Not Pretty Enough

by Gerri Hirshey

  Pogrebin was able to book Helen: Description of Helen’s ordeal on The Mike Douglas Show from author’s interview with the show runner in 1964, Forrest “Woody” Fraser, and Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC, Box 36A. Letter from HGB to Roger Ailes, HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 6. Description of the early days on The Mike Douglas Show also from Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country (New York: Random House, 2014), 18–21.

  As you settle in: Recording of the Joe Pyne radio show, episode 3, with Helen Gurley Brown promoting Sex and the Office, held by the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

  One reporter, as slim and bird-boned: Joan Didion, “Bosses Make Lousy Lovers,” The Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1965. Information on Didion’s California heritage and her contest entry for Vogue from her book Where I Was From (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 204–17. More on Didion’s life, especially her guest editorships at Mademoiselle and Vogue, from Tracy Daugherty, The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015). See also Meghan Daum, “The Elitist Lure of Joan Didion,” The Atlantic, September 2015; and Michelle Green, “Becoming Joan Didion,” The Awl, May 23, 2012, www.theawl.com/2012/05/becoming-joan-didion.

  There was one crucial nexus: On guest editorships: Meg Wolitzer, “My Mademoiselle Summer,” The New York Times, July 19, 2013. Further details on the history of the magazine’s guest editorships in Lynn Peril, College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-Eds, Then and Now (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 135–37. See also Alex Witchel, “After ‘The Bell Jar,’ Life Went On,” The New York Times, June 22, 2003.

  “They can’t put me off”: HGB quotes in this section from Didion, “Bosses Make Lousy Lovers.”

  “While Helen doesn’t show it”: David Brown letter to Berney Geis, HGB-SSC, Box 22, Folder 1.

  Helen was already on it: Account of Helen’s job interview for a copywriter job from author’s interview with Mary Wells Lawrence. Information on Lawrence’s career and specific campaigns from her autobiography, A Big Life (in Advertising) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), and from Ginia Bellafante, “A Pioneer in a Mad Man’s World,” The New York Times, June 8, 2012. Helen’s musing on Lawrence’s vulnerability from author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  21. IN WHICH COSMOPOLITAN GETS A MAKEOVER

  “In those days, Cosmopolitan was a failing horror”: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  In the winter of 1964: Descriptions of working on the proposal for Femme from Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 111. Also, author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene.

  Helen’s mock-up cover for Femme: Femme cover and proposal, HGB-SSC, Box 37.

  “We decided it would have to appeal”: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 111.

  Many subjects of interest: Femme basic tenets as quoted in James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 223.

  “It was all loving hands at home”: Brown/Tornabene tapes, HGB-SSC, Box 36A.

  The risqué ads: Charlotte Pagni, “Does She or Doesn’t She? Sexology and Female Sexuality in Sex and the Single Girl,” The USC Spectator (University of Southern California journal of film and television criticism), n.d.

  “A new slanguage”: Ibid.

  Helen’s positively dreamiest prezzie: Account of the crowds at New York theaters as well as A. H. Weiler, “Movie Review: Sex and the Single Girl,” The New York Times, December 26, 1964.

  “I thought the movie was”: Pagni, “Does She or Doesn’t She?”

  Deems was frank in his distaste: David’s account of pitching Femme from Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 111–13.

  Helen and David both went: Ibid., 112.

  David knew all too well: Information and dates on Cosmopolitan’s decline and internal comments on Helen’s appointment from Herbert R. Mayes, The Magazine Maze: A Prejudiced Perspective (New York: Doubleday, 1980); Landers, The Improbable First Century, 218–24; and Helen’s account of her start there in Brown, Let Me Entertain You, along with author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene, who had been an editor at both Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan before Helen’s arrival.

  Salinger incident from author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene and from PBS American Masters interview with A. E. Hotchner, a former editor at Cosmopolitan who faced Salinger’s wrath after his story title was changed without his knowledge or permission. Viewable at www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/jd-salinger/film-excerpt-salingers-last-story-in-cosmopolitan-blue-melody/2836/.

  David negotiated: Correspondence between HGB and Richard Deems, HGB-SSC, Box 39, Folder 7.

  “Helen Gurley Brown, that ad agency”: Mayes, The Magazine Maze, 29.

  Helen was due to take over the magazine: Accounts of Helen’s anxieties as she prepared to take over the magazine from author’s interviews with Lyn Tornabene; author’s interview with the Browns’ friend Faith Stewart-Gordon; and Helen’s account in Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 107–10.

  “I go in for our meeting”: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  “She had a self-deprecating Arkansas charm”: Liz Smith, Natural Blonde (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 216; author’s interviews with Smith.

  Reed rewound back to his days: Author’s interview with Rex Reed.

  Soon after Smith told Rex Reed of the change: Helen’s schedule for March 25, 1965, the day she interviewed Rex Reed, HGB-SSC, Box 3, containing datebooks. Reed’s account of that meeting and subsequent events from author’s interview with Reed.

  “You must converse with your reader”: Helen’s comments on her writerly guidelines from Landers, The Improbable First Century, 238.

  “Hello, I’m Cosmopolitan’s new editor”: HGB, first editorial column, “Step into My Parlor,” Cosmopolitan, July 1965.

  Her inaugural main feature: Information on the Supreme Court decisions regarding contraception from Mark Tushnet, I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 179–90. Details of contraception cases also from U.S. Supreme Court website, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/ (Griswold) and https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/438/ (Eisenstadt). Details on the benefits of the Pill as explained in “Oh, What a Lovely Pill!” Cosmopolitan, July 1965, 33–37.

  22. WEEKDAYS IN THE PARK WITH DAVID

  “A man must feel he runs things”: Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls (New York: Grove Press, 1997; original copyright 1966 by Tiger, Inc.).

  Dr. William Appleton, a Boston psychotherapist: Author’s interview with Dr. Appleton.

  In her first three years: Circulation and ad statistics from James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 225. Executive commentary from Richard Deems in memos from HGB-SSC, Box 39, Folder 7.

  The sales appeal lay in Helen’s editorial mix: Titles listed from the contents pages from back issues of Cosmopolitan held in the New York Public Library and in HGB-SSC.

  “There’s always the basics”: Landers, The Improbable First Century, 285.

  “We’d ride around Central Park in a taxi”: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 113.

  She had some insider’s tips: Details of the book publicity and movie deal for Valley of the Dolls and Geis and David Brown’s involvement in Barbara Seaman, Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 300–303, 332; and Amy Fine Collins, “Once Was Never Enough,” Vanity Fair, January 2000, www.vanityfair.com/culture/2000/01/jacqueline-susann-valley-of-the-dolls-books.

  In the year of Dolls’s release: Movie grosses from imdb.com at www.imdb.com/title/tt0062430/business; other financial info from Seaman, Lovely Me, 302.

  Helen did suffer one brief and public stumble: Account of HGB’s daytime TV show and interview, Judy Klemesrud, “Mrs. Brown, Your Subject Is Showing,” The New York Times, December 31, 1967.

  The Browns and the Mansfields grew cl
oser: Details on celebratory dinner and Susann’s illness from Seaman, Lovely Me, 332.

  even at Wyntoon: Hearst’s extravagance on Wyntoon at the expense of his companies, Landers, The Improbable First Century, 174. Details of the stay in Helen’s letter to her friends Larry Baldwin and John Clerk-Scott, HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 7.

  Back in New York, she put in seventy: Landers, The Improbable First Century, 265.

  Cosmo readers were exceptionally loyal: Ibid., 271.

  her numbers were also buoyed by a demographic tsunami: “A Century of Change: The U.S. Labor Force, 1950–2050,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2002, www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art2full.pdf; and Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, bicentennial ed. (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1975).

  The New York Times reviewer: Alan F. Guttmacher, “Clinical Analysis,” The New York Times, May 29, 1966.

  In Re-Making Love: Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, Gloria Jacobs, Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1986), 39–43.

  In 1969, two-thirds: Changing Cosmo demographics, Landers, The Improbable First Century, 291–92.

  at Hearst, she was still on a short leash: Letters to HGB from Richard Deems and Richard Berlin, HGB-SSC, Box 39, Folder 3. See also ibid., 260, on bonus requests and salary.

  Instead, she traded shameless editorial mentions: On TWA flight, “Step into My Parlor,” Cosmopolitan, September 1966.

  Helen would also receive a demoralizing note: Letter from Richard Berlin to Helen, HGB-SSC, Box 39.

  23. RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

  “It is better to get hollandaise”: Helen Gurley Brown’s Single Girl’s Cookbook (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1969). Originally published by Bernard Geis Associates, 1969.

  Helen did not let up, not for a second: Helen’s handwritten list of items on her daily food regime, HGB-SSC, Box 4, Folder 7.

  Thus the Cosmo girl was a fairly oblivious: Article subjects and titles from Cosmo’s tables of contents and reader mail page, “Dear Cosmo,” in the late 1960s.

  When necessary, she took writers to lunch: Entries from Helen’s office datebooks, 1965–70, HGB-SSC, Box 3. Commentary on Helen’s lunch habits from author’s interviews with Faith Stewart-Gordon, Peter Rogers, and Judith Krantz. Additional details in letters from the Liz Smith–HGB correspondence, LSP-UTA.

  One day, when she was sorting: Quotations from Mimi Sheraton, The Seducer’s Cookbook (New York: Random House, 1963). Also from author’s interview with Mimi Sheraton.

  Success did usher in a ruthless: Helen’s lifetime Jell-O obsession is detailed in a letter to the president of General Mills, HGB-SSC, Box 13, Folder 9.

  Besides, David liked her skinny: Brown, The Rest of Your Life Is the Best of Your Life, 47.

  The Browns relied on: Note to the housekeeper Anna Freimanis in Dear Pussycat, 38.

  This was a woman who made salads: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  The book was fried by critics: Robert Glasgow, “Helen Gurley Brown: The Fanny Farmer of the Boudoir,” Los Angeles magazine, February 1963.

  Here is Gloria Steinem: From “Six Current (but perennial) Fascinators,” Cosmopolitan, February 1966.

  Nora Ephron was game for nearly anything: Interview with Ephron (2001) provided by the journalist Margy Rochlin, who spoke to Ephron for a story about HGB for LA Weekly. Ephron’s Cosmo contributions include “Women’s Wear Daily Unclothed,” January 1968; “Starting a Conversation,” December 1968; and “Makeover: The Short Unglamorous Saga of a New Glamorous Me,” May 1968.

  “Some little bitch”: On controversy over breast memo leaked to WWD, see HGB profile in Nora Ephron, Wallflower at the Orgy (New York: Ace/Viking, 1973), 48–49.

  “Italian men! They are so quaint”: Tom Wolfe, “Life of a Teenage London Society Girl,” reprinted in Cosmopolitan, February 1967.

  Gail Sheehy, she of the multi-book: Sheehy’s early Cosmo articles included “She Works While He Studies,” “Portrait of a Divorce,” and “What Your Sleep Habits Reveal.”

  Gael Greene did not trifle: Author’s interview with Gael Greene. Also Greene’s memoir, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (New York: Warner Books, 2006), 78–81.

  Myrna Blyth was a married young mother: Author’s interview with Myrna Blyth.

  Given the fact that: Readership demographics from James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 274.

  Regardless of Helen’s alleged blind spots: Roster of famous authors from 1965 to 1975 from Cosmo tables of contents and editor’s columns. Special men’s issue was the subject of Helen’s February 1966 “Step into My Parlor” column, with note on Oriana Fallaci.

  24. BIG SISTER AND THE YOUTHQUAKE

  “Wanted: Keeno, diggo, coolo”: Classified ad in the September 1968 issue of Eye magazine.

  “You had to come up with ideas”: Harriet LaBarre, an editor at Helen’s Cosmo, in James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), 240.

  Though she was happy to have the writing assignments: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  “My name cannot go on”: Unsent letter to HGB from Liz Smith, LSP-UTA.

  For months, at the beginning of Tornabene’s: Author’s interview with Lyn Tornabene.

  Helen and Gloria, the Arkie and the heiress: On their meeting, author’s interview with Liz Smith. Helen’s complaint that Vanderbilt would not talk about the forties in Los Angeles in letter to friends Larry Baldwin and John Clerk-Scott, HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 7. The couple were friends of both HGB and Vanderbilt in those years.

  “We danced all night there”: Author’s interview with Peter Rogers.

  She met her husband, Steve: Author’s interview with Judith Krantz.

  Hearst executives felt that Helen needed: Author’s interview with Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner.

  “Flies or bees bothering you?”: Collected tips for Cosmo, list from Helen in CKVP.

  Helen would be paid: Letters to Richard Deems on compensation for work at Eye, HGB-SSC, Box 39, Folder 7.

  “She called me up and asked if I was interested”: Author’s interview with Susan Edmiston.

  Contributing editors included: Details on the editorial content of Eye magazine from author’s interview with Edmiston, and from old copies of Eye. Sheila Weller quote from her article “Betsey Johnson: A Role Model, Still,” The New York Times, February 13, 2015. Quote on the death of the art director Judy Parker from Sheila Weller, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation (New York: Washington Square Press, 2008), 265.

  There had never been good chemistry: Author’s interview with Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner.

  25. A MARCH FORWARD, A FEW STEPS BACK

  “The feminists attacked me”: David Brown, quoting HGB, unpublished writing, HGB-SSC, Box 35.

  Mary Alford’s home companion: Letter to Helen from Teresa Rowton, Shawnee, Oklahoma, HGB-SSC, Box 9, Folder 7.

  Life just wasn’t getting any better: Helen’s account of her efforts to help George Alford in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 67–68. Letters to and from HGB and Oral Roberts, HGB-SSC, Box 9, Folder 6.

  Nature’s implacable cruelty: From correspondence in HGB-SSC and CKVP, it is evident that Helen sent the clovers to many friends and associates in dire straits. Origin of the clovers in a note from HGB to Charlotte Veal, CKVP.

  David, working at Fox in tandem: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 128–29.

  Helen was fighting trim: Helen’s measurements from HGB-SSC, Box 4, Folder 7.

  David’s son and daughter-in-law: Author’s interview and e-mail correspondence with Bill Kortum, who knew Bruce Brown at WBAI radio in New York City. Also, author’s correspondence with Spencer Sunshine, assistant editor of Monthly Review, Bruce Brown’s book publisher. Kathy Brown’s employment
history from her writings, from program for Helen Gurley Brown memorial service and from author’s interview with Amy Levin Cooper, former editor in chief of Mademoiselle.

  “I felt tensions building up”: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 189–90.

  She wrote about it in her editor’s column: HGB, “Step into My Parlor,” Cosmopolitan, May 1970.

  During that office invasion, Helen got off easy: Account of sit-in at Ladies’ Home Journal, Grace Lichtenstein, “Feminists Demand ‘Liberation’ in Ladies’ Home Journal Sit-in,” The New York Times, March 19, 1970.

  “What is all that crap about”: Vivian Gornick, “The Women’s Liberation Movement!” Cosmopolitan, April 1970.

  a very long and trying day: “Leading Feminist Puts Hairdo Before Strike,” The New York Times, August 27, 1970. See also Linda Charlton, “Women March Down Fifth for Equality,” The New York Times, August 27, 1970.

  Helen and Friedan were miles apart: Roger Chapman, ed., Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2010), 73.

  Despite the criticism from Friedan, Helen remained a supporter of her work. Friedan relates the phone call from Helen soliciting the second article in “Where Are Women in 1978?” in the May issue of that year.

  “I’ve never read such rave reviews”: HGB, “Step into My Parlor,” Cosmopolitan, October 1970.

  Her interviewer was a writer: 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: Ace/Viking, 1973).

  Helen gave Ephron: From Ephron’s 2001 interview with the journalist Margy Rochlin about HGB.

  the word “penis” appeared: Landers, The Improbable First Century, 258.

  Lovey was the last good thing: David Brown’s recounting of his firing from Fox and his reaction in Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 128–29. Introduction of Lovey, HGB, “Step into My Parlor,” Cosmopolitan, November 1970.

  an expensive series of lurid disasters: David’s account of the making of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 128–29. The settlement of the Mansfields’ lawsuit against Fox and Beyond was reached after Jacqueline Susann’s death. See “Mansfield Wins Lawsuit,” The New York Times, August 2, 1975.