How ever did she do it?: Helen’s account of how she put her 1953 contest entry together is in typed notes, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12. The photograph for her entry is reproduced in HGB, I’m Wild Again; information on the photographer John Engstead’s career from his book, Star Shots (New York: E. P Dutton, 1978).
That August, Mr. Cyril Magnin: Article on winning contestants’ activities, Glamour, May 1953. Photo and caption with Magnin, San Francisco News, August 12, 1953.
the values of women’s professional organizations: On women’s networking: various clippings of Helen’s activities in Los Angeles women’s professional organizations, HGB-SSC, Box 1, Folder 4. Personnel manager’s doubts on promotion, Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.
“I was utterly terrified”: HGB, Sex and the Office, 51.
At thirty-one, Helen had come to know: Helen took Pyribenzamine, an early antihistamine, for the hives and discovered that its tendency to induce drowsiness was also helpful with her insomnia, as she describes in a letter (HGB, Dear Pussycat, 132). Helen’s quote about colitis from Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.
She also recognized her cyclical susceptibility: From “notes and papers,” HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 15.
much to congratulate herself for: Helen’s duties as a copywriter at FC&B are described in HGB, Sex and the Office, 303–309, as well as in FC&B press releases on her award-winning campaigns and correspondence in DBP-SWC, Box 2, Folder 103. On the experience chaperoning Hillevi Rombin, HGB, Sex and the Office, 305–306. On selling swimsuits in department stores, HGB, “Four Weeks Behind the Counter,” Western Advertising, n.d., HGB-SSC, Box 1, Folder 4.
It was sometime during this period: Portions of Helen’s solo trip to Europe are referenced in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 208, and in a travel “diary” that consists of pages from a steno notebook, HGB-SSC, Box 36, Folder 15; those pages contain another verification that she did indeed have a tryst with General Clifton there at the Plaza Athénée, the same event referenced in chap. 9 and in her book Having It All.
The performance evaluation: Job evaluation for FC&B done by the Runner Associates, Golden, Colorado, HGB-SSC.
“I have never worked anywhere”: HGB, Having It All, 51.
Helen was hot professionally: Information on Helen’s professional awards for campaigns for FC&B drawn from newspaper and advertising journals and FC&B press releases in DBP-SWC.
Feeling somewhat established: Descriptions of the decorating of Helen’s apartment and her entertaining there appear in HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 126–28. On décor challenges, Jerry Talmer, “At Home with Helen Gurley Brown,” New York Post, April 1, 1972.
Once the lair was completed and the stage set: Helen spoke of her entertaining at brunches in Sex and the Single Girl, and in Helen Gurley Brown’s Single Girl’s Cookbook. More on brunches in author’s interview with Yvonne Rich.
Her romantic flings effervesced: Author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene; HGB, Having It All, Sex and the Office, Sex and the Single Girl; Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC; and DAP. Additional details on the Swiss lover Freddy in Sex and the Office, 301.
“I remember splendid years”: HGB, Having It All, 203.
She had a brief affair with an art director: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.
As is often the plotline: “Don Juan” appears in most of Helen’s books, sometimes under a pseudonym or as “DJ.” Additional information from author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene, as well as from CKVP, which confirm his real identity. On DJ’s bad behavior, see also HGB, Sex and the Office, 302–303. Given Helen’s tendency to provide various versions of certain memories, her statements regarding Don Juan are remarkably consistent, as are Helen’s detailed fictional accounts, HGB-SSC. One manuscript is an outline for a novel to be titled “The Girls of Beverly Hills.” In an accompanying letter to Bernie Geis, Helen admits that one main sketch is based on Helen’s own experience with Don Juan, HGB-SSC.
The villain is nearly always referred to as Don Juan: There were actually two men that Helen termed “Don Juans.” One affair began as soon as Helen joined FC&B and lasted a few months. The man she very much wanted to marry, an executive at another ad agency, is referred to as “Allen” in Sex and the Office and simply as “Don Juan” elsewhere. Helen identified him by his actual name in her taped conversations with Lyn Tornabene. More on the relationship is drawn from her published accounts in HGB, I’m Wild Again; HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folders 9 and 10; and in Helen’s letter to him in Dear Pussycat. Letters to Helen by the man identified as Don Juan are contained in CKVP, along with HGB commentary.
“He was very romantic”: DAP.
Charlotte Kelly took Helen’s sobbing phone calls: Recollections about the bad relationship with DJ from a speech in CKVP.
she confessed some serious anger issues: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC. More examples, including hiding DJ’s car and the blond model, in CKVP.
“Whatever the emotional problems”: DAP.
She left DJ many times: Helen’s romance with Dempsey is detailed in HGB, Sex and the Office, 301–302; HGB, I’m Wild Again, 26; and Walter Winchell, “Man About Town” column, New York Daily Mirror, n.d., HGB-SSC, Box 1, Folder 4. Details on Dempsey’s life and boxing career from Victor Mather, “With One Boxer Dominating, the Heavyweight Division Seems Light,” The New York Times, April 23, 2015.
11. THE CURES
“I believe psychiatry helps”: from HGB, Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions, 249.
The meeting space of the group psychotherapy practice: Having begun therapy at age twenty-two, Helen saw a shifting cast of psychotherapists in Los Angeles and New York. Information on those treatments is drawn from HGB, Having It All, I’m Wild Again, and The Late Show, as well as from her syndicated Los Angeles Times column, “A Woman Alone,” collected in book form as Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions. Additional information from author’s interviews with Liz Smith and Faith Stewart-Gordon, friends of Helen’s with whom she discussed such matters. Descriptions of the group and private therapy sessions with Charles Cooke are drawn from several sources: DAP, which also covers her interest in Albert Ellis, and from author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene.
See also C. E. Cooke and A. E. Van Vogt, The Hypnotism Handbook (Alhambra, CA: Borden, 1965); and Charles E. Cooke and Eleanore Ross, Sex Can Be an Art! (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1964).
“Depression is waiting for you”: HGB, Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions, 254.
“It’s such a dull, ordinary”: Ibid., 256.
“I sort of expiated the pain”: DAP.
“He [Cooke] said”: Ibid.
“The sex urge is as strong”: Cooke and Ross, Sex Can Be an Art!, 14.
Kinsey’s report was shocking at the time: Overview of national reactions to the study in David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 276–81. Albert Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998; originally published in 1953). Also “The Kinsey Report: Media Reaction to Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” report on the Kinsey Institute (at Indiana University) website at http://kinseyinstitute.org/services/2003/media-reaction.html.
“I would always bring along a little something”: Incident with the fellow patient breaking his hand in a speech that Helen gave to the American Society of Magazine Editors on August 9, 1980. HGB-SSC, Box 15.
Helen Gurley was nothing but a slut!: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.
Slut-shaming is an ancient: See Monica Lewinsky TED talk at www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame?language=en.
Austen confessed in a letter: Jane Austen’s fascination with Don Juan is mentioned in a September 1813 letter to her sister, Cassandra. Deirdre Le Faye, ed., Jane Austen’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 219, 221.
“He almost took the fun out of it”: DAP.
Helen made herself do it: Helen described the nude exercise in Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC, as
well as in an undated fiction fragment, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12.
Burnouts were common in the trade: Helen’s account of male coworkers complaining from HGB, I’m Wild Again, 114.
“pressing for news of dating”: HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 168–71. More on her work with Miss Universe in HGB, Sex and the Office, 305–306, and in unpublished jottings in HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12.
Helen took her place in line: Helen’s meeting and relationship with Gladys Lindberg are in HGB, The Late Show, 158; Sex and the Single Girl; Sex and the Office; and a book written by Gladys Lindberg’s daughter: Judy Lindberg McFarland, Aging Without Growing Old (Lake Mary, FL: Siloam Press, 2003), xv–xx.
Given more energy, she began to exercise: Helen’s earliest exhortations on fitness appear in HGB, Sex and the Single Girl. Also in “Look Ma, I’m a Yogi,” originally appearing as a “Woman Alone” column, Los Angeles Times, and reprinted in HGB, Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions.
Thinking that she might feel safe: Helen’s car names, HGB, Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions, 28. Helen’s misgivings after her impulsive Mercedes purchase is a tale retold in nearly all of her books and in a nonfiction fragment, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 12. Her extreme distress is also recounted by her friend Charlotte Kelly in a speech, CKVP.
Just as she settled into: Don Belding’s version of Helen’s wooing by a rival agency is from an undated speech contained in his papers; DBP-SWC, Box 2, Folder 103. Helen’s difficulty in making the decision to leave FC&B from CKVP.
“They needed to staff up”: The description of her beginnings at Kenyon & Eckhardt and her work on the Max Factor account, as well as information on the strange methods of Mr. Gross, are drawn from Helen’s version, in Sex and the Office, 306–307.
The agency was reeling: Additional information on the Edsel disaster from the Foote, Cone & Belding history in the online AdAge Encyclopedia compiled by Advertising Age, http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/foote-cone-belding-fcb-worldwide/98467/.
Helen applied her adjectival wizardry: Samples of Helen’s ad copy and promotional ideas for Max Factor, HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folder 2. Her observations and complaints about her treatment at K&E and its mismanagement are contained in HGB, Sex and the Office, as well as an article titled “Top Ad Woman to Tell Woes of Copywriter,” in University of Southern California newspaper, The Trojan Owl, March 16, 1959. More details in a talk to the Los Angeles Copy Club in October 1962, as reported in “Sins of Creative Directors Revealed by Helen Gurley Brown,” Media Agencies Clients (trade publication). Helen’s description of the women copywriters’ office at Kenyon & Eckhardt, HGB, Sex and the Office, 46. Her complaints regarding treatment of the three female copywriters are also described in HGB, The Writer’s Rules, 81–82.
“David came to me presold”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.
12. THE MARRIAGE PLOT
“Helen wants to marry”: From Jean Walker, “Marriage? Three Modern Misses Discuss an Up-To-Date Dilemma,” Los Angeles Mirror News, May 5, 1959.
Helen was willing to play the long game: Courtship details have been drawn and cross-checked from David’s first memoir, Let Me Entertain You (including a section in that book given over to Helen’s version of the story, pp. 38–40), as well as in Helen’s I’m Wild Again, 25–27, Sex and the Single Girl, 3–4, and The Late Show, 52–54. David’s quote about his premarital dating in California from Cindy Adams, “He Made Her a Married Woman,” Pageant, December 1963. Additional details from Judy Bachrach’s “Couples” profile, People, November 1, 1982.
The subject of Helen’s “sinking in” to her intended was discussed in author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene. Helen used the term throughout her writing life. An example in HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 204, as well as a section titled “Sinking In” in HGB, Having It All, 266.
He was born into: Early biographical facts are drawn chiefly from Brown, Let Me Entertain You, as well as Brown’s recounting of the years growing up on Long Island in “Long Island and the Single Boy,” On the Sound, August 1972; and Andrew Goldman’s account of Brown’s long friendship with Ernest Lehman, “The Producers,” The New Yorker, March 4, 2002. Additional information from Brown’s other two books, The Best of Your Life Is the Rest of Your Life and Brown’s Guide to the Good Life.
Further details on Brown’s magazine career, William Randolph Hearst, and the state of Cosmopolitan magazine in the mid-forties are contained in Herbert R. Mayes, The Magazine Maze: A Prejudiced Perspective (New York: Doubleday, 1980), and James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010).
Information on David Brown’s first two marriages, to Liberty LeGacy and Wayne Clark, from Brown, Let Me Entertain You; plus author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene, the author Judith Krantz, and Alex Mayes Birnbaum, daughter of David’s Cosmopolitan boss Herb Mayes, who first met Brown when he was a child and remained a close friend until his death, and with Marc Haefele, a former friend and college roommate of David’s son, Bruce Brown. David Brown’s domestic arrangements prior to marrying Helen—particularly in terms of the home itself and Helen’s observations of the housekeeper, dog, and Bruce Brown—are detailed in HGB, I’m Wild Again; HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folders 9 and 10; as well as in Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC.
13. LET THE GAMES BEGIN
“I wish I was a woman of about”: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (New York: Little, Brown, 2013), e-book.
Finally, it was time: Ruth Schandorf’s invitation to David Brown from Joanne Kaufman, “Starting Over,” Vanity Fair, October 1988. Information on the courtship and wedding from HGB, I’m Wild Again, 25–27; and the section Helen authored in Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 38–40. See also Helen’s letter to Ernest Lehman in HGB, Dear Pussycat, 303, and HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folders 9 and 10.
deployed the soon-legendary HGB Eye Lock: Many sources interviewed for this book, most of them male, commented on Helen’s intense and sometimes mesmerizing stare during one-on-one conversations. For a humorous description of the phenomenon, see James Kaplan, “The Mouseburger That Roared,” Vanity Fair, June 1990.
This Helen believed: Helen’s books are filled with how-tos on hooking a man with sex. She also suggested a musical number for her proposed Broadway show titled “Sex Is Power.” HGB-SSC, Box 36, Folders 2 and 3.
Helen considered a change in birth control: DAP.
David was still dating others: David’s avid interest in the novelist Rona Jaffe, as well as his dating her, is discussed in Helen’s section of Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 109. Jaffe biographical facts from “Rona Jaffe, Author of Popular Novels, Is Dead at 74,” The New York Times, December 31, 2005; and theater review, Ben Brantley, “‘The Best of Everything,’ Based on Rona Jaffe’s Novel,” The New York Times, October 7, 2012. Jaffe’s comments from her foreword and text of The Best of Everything (New York: Penguin, 2005; originally published by Simon & Schuster, 1958).
He had long admired a certain flock: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 33–34.
David infuriated Helen by suggesting: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene on Helen’s frustrations getting David to consider her as a wife, and Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC, Box 36A.
a soupçon of what she called “latent revenge sex”: Helen’s brief fling with Jean Ronald Getty in 1959 is discussed in HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC.
Something snapped in Helen: Description of Mrs. Neale, housekeeper, and the argument in Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 39; and HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC.
One dreadful night he pushed back: HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, and in Helen’s account of their courtship, Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 38–40.
Cleo, out for a visit: HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC.
He finally agreed to set a date: Helen’s version of the wedding secrecy from author’s interview with HGB for “Popping the Question,” New York Daily News
Magazine, April 16, 1978. Also, Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 40.
Helen ordered her wedding dress: Description of dress from photograph in Brown, Let Me Entertain You. Information on Helen’s favorite designer and the design of her wedding dress from “Life with the Jax Pack,” Sports Illustrated, www.si.com/vault/1967/07/10/619989/life-with-the-jax-pack.
The things she carried: What Helen brought to her new home, HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 9.
Congratulatory wires: HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC.
14. WHISKEY SOURS WITH CARL SANDBURG
“Unlike Madame Bovary”: HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 9.
Helen surveyed her new domain: Accounts of the beginning of the Browns’ marriage at 515 Radcliffe Avenue are taken from HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, Box 35, Folders 9 and 10; Brown, Let Me Entertain You; author’s interview with Yvonne Rich; and Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC. Details on Helen’s friendship with Charlotte Kelly from speakers at the memorial service for Charlotte Kelly Veal at St. Peter’s church, New York City, November 2013, and from CKVP.
Material on Bruce Brown and his behavioral problems from HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC, and a fragment of writing, undated, HGB-SSC, Box 35, as well as from author’s interviews and correspondence with Marc Haefele, Bruce Brown’s roommate at New York University in the early 1960s. Information on the Browns’ friendship with Herbert and Grace Mayes from author’s interview with their daughter Alex Mayes Birnbaum and from Herbert R. Mayes, The Magazine Maze: A Prejudiced Perspective (New York: Doubleday, 1980).
Descriptions of David’s stalker, Nadine, in HGB, “autobiographical work,” HGB-SSC.
Despite the difficulties at home: Commentary on Helen’s dining habits from author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene, Faith Stewart-Gordon, Barbara Walters, Liz Smith, Alex Mayes Birnbaum, Yvonne Rich, and others. Helen’s early exercise regimes are described in HGB, Sex and the Single Girl, 180–85.
“A plague on hostesses”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 160.
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