find that the gentleman’s remains had already left New York. “I went to Frank Campbell to see to David’s ashes after the funeral and someone had already come and taken them—some cousin or someone.”

  David, a kinless New Yorker raised on concrete, preferred to avoid the subject of interment entirely. Helen knew the old ways; you lie down where you have people and mingle your shared DNA back into the loam and chickweed. In 2000, the Browns went to Arkansas together to have a look. They stopped first in Little Rock. Helen had made their visit known beforehand. When they arrived, they were met by a woman holding the elected office that Ira Gurley had decided to run for just before his death. Secretary of State Sharon Priest, previously the first female mayor of Little Rock, welcomed them to the Capitol Building.

  Secretary Priest had a packet for Helen containing photocopies of the two acts sponsored by Ira, as well as photos of him from his service in the Forty-Second through Forty-Sixth General Assemblies. The secretary then produced Governor Mike Huckabee himself, who came out to the Capitol steps to welcome the native daughter home. Had she known the governor’s Neanderthal views on women’s reproductive rights, Helen just might have knocked him down those stairs. Priest remembered the visit well, but she was unsure whether she heard one thing correctly. “I could swear they said they were looking at gravesites—that was the reason for their trip,” she said. “Could that be?”

  There was a rare May snow on the day that a procession of black livery cars arrived at the Sisco cemetery in 2013; Newt Lale knew they were Hearst people from New York, because after the private graveside service a bunch of them stopped by and asked to use his restroom. The caravan then disappeared back up the road, leaving Helen to her people.

  Ira Gurley lies alone beneath a small marker in the Glenwood Cemetery in Green Forest; even his parents abandoned the substantial Gurley monument erected near Ira’s small flat stone to rest together in Alpena. In Osage, the Sisco family plot has been looked after by Carolyn Clayton, the widow of Helen’s cousin Wayne Bell. According to Lale, Clayton was working as a greeter at Walmart; her son Jerrit Bell keeps the cemetery grass mowed. The graves are adorned in the local custom with sprays of plastic flowers; many bloom in colors not found in nature’s paint box. “They know you’re in town,” Lale said of Helen’s remaining kin; he was not surprised that they might be keeping out of sight during a nosy stranger’s visit.

  The floral tributes for Helen and David are modest and subdued, just a couple of small pink and white faux carnations. Helen’s stone is pink granite, with a five-inch rendition of Lovey, her pussycat logo, etched at its center; David’s gray marker bears an etched Oscar statuette. The back of Helen’s stone is fully inscribed with the name of her husband as well as the full, three-generation Sisco pedigree. It barely fits. David’s reads just this:

  MARRIED TO HELEN GURLEY BROWN

  Notes

  Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.

  The page numbers for the notes that appear in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

  Archival citations and privately held HGB interview material provided to the author are represented in the Notes section with the following abbreviations:

  DAP

  Audiotapes of interview of HGB by Dr. David Allyn for his book Make Love Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York: Little, Brown, 2000), in the David Allyn Papers, held in the LGBT Community Center National History Archive in New York City.

  DBP-AHC

  The David Brown Papers, American Heritage Collection, University of Wyoming, Laramie.

  DBP-SWC

  The Don Belding Papers, 1872–1987 and undated, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.

  CKVP

  The Charlotte Kelly Veal papers, privately held.

  HGB-SSC

  Helen Gurley Brown Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

  LSP-UTA

  Memorabilia and correspondence between Liz Smith and Helen Gurley Brown, loaned privately by Liz Smith and now archived as the Liz Smith Papers at the Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin.

  Published books by Helen and David will be referred to by their authors and titles in chapter notes; full citations are below.

  DAVID BROWN

  Brown’s Guide to the Good Life Without Tears, Fears or Boredom. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade, 2006.

  Let Me Entertain You. B
everly Hills, CA: New Millennium, 2001; originally published in 1990 by William Morrow, New York.

  The Rest of Your Life Is the Best of Your Life: David Brown’s Guide to Growing Gray (Disgracefully). Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 1991; originally published in 1987 by Delacorte Press, New York.

  HELEN GURLEY BROWN

  Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan’s Legendary Editor. New York: St. Martin’s, 2004.

  Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You’re Starting with Nothing. New York: Linden Press, 1982.

  Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions. New York: Avon, 1982.

  I’m Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.

  Sex and the New Single Girl. New York: B. Geis Associates; distributed by the World Pub., 1970.

  Sex and the Single Girl. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2003; originally published in 1962 by Bernard Geis Associates, New York.

  Sex and the Office. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005; originally published in 1964 by Bernard Geis Associates, New York.

  Helen Gurley Brown’s Single Girl’s Cookbook. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1972.

  The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over 50. New York: William Morrow, 1993.

  The Writer’s Rules: The Power of Positive Prose—How to Create It and Get It Published. New York: William Morrow, 1998.

  PREFACE: THE TROUBLE WITH HELEN

  “I embrace the label of bad feminist”: Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (New York: Harper Perennial, 2015), xi.

  Long before she was famous: Unnamed persons referred to in this section are Don Belding, General Omar Bradley, and Jack Dempsey; citations for them are in chaps. 9 and 10.

  The composer Irving Berlin so adored Helen: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 4–41; depression discussion with Mike Wallace and Art Buchwald, HGB, The Late Show, 32.

  Let it be understood at the outset: Information on number of foreign editions of Cosmo as of January 2015 from Kate Dries, “Cosmo Is Taking Over the World, One International Website at a Time,” Jezebel, January 12, 2015, http://jezebel.com/cosmo-is-taking-over-the-world-one-international-websi-1679015736.

  Today’s Cosmopolitan, using its “mega DAM”: Citations on Cosmo’s digital presence from Garett Sloane, “Cosmo Is Getting 3 Million Readers a Day on Snapchat,” Digiday, http://digiday.com/platforms/cosmo-says-getting-3-million-readers-snapchat-discover/; “Nifty at Fifty: The Never-Aging, Always-Rocking Cosmopolitan Magazine, Mr. Magazine, March 5, 2015, https://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/nifty-at-fifty-the-never-aging-always-rocking-cosmopolitan-magazine-the-mr-magazine-interview-with-donna-kalajian-lagani-senior-vice-president-publishing-director-chief-revenue-of/.

  “Perhaps you will reconsider”: HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 257.

  As the late Joan Rivers told me: Author’s interview with Joan Rivers.

  “this global editor?”: Quoted in author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  what Forbes magazine termed “do-me feminism”: Helaine Olen, “Helen Gurley Brown and the Failure of Do-Me Feminism,” Forbes, August 14, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/helaineolen/2012/08/14/helen-gurley-brown-and-the-failure-of-do-me-feminism/.

  full-page ads in The New York Times ballyhooed: Ad appeared on the last page of The New York Times business section, October 12, 2015.

  And her legacy as pop/cult muse: See Weiner quote at http://flavorwire.com/510877/its-about-class-matthew-weiner-and-mad-mens-cast-on-the-shows-final-episodes. “Bananas” reference from the introduction to Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl. Reference to Sex and the Single Girl in Marc Myers, “Review of ‘Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men’ at the Museum of the Moving Image: ‘Clothes Made the Men,’” The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/review-of-matthew-weiners-mad-men-at-the-museum-of-the-moving-image-1427925433; Elizabeth Wagmeister, “HBO Orders 1960s Feminist Comedy Pilot from Lena Dunham & ‘Girls’ Team,” Variety, October 13, 2015, http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/hbo-max-series-lena-dunham-lisa-joyce-magazine-comedy-1201617081/.

  A study in the online magazine: See http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/15/_am_i_pretty_or_ugly_youtube_videos_alarming_or_maybe_ok.html.

  Thrilled by the invitation: Helen began sending her material to Smith College in 1974. Letter from HGB to Cleo, HGB, Dear Pussycat, 330.

  Smith College has physical possession: From permissions section of the Finding Guide for HGB-SSC, at smith.edu.

  Many questions have been raised: Katherine Rosman, “Who Owns Helen Gurley Brown’s Legacy?,” The New York Times, August 23, 2015.

  Helen still prattles online: See “Helen Gurley Brown—Lessons in Love—07—How to Love a Man if You Aren’t Pretty, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY7_hz6G6Vk—6:16; “Helen Gurley Brown Interview Clips,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HYgMF8Jb2Q—5:26.

  So I was madly grateful: James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010).

  It brought to mind: Lyrics from Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” Sony Music Entertainment, from Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, release date 1966.

  PROLOGUE: THAT WOMAN

  The house that Randy High’s parents rented: Author’s interviews with Randy High by phone and at the Carroll County Historical Society, Berryville, Arkansas. Observations from research trip to Arkansas, summer of 2014.

  On July 6, 1971: Article, “Helen Gurley Brown Visits” by J. E. Dunlap, Jr., Harrison Daily Times, July 7, 1971.

  Their mother-daughter relationship: Helen’s answers to the “Proust Questionnaire” feature, Vanity Fair, August 2007.

  “had about as much insight as a waffle”: HGB, “Memories of Mother and Early Life in Little Rock,” unpublished memoir, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 11, hereinafter “Memories of Mother.”

  “You can’t understand a single thing”: Author’s interview with Simone Levitt.

  PART ONE: ARKANSAS

  “I’m sure this is very clichéd”: HGB in Somewhere Apart, “My Favorite Place in Arkansas.” Compiled by the staff of the Arkansas Times and the staff of the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR, 1997.

  1. CLEO’S LAMENT

  “It was a terrible life”: Vanity Fair, “Proust Questionnaire,” August 1977 issue.

  Born in 1893, Cleo Fred Sisco was the first: Helen has alternately said that her mother was one of nine or ten siblings. The ten Sisco siblings recorded in genealogies held in the Carroll County Historical Society in Berryville, Arkansas, include: Cleo (b. 1893), Jennie Gladys Sisco (b. 1895), Henry Booker Sisco (b. 1897), Jessie Willie Sisco (b. 1899), Charlie Burton Sisco (b. 1903), Carl Wilson Sisco (b. 1903), Mary Louise Sisco (b. 1905), Thelma Ruth Sisco (b. 1908), Virginia Helen Sisco (b. 1914), and Jack Harvey Sisco (b. 1918). All were live births and survived well into adulthood.

  Genealogical and cemetery records read “Jennie” for the name of Helen’s grandmother; Helen’s writings refer to her as Jinny and Ginny, which was possibly the family pronunciation.

  Genealogies cited: The Siscos of Carroll County, AR, compiled by George R. Sisco (April 1992; 2nd revision, January 1993). Also: Families of Thomas F. Sisco Sr. and Nancy Miller Sisco, compiled by Gene Roberts (1989). Birth and death dates from genealogies were compared and matched with those on tombstones in the Sisco family graveyard on Route 412, Osage, Arkansas, as well as the Sneed family graveyard, also on Route 412 in Osage. Additional Sisco family information, including history, land records, and military service, also drawn from Carroll County Families: These Were the First (Carroll County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1996).

  For a time, Alfred ran the general store: The store referred to was later known as the Stamps Store, on what is now Route 412 in Osage, currently on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by Newton Lale, potter and resident. The building is now operated as Osage Clayworks. Information on the family cemeteries, burials of Helen and David there, and routes tak
en through surrounding land by Native Americans traveling the Trail of Tears, from author’s interview with Lale at his store.

  It was understood that the eldest child: HGB, “Memories of Mother,” HGB-SSC. See also Helen’s letter to Cleo, October 10, 1978, in HGB, Dear Pussycat.

  “she was nursemaid”: HGB, “Memories of Mother,” HGB-SSC.

  “Smart kid”: Ibid.

  As graduation approached: Ibid.

  In later life, Cleo would tell her daughters: Historical information on the university as well as Cleo Fred Sisco’s matriculation dates provided in e-mail exchanges with Steve Voorhies, manager of media relations, and by the Registrar’s Office at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Further historical information from the university’s website, http://uark.edu/about/history.php.

  earn a salary of about thirty dollars: Approximate teacher salaries from interview with Randy High, Carroll County Historical Society.

  Every weekday morning: HGB, “Memories of Mother,” HGB-SSC.

  Her students numbered: Interviews with Randy High, July 27 and October 15, 2014. Additional information on Rule from http://carrollcountyar.com/sources.php.

  In cold weather: Information on one-room schoolhouses in rural Arkansas from interview with Randy High and tour of classroom replica with original desks, books, and photographs (including Ira Gurley as a teacher) in the Carroll County Historical Society, July 26, 2014.

  Jennie Seitz’s family: Genealogical information from Carroll County Historical Society.

  The Osage, originally from: History of the Osage Indians in Arkansas from The WPA Guide to 1930s Arkansas (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 30–32; originally published in 1941 by Hastings House as Arkansas: A Guide to the State.

  Throughout the 1830s: Routes and history of the Trail of Tears progress through northwestern Arkansas from http://trailofthetrail.blogspot.com/2009/10/trail-of-tears-in-northwest-arkansas.html.