Not Pretty Enough

by Gerri Hirshey

  on March 23, 1939: Certificate of marriage No. 3346, filed on March 23, 1939, in Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office. The license was obtained there the previous day.

  “embarrassing and ineffectual”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 9.

  On Thursday evening, June 22, 1939: Poly Graduation Program, HGB-SSC, Box 1, Folder 4.

  “Some of the best smooching”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 7.

  the spring semester at Texas State: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Cleo had forced herself: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 8–9.

  6. SINKING IN

  “Nobody likes a poor girl”: HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 104.

  “The Super Chief or something went by”: HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 276–77.

  The Super Chief was the glamour liner: Information on period Santa Fe train schedules and track locations courtesy of Eric A. Bowen, a railroad historian who documents timetables and routes on the site streamlinerschedules.com.

  “You could hear the little bastards”: HGB to writer Margy Rochlin in “Bad, Bad Gurley Brown,” LA Weekly, June 6, 2001. Most thorough description of the infestation is in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 8.

  “shy to the point of verbal paralysis”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 8–9 (on both Cleo’s and Mary’s jobs).

  “somehow got beyond the sads”: Ibid., 8.

  her afternoon job at the radio station KHJ: Accounts of that job taken from HGB, I’m Wild Again, 7–8, and Sex and the Office, 284–86.

  “The place was loaded with men”: HGB, Sex and the Office, 285.

  One such incident unfolded right on the Sunset Strip: Author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene.

  “You are beautiful enough”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 276.

  “In my own life later”: Ibid., 277.

  The proof is indeed in the photos: Snapshots of Helen in that time period provided by the family of Hal Holker, along with an excerpt of a note praising Helen from Hal’s sister.

  Helen’s resolve to avoid such wounds: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Helen charted a plan: Ibid.

  Sinking in would become her signature skill: Ibid. Helen speaks of sinking in when describing how to capture a man’s attentions if one is not a stunner, but her use of the phrase predated the taped conversations with Tornabene and would expand throughout her life and career. Sinking in would become a leitmotif in Helen’s magazine writing and in her books; the phrase was often used to convey a quiet perseverance to attain the desired goal/job/man.

  Helen had thoroughly enjoyed testing the powers of temptation: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 9.

  She described “the deflowering”: DAP.

  “The first time I had intercourse”: Ibid.

  The terrible fear of pregnancy: Ibid.

  “I had hoped to marry somebody wealthy”: HGB, The Late Show, 282.

  “Oh well he’s got that je ne sais quoi”: Poetry snippet from HGB miscellaneous writings, HGB-SSC, Box 36, Folder 12.

  A few years into Cleo’s second marriage: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 9, 11.

  “Those visits to him in the Los Angeles County Hospital”: Ibid.

  All citizens of Los Angeles had a right to the jitters: Information on wartime Los Angeles and coastal California from the following sources: “Battle of Los Angeles,” www.militarymuseum.org/BattleofLA.html; “Army Says Alarm Real: Roaring Guns Mark Blackout,” Los Angeles Times, front page, February 26, 1942; report of news coverage of the event during that blackout, Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1941, http://framework.latimes.com/2012/12/11/times-editors-working-during-first-world-war-ii-blackout/; account of the event at www.sott.net/article/132795-Eyewitness-to-History-The-Battle-of-Los-Angeles.

  war had driven the Thoroughbreds away: Alison Bell, “Santa Anita Racetrack Played a Role in Japanese Internment,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2009. See also the ongoing, publicly funded history of Japanese in wartime America, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Santa_Anita_(detention_facility)/.

  Helen assumed that she would be working directly: Helen’s descriptions of life at MCA on her first tour of duty there in HGB, Sex and the Office, 287–89.

  MCA’s founder, Jules Stein, was a former eye surgeon: Biographical information on Stein from Peter Kihiss, “Jules Stein, 85, Founder of MCA, Dies,” The New York Times, April 30, 1981.

  A long letter to the happy couple: Helen’s letter to the newly married Bilheimers, “four days after the merge,” in early January 1943, HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 8.

  7. NOT PRETTY ENOUGH

  professional portrait she had taken: Photograph, HGB-SSC, Box 5, Folders 2 and 3; see also caption, photo insert in HGB, I’m Wild Again.

  Perma-Lift “bullet bras”: Vintage ad for Perma-Lift, www.google.com/search?q=bullet+bra+1940s&espv=2&biw=1287&bih=717&tbm=isch&imgil=tJxwUK1SMEtY1M%253A%253B3HgHAOBVWGZiSM%253B.

  An active-duty snapshot of Brown: Photograph, correspondence in HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 9.

  “I learned how it felt to be very, very popular!”: HGB, Sex and the Office, 290.

  her Wednesday evening trips to dance with patients: speech with comment about Helen’s war volunteering in CKVP, undated.

  On June 28, as more war casualties continued: Death record for William Leigh Bryan, California Death Index 1905 to 1997.

  “Cleo slept with a total of two men in her life”: HGB, The Late Show, 276.

  struggling with what she termed daddy issues: CVP.

  “In 1944, I went to a therapist”: DAP.

  asked, nastily, whether her mother “put out”: HGB, The Late Show, 276.

  “I think I went through psychiatrists”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Helen was a brave and eager analytic subject: Drawn from multiple references to Helen’s therapy in books (HGB, The Late Show, I’m Wild Again, Having It All) and in interviews with Liz Smith and Helen’s New York friend, Faith Stewart-Gordon.

  “I was always attracted to psychiatry”: Author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene.

  Yvonne Rich: Interview by author with Yvonne Rich, then Yvonne Findling.

  fishnet stockings would become an HGB signifier: Multiple interviews by author with friends and former Cosmopolitan employees all mention the ubiquitous stockings, often bagging at the knees and, toward the end of Helen’s tenure at Hearst, often torn.

  She was secretary to Mickey Rockford: Helen names Citron as her lover in Dear Pussycat, 169. Further details on the affair are in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 17–18, and in Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  On the hunt for profitable clients: Description of Citron as the Iceman in Melville Shavelson, How to Make a Jewish Movie (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971).

  “sex is power”: Helen’s use of the phrase and wishing to create a Broadway production number around it in author’s interviews with Tornabene. Examples of Helen’s frequent sexual boasting in author’s interview with Tornabene and in Nora Ephron, “If You’re a Little Mouseburger, Come with Me. I Was a Mouseburger and I Will Help You,” originally published in Esquire and reprinted in Ephron’s anthology Wallflower at the Orgy (New York: Viking, 1967).

  “one of the biggest swordsmen in Hollywood”: Discussions of Helen’s relationship with Walter Pidgeon from author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  Marvin the Gag Writer: HGB, Sex and the Office, 289–90.

  “Gurley! Come over here!”: Ibid.

  8. THE KEPTIVE

  “A secretary offers”: From LP, Lessons in Love, recorded by HGB in 1963 on the Cascade label. Available online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1C1NqLEDAo—3:05 “Helen Gurley Brown—Lessons In Love—03—Getting The Most From Your Secretary.”

  She generally cannot remember their names: Author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.

  He was from Chicago: Information on Paul Ziffren’s Chicago background and Los Angeles career from Dennis McDougal’s biography of Lew Wasserman, The Last Mogul (New York: Crown, 1998), 141, 183, 278. When McDougal’s book came out in 2001, Helen wrote to him, effusive in her praise for his r
eporting and calling it a masterpiece. She mentions her affair with Citron, but there is no reference to Ziffren or the material contained in this passage from the book. For her letter praising the book and discussing her adventures at MCA with Mickey Rockford and Herman Citron, see HGB, Dear Pussycat, 169–70.

  Helen’s boss at yet another showbiz job: HGB, Sex and the Office, 289–90.

  “I hated legal work”: Ibid., 290.

  On her first day of work: Ibid.

  “I was frequently a metastasized case”: Helen’s quote, as well as Paul Ziffren’s quote comparing her to Atlas, from HGB, The Late Show, 342.

  when Ziffren was terminally ill: Letter from Helen to Paul Ziffren, June 20, 1988, published in HGB, Dear Pussycat, 31–33.

  “In every work of genius”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series, 1841, Essay II, Self Reliance. Note: this is the correct version of the sentence; Helen misquoted it slightly in her letter to Paul Ziffren.

  Ziffren would also be known: McDougal, The Last Mogul, 278.

  “Who knows who left whom?”: HGB, Sex and the Office, 290.

  “Cleo’s separating me from them”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 10.

  She closed the door on the rodent-plagued house: Addresses for Helen’s various single-girl residences are taken from her accounts in Sex and the Office and I’m Wild Again. Descriptions of these apartment buildings or houses and their neighborhoods are provided in part by Google maps of those still standing. Helen revisited some of these addresses with the journalist Margy Rochlin for her article “Bad, Bad Gurley Brown,” LA Weekly, June 6, 2001.

  fifteenth job in six years: Various writings mix the order of some of Helen’s secretarial jobs; in others, she confesses to not remembering one or two. There is some conflict in terms of boss pseudonyms and order. The most complete accounting is in the appendix to HGB, Sex and the Office; all versions have been compared and cross-referenced.

  She had been looking for a sugar daddy: Rochlin, “Bad, Bad Gurley Brown.” Other mentions of Helen’s relationship with Mason Miller can be found in HGB, Sex and the Office and I’m Wild Again, but under different pseudonyms.

  He and his wife took frequent trips to Europe: Details on the married life of Mason Miller are taken from HGB, I’m Wild Again, 14–21, and Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  “Pretty hip advice for 1947”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Helen’s tax return: HGB-SSC, Box 4, Folder 6.

  In I’m Wild Again: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 12–22.

  an almost anthropological fascination: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Mary had warned her: Helen used the term “hillbilly” and mentioned her sister’s sanctions at an author’s luncheon at Stanford, HGB-SSC, Box 37, Folder 4.

  Helen’s “at homes” featured: Author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.

  “In Little Rock, where I grew up”: Helen’s musings on the morality of staying with a rabid anti-Semite and learning to “identify” Jews by physical characteristics are discussed in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 18–20.

  She explained to Helen: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  She devoted a paragraph to the dilemma: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 19.

  “He actually said”: Reference to the plot of land near Ginger Rogers and why she never got it in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 19.

  By then it was not making love: Ibid., 15.

  Tucked amid Helen’s unpublished writings: Retellings in much of Helen’s writing, published and unpublished, deal with the men she was involved with in her single years. Much of the writing bears resemblance to actual relationships. See HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12, listed as “short stories and notes 1944–74,” and Box 36, Folder 13, listed as “fiction: short stories, notes and fragments.”

  “I very carefully picked my predators”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGC-SSC.

  “I don’t remember gulping in pain”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 21.

  forest-green Buick station wagon: Ibid., 22.

  9. DEAR MR. B …

  “It was exciting”: HGB, Sex and the Office, 299.

  On a Saturday morning just after her twenty-sixth birthday: Accounts of Helen’s working years at Foote, Cone & Belding (FC&B) are taken from Helen’s own descriptions in “The Perils of Little Helen,” the appendix to HGB, Sex and the Office, as well as from personal letters, memos, press clippings, and telegrams contained in DBP-SWC, Box 2, Folder 103. Those materials include: letter from HGB to Alice Belding, August 5, 1964; birthday note from HGB to Don Belding, undated; memo on Don Belding stationery listing his five secretaries at Foote, Cone & Belding, undated; secretarial correspondence, letters, and telegrams from HGB to the traveling Don Belding, November 5, 1956.

  Additional detail on Helen’s work at FC&B is drawn from author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene, and from CKVP.

  The man in the chair did have a rather forbidding mien: Description of the interview at FC&B with Don Belding from HGB, Sex and the Office, 294–95. Biographical information drawn directly from Belding’s papers is mostly cited from Jeanne Marie Knapp, “Don Belding: Advertising America,” thesis submitted to and accepted by the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University, 1983, DBP-SWC.

  In an undated letter to Belding: DBP-SWC.

  “It was like finding a haven”: Helen Gurley Brown letter to Alice Belding, August 5, 1964, DPB-SWC. Description of the Beldings’ ranch from “The Ranch,” typed notes, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12.

  “I was living just an adorable career-girl life”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  Helen rarely knew what to expect: Tales of clients, HGB, Sex and the Office, 296–98.

  no FC&B client was as furtive as Howard Hughes: Ibid., 298.

  Belding was a civic and political dynamo: Information on the origins of the Freedoms Foundation and Belding’s role cited from “The History of Freedoms Foundation” on its website, www.freedomsfoundation.org/ourhistory.

  Don Belding was hell on commies: Verification of Belding’s service as vice president for operations on the Citizens Food Committee, also known as the Luckman Committee, documented in an official report at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/rbml/lehman/pdfs/0571/ldpd_leh_0571_0014.pdf. Regarding Belding’s participation in RKO’s Letter to a Rebel, see Knapp, “Don Belding: Advertising America.”

  Wrestling, albeit briefly, with her Democratic: HGB, Sex and the Office, 11–12.

  The effects of this immersion: HGB, Sex and the Office, 296–99.

  In 1949, Helen hired: Helen’s hiring of Charlotte Kelly; background on Kelly’s family tragedy; life at FC&B; speech on their long relationship, undated; biographical information, including clippings from The Tonapah Daily Bonanza, 1916, and grandparents’ death certificates after their murder, all from CKVP.

  “I felt like the blackballed freshman”: Circumstances around Helen’s entering the Glamour contest, HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 226, 265; author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.

  Belding was always on the hunt for good copywriters: Don Belding’s written account recalling his wife’s urging to promote Helen, dated May 19, 1969, DBP-SWC, Box 103, Folder 2. Helen’s quote about always being able to write from James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 222.

  One morning, while Yvonne Rich was in the kitchen with her baby: Author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.

  Every now and again, she “borrowed” a little girl: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  She could barely manage: Charlotte Kelly’s recall of Helen’s goldfish from a speech given in HGB’s honor in the mid-1990s, CKVP. On getting her Siamese kitten, Spam, jottings and typed fragments from HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12.

  Outside the FC&B office: Author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.

  “I’ve never been a revolutionary”: DAP.

  They relished their liberties: Accounts of discussion among Helen’s friends about their experiences and the difficulties getting abortions, and Helen’s care of frie
nds having had the procedure, are taken from DAP, author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene. Helen’s recounting of her roommate’s abortion from “The Playboy Interview,” Playboy, April 1963.

  “I’m going to give you to the boys tomorrow”: First accounts of Helen’s work for General Bradley and his aides appear in HGB, Sex and the Office; there is no reference to her sexual relationships with two of those aides. Details and identities from Brown/Tornabene tapes and author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene. Helen sent an obituary of one of the men, General Chester “Ted” Clifton, Jr., to be added to her papers in the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, with the folder designation “beaux.”

  Details of Clifton’s military career are drawn from “Gen. Chester Clifton, Jr., 78, Dies; Was Military Aide to 2 Presidents,” The New York Times, December 28, 1991. Information on Clifton drafting MacArthur’s dismissal note from Stanley Weintraub, MacArthur’s War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero (New York: Free Press, 2000), 335.

  Here was the silly little secret: Helen discussed the evolution and uses of her sexual prowess in DAP; also in author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  “Business I could rely on”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.

  10. HOW EVER DID SHE DO IT?

  “She is a feeling being”: From a job performance evaluation prepared for Foote, Cone & Belding by the Runner Corporation of Golden Colorado, titled “Report: to Foote, Cone & Belding … Regarding: Helen Marie Gurley,” prepared in February 1957, HGB-SSC, Box 4, Folder 4.

  On a frosty evening in January 1953: Descriptions of Helen’s Glamour contest and trip from her published descriptions in Sex and the Office, I’m Wild Again, A Writer’s Rules, and Sex and the Single Girl, as well as the relevant articles in Glamour (May 1953) and an unpublished account of the visit to New York, undated manuscript, HGB-SSC, Box 35. Also, author’s interview with Yvonne Rich, and news clippings: “Miss Helen Gurley, Former Arkansan, Honored by Glamour,” Arkansas Gazette, March 15, 1953; GIRL WITH GOOD TASTE, photograph, Honolulu Star Bulletin, August 5, 1953; GOOD TASTE, photograph, San Francisco News, August 12, 1953.