Not Pretty Enough

by Gerri Hirshey

  The dual transitioning: Author’s interview with Bonnie Fuller.

  “I would see her as regularly”: Author’s interview with Cathie Black, who had just taken over as chief of Hearst magazines.

  Atoosa Rubenstein: Author’s interview with Atoosa Rubenstein.

  Helen had jumped all over her: Faith Stewart-Gordon, The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story (New York: Scribner, 1999), as well as author’s interview with Stewart-Gordon.

  She allowed herself a bit of bragging: Helen’s final editor’s column, Cosmopolitan, February 1997.

  Mary Gurley Alford had died: Letter from HGB to Liz Smith, LSP-UTA, and letter from HGB to former coworker Berna Linden in HGB, Dear Pussycat, 21–22.

  In July 1998, Helen was diagnosed: Helen’s accounts of her breast cancer experience in HGB, I’m Wild Again, 138, 151 (quotes); Dear Pussycat, 134 (letter to her surgeon).

  Fuller’s successor, Kate White: Author’s interviews with Kate White.

  Helen’s stash of four-leaf: Author’s interview with Erica Jong. Letter about sympathy for Joyce Maynard, CKVP; to Steve Rubell, HGB-SSC, Box 9, Folder 7; to Lizzie Grubman, HGB, Dear Pussycat, 28–29. Thank-you notes to and from Browns and Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, HGB-SSC, Box 6, Folder 6.

  In the electronic media: Episode of the BBC show Where’s Elvis This Week? online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEc7eFArqw. First aired on October 13, 1996.

  At seventy-six, a time when an arthritic shoulder: CKVP, correspondence with HGB, including a clipping of “No Wallflowers in Dance Heaven,” by Sandee Brawarsky, The New York Times, August 25, 2000. Also, letter from Eve Ensler to HGB and author’s interview with Ensler.

  33. “WHAT THE HELL, WE’RE OFF TO KOREA!”

  “Find out what you can still do”: HGB to interviewer in the same video that shows her doing the tango. Unaired. Online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg162A9oq-8.

  Helen left her penthouse: News clipping about Danse Elegante from CKVP.

  In cold weather: Author’s interview with Kit Golden.

  “What the hell, we’re off”: Author’s interview with Jamie Brickhouse.

  In June 2001: Margy Rochlin, “Bad, Bad Gurley Brown,” LA Weekly, June 6, 2001; and author’s interview with Rochlin.

  Helen had written another iteration of her Book again: Author’s interviews with the editors Sally Richardson and Elizabeth Beier at St. Martin’s Press, and with the then publicist Jamie Brickhouse.

  For decades, Helen had been writing: Author’s interviews with Nancy Megan, friend of Charlotte Veal, and Robin LoGuidice, Veal’s friend, attorney, and executor. Letters and e-mails regarding the disposition of Helen’s papers from CKVP.

  When the wealthy financier Pete Peterson: Author’s interviews with Pete Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney.

  To those who knew about her divertissements: Author’s interviews with Robin LoGuidice, Nancy Megan, Lyn Tornabene, and Simone Levitt. Also in CKVP.

  After his death, Helen put information: HGB-SSC.

  David Brown heard rumors about his wife: Brown, The Rest of Your Life Is the Best of Your Life, 30.

  There may be a simple reason: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 70.

  When I wanted to borrow her flat: Excerpt from “Carlotta,” poem written for her friend, in CKVP.

  “Why are we (not me)”: HGB, I’m Wild Again, 52.

  For years, until well into the 2000s: Letters from DJ to HGB in CKVP, along with commentary by HGB; letter to “Sweetiepie” in HGB, Dear Pussycat, 354–56. Also, letters to Don Juan in her papers at Smith.

  Two years after Helen’s experiment: Author’s interview with Eve Ensler; letter from Ensler to HGB, 2000; Helen’s monologue later performed onstage excerpted from Ensler’s book The Good Body (New York: Villard, 2004), 11–14.

  The dreaded things: On David’s broken hips, two letters from HGB to Liz Smith, LSP-UTA.

  “They were very nice”: Author’s interview with the Four Seasons’ co-owner Julian Niccolini.

  “We were the downstairs people”: Author’s interview with David Patrick Columbia.

  34. THE LONG GOODBYE

  “please don’t die”: Bit of poetry from random and undated HGB writings, HGB-SSC, Box 39.

  On February 1, 2010: Details on the illness and death of David Brown and Helen’s reaction to it from author’s interviews with Alex Mayes Birnbaum, Liz Smith, Kit Golden, and Lois Cahall.

  The first person to speak was: Recording of the speakers at David Brown’s memorial provided by a friend of the family in attendance.

  “Well, I haven’t coped too well”: Radio interview of HGB by Scott Spears, and author’s e-mail with him.

  “She was told she could not come over”: Author’s interviews with Robin LoGuidice and Charlotte Veal’s friend Nancy Megan. Additional testimony on the difficulty of old friends visiting from author’s interview with Lois Cahall.

  “We ended up with a partnership”: Author’s interview with Nicholas Lemann.

  But she was not a brick-and-mortar: Information on HGB’s bequests and the controversy on control of her legacy from Katharine Rosman, “Who Owns Helen Gurley Brown’s Legacy?,” The New York Times, August 22, 2015.

  The obituary writer, Margalit Fox: Margalit Fox, “Helen Gurley Brown, Who Gave ‘Single Girl’ a Life in Full, Dies at 90,” The New York Times, August 13, 2012.

  The Hearst send-off: Memorial service details from the program and handouts given at the event, LSP-UTA and from interviews with Liz Smith and Brooke Shields.

  35. THE WOMEN: CAN WE TALK?

  “A best girlfriend is like Mentholatum:” HGB in I’m Wild Again, 224. For this chapter, author’s interviews conducted with Gloria Vanderbilt, Barbara Walters, Simone Levitt, Liz Smith, Lois Cahall, and Joan Rivers. Additional material from Lois Cahall’s unpublished memoir. On Simone Levitt, biographical material from Rich Levin, “La Belle Simone,” New York magazine, November 10, 2013. After Joan Rivers’s death, some of her one-liners were posted at www.people.com/article/joan-rivers-best-quotes-one-liners. Also in Rivers section, HGB letter to the makeup artist Robert Oysterman, HGB-SSC, Box 9, Folder 3.

  EPILOGUE: “TAKE ME TO THE OZARKS”

  “Have you heard?”: Author’s interview with Newton “Newt” Lale at Osage Clayworks, near Sisco family cemetery. Also author’s conversation with Kathy Smith of Smith Family Funeral Home, Green Forest, Arkansas, about the Browns’ interment.

  While it was still standing empty: Author’s interview with the reporter Cyd King, and King’s article “Cosmo Editor Called Home in End,” Arkansas Online, November 29, 2012. Also, author’s notes and photographs of Sisco family cemetery, gathered in July 2014.

  He remembered it this way: Brown, Let Me Entertain You, 259.

  A while after David’s funeral: Author’s interview with Kit Golden.

  When they arrived, they were met: Author’s interview with Sharon Priest, former secretary of state of Arkansas; and HGB’s letter to Priest, HGB, Dear Pussycat, 80.

  Ira Gurley lies alone: Author’s interview with Randy High; author’s photographs of Greenwood Cemetery in Green Forest, Arkansas.

  In Osage, the Sisco family plot: Author’s interviews with Newt Lale and Kathy Smith.

  Married to Helen Gurley Brown: Grave inscriptions for both Browns from author’s photographs.

  Acknowledgments

  This book began where much of it was written, in the New York Society Library on East Seventy-Ninth Street. One morning, I ran into Betsy Carter, friend, editor, fine writer, and longtime denizen of the library’s Hornblower Room, where a robust portion of Manhattan writers find sanctuary, Wi-Fi, and civility. Knowing that I was casting about for a book idea, Betsy said, “Why not Helen Gurley Brown? It’s a great story. Think about it.” I would never blame Betsy for the special torments of the ensuing three years; I do thank her, so very much, for her support, for sharing her own HGB encounters and insights, and for her boundless patience in abiding my escalating whines. As I looked up from my keyboard all
those months and saw her curly head bent—with joy!—over new fiction, Betsy was a reassuring polestar. She’s right: we are fortunate to do this crazy thing for a living.

  As ever, the next step was up to my beloved friend and agent, Flip Brophy, who knew exactly where to place this project, and with whom. For the first time, I got to see the process firsthand; she closed the deal as we convened at a borrowed house on the Jersey shore. For the aspiring author, it was nerve-racking and impressive; by lunchtime, Flip had made another perfect match, with Sarah Crichton Books at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Sarah Crichton is the increasingly rare working editor who gets into it up to her elbows, gently tamps down author excess, leaves no footprints, and always makes it better. It was a wild ride at times; I am so grateful for Sarah’s faith, humor, constancy, and calm. Many thanks to her quicksilver assistant, Marsha Sasmor, who was never too busy to counsel a cyber-klutz and was too polite to laugh. I am one lucky dog to have had the keen eyes and sensibilities of copy editor Lisa Silverman and production editor Frieda Duggan, who coddled, triple-checked, and fine-tuned my copy. All the way through, as I was researching and writing, and during the close vetting of this book, I simply could not have persevered without the sound judgment and boundless patience of the attorney Eric Rayman. So many people in publishing told me, “You have Eric? You’re lucky.” Amen.

  At the outset of my research, more good fortune led me to Chloe Boxer, then a whip-smart recent Vassar grad who agreed to sign on as a part-time researcher. She dove in with enthusiasm and with cyber skills far superior to mine; no one can massage a search engine like Chloe. It was inevitable that she would land an excellent “real job.” I’ve missed her, and how. But given the material she turned up and the organization she imposed on the digital mountain of documents and transcripts, Chloe was with me the whole way home.

  The incomparable Ms. Lizzie Smith has been a generous source, conduit, and sounding board since my days at The Washington Post. For this book about her close friend Helen, Liz opened up her mammoth HGB correspondence and her heart and dispensed a few timely doses of Texas pragmatism that generally ended with: “Honey, just get on with it. Would you like a margarita?” A deep curtsy to Mary Jo McDonough, who wrangles Liz’s vast network, archives, and pesky seekers like me with grace, professionalism, and warp speed.

  When corporate restrictions limited use of some of Helen’s richest material, other journalists and friends stepped up to share HGB interviews and encounters. My thanks to Alice Baer for permission to quote the correspondence of the late Bernard Geis from Bernard Geis Associates. Lyn Tornabene is a fine journalist with clear, granular recall and the generosity to share and elaborate on her remarkable set of interviews with Helen. Lyn was also a gracious and unflappable hostess at her gorgeous desert home in Arizona; an hour after my arrival she hauled me to an urgent care facility after this city girl’s close encounter with a scorpion. After all we’ve been through, I am fortunate to call her a friend.

  My deep thanks to David Allyn for access to the full version of his remarkable talk with Helen on her “sexual awakenings,” when he spoke with her for his book Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Rich Wardell, an archivist at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive, kindly retrieved the cassettes from storage and had them digitized for me. In 2001, the writer Margy Rochlin had the brilliant notion to invite the seventy-nine-year-old HGB on a tour of her single girl homes for LA Weekly; thanks to Margy for recounting that memorable road trip and for sharing her interview with Nora Ephron about Helen. Eve Ensler gave me permission to quote the bravura HGB monologue she brought to print and the stage in The Good Body; she also spoke to me about her surprising relationship with Helen. I thank her for providing the vibrant and touching coda in Helen’s own words. My debt to the research and analysis of James Landers is detailed in the preface; I thank him again here for his kindness in sharing the “outtakes” of his interactions with Helen and Hearst. Lois Cahall gave her all—photos, memories, and tender sections of her unpublished memoir—which provided an intimate look at Helen’s love for her women friends and her last days with David Brown. Just when I thought I was done with research, Katie Rosman’s deftly reported New York Times article, “Who Owns Helen Gurley Brown’s Legacy?,” motivated some concerned close friends and associates of the Browns to speak with me. Connecting with Robin LoGuidice, friend, attorney, and executor of the late Charlotte Veal Kelly, Helen’s BFF since 1948, was a huge and unexpected game-changer. I cannot thank her enough for recounting her own, often hilarious adventures with Helen and “Carlotta” and for granting me access to Charlotte’s “deep dish” papers. Bringing that friendship to life—with the additional help of Charlotte’s friend Nancy Megan—sharpened my perspective and the narrative immeasurably.

  In Los Angeles: At Polytechnic High School, the current incarnation of Helen’s alma mater, John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, I had the generous assistance of its principal, Ari Bennett; the former school historian John Blau; teacher and yearbook advisor Chi-Sun Chang; and Michelle Elias, co-advisor for the school yearbook, The Optimist.

  In Arkansas: Many thanks to Randy High, a Carroll County native son who was so helpful during my visit to the historical museum there and during our talks and e-mails thereafter. Newt Lale, a talented potter and unofficial historian of Helen’s home place in Osage, proved to be a generous repository of local doings, from Helen’s very quiet burial to the ghastly historical details of the Trail of Tears as it wound through the area in the nineteenth century. The reporter Cyd King of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote the first story about the Browns’ final resting place; she kindly brought me up to speed before my trip south. The former Arkansas secretary of state Sharon Priest dug into her records and her memories to detail Helen and David Brown’s visit to the state capitol. In Little Rock, Dr. David Ware, capitol historian, conducted an informative tour of Ira Gurley’s workplace, the capitol building, including the spot where he met his death. I’m most grateful to another Carroll County native, Jane A. Wilkerson, archival manager at the Arkansas History Commission in Little Rock, who guided my research in the state archives there, answered my many questions in subsequent months, then graciously read and commented on the Arkansas chapters of the manuscript.

  At Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts: What a privilege it was—and what fun—to have the collegial help and guidance of the archivists at the Sophia Smith Collection, which holds the Helen Gurley Brown papers. Special blessings to the professional and compassionate Kathleen Nutter. Thanks also to Elizabeth Myers, Director of Special Collections; Amy Hague, who helped me through the permissions thicket; and Nichole Calero, who kept apace of my frantic digital orders with calm and good cheer.

  My thanks to Mark Ekman for his welcome to the research services at the Paley Center for Media, and for walking me over to meet the manager of research there, Jane Klain, explaining, “This is someone you absolutely need to know.” And how. Thank you, Jane, for your persistence in helping me track the early HGB on TV and radio and helping me get to the bottom of “the shaming in Cleveland.”

  The information age is a boon for churning up experts on all things; I was so glad to have research help from the railroad historian Eric A. Bowen and the musical theater expert John Kenrick. Bill Kortum, formerly of WBAI radio, went far beyond the call in canvassing former colleagues on the subject of Bruce Brown and his work at the station. At Playboy magazine, Theresa Hennessey and Stephanie Worth researched Helen’s appearance as the “first woman” to do the Playboy interview and provided a roster of those who followed soon after.

  Helen Gurley Brown touched so many lives. In my efforts to toss the net as widely as possible, I wrote too darned much; there was a surfeit of rich material and fabulous anecdotes that simply wouldn’t fit. Cutting any of it was agony. With gratitude and contrition, I beg the forgiveness of my sources whose contributions are no less valuable as background. To those who helped despite corporat
e prohibitions and preferred not to be named, I salute your integrity and goodwill. For swelling the HGB chorus with their interviews and by making key introductions, my gratitude to: Dr. William S. Appleton, Elizabeth Beier, Alexandra Mayes Birnbaum, Cathie Black, Myrna Blyth, Jamie Brickhouse, Lois Cahall, Bob Cass, Dick Cavett, David Patrick Columbia, Joan Ganz Cooney, Amy Levin Cooper, Susan Edmiston, Joni Evans, Judi Drogin Feldman, Forrest “Woody” Fraser, Bonnie Fuller, Paul Goldberger, Kit Golden, Carl Gottlieb, Gael Greene, Louise Grunwald, Marc Haefele, the late Hal H. Holker and his daughter Janet Kessler, Beverly Johnson, Erica Jong, Harry King, Michael Korda, Judith Krantz, Mary Wells Lawrence, Nicholas Lemann, Steve Leveen, Karen Macdonald, Bill Manville, Patty Marx, Alice Mason, Nancy Megan, Michael Musto, Julian Niccolini, Claudia Payne, Mitzi Perdue, Pete Peterson, Nicholas Piazza, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Sharon Priest, Rex Reed, Yvonne Rich, Sally Richardson, Alan Richman, the late Joan Rivers, Peter Rogers, Katherine Rosman, Atoosa Rubenstein, Diane Salvatore, Betty Sargent, Rhonda Schwartz, John Searles, Mimi Sheraton, Brooke Shields, Patty Sicular, Scott Spears, Faith Stewart-Gordon, Bobbe Stultz, Spencer Sunshine, Gloria Vanderbilt, Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner, Barbara Walters, Dr. David Ware, Kate White, Alex Witchel, Maxine Wolfe.

  How I have sorely tried my friends, and how forgiving they have been. My apologies, love, and thanks to our ad hoc urban family:

  We met David and Michaelyn Mitchell in Lamaze class, but it seems—thank heaven—that they have always been there for us. So have John and Zoe Eisenberg, Mark Gallogly and Lise Strickler and the nine (!!) children we herded to New Year’s Eve fireworks in Central Park. Lisa Henricksson and Jim Kelly conferred advice, introductions, restorative dinners, miles of park walks, and the always engaging (yes!) company of their son, Luke. Like HGB, I have always found girlfriends essential, “soothing as Mentholatum,” and ever so much fun. Here’s to that stalwart girl group: Sally Boyd, Marilyn Healy, Marnie Henricksson, Sali Masters, Sue Mittenthal, Ellen Weyrauch, and Joellen Winter. Special blessings to Jane Leavy, who gave a married pair of twitchy writers the gift of quiet and beauty in off-season Truro; those six weeks could have played out like The Shining but for the generous spirit that inhabits her home there.