Park Avenue Summer

by Renée Rosen

  Helen was the one who encouraged me not to give up on him. She coached me along the way, giving me advice—some of which, as you can imagine, I chose not to follow—and Kleenex when I couldn’t take it anymore. I did walk away from him at one point. Real love, I thought, shouldn’t be that hard. Thankfully, it was Christopher who decided he couldn’t let me go. He fought, mostly with himself, to get me back. From then on, we were both in, all the way. Three months later, we were married in Stamford, in my grandparents’ backyard.

  “I see I made the cut.” Christopher points to the photograph of him, taken that day on Coney Island.

  I crane my neck and smile at him.

  “I’m sorry about Helen,” he says, a strand of salt-and-pepper hair hanging down in his eyes. “It’s the end of an era, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Hours later, following a lovely reception with toasts and flowers and posing for the press, the gallery fills with another wave of people as tuxedoed waiters circulate with trays of champagne, wine and hors d’oeuvres. I’ve been surrounded by the critics: Jonathan Jones from the Guardian, Eleanor Heartney from the Times and Lucy Lippard from the Village Voice. I’m not good at being the center of attention. I’ve always been more comfortable behind the scenes, hiding out behind my camera.

  I feel a respite when I look across the gallery and my eyes land on the familiar faces of my children. To see my daughter and son, now grown with children of their own, reminds me of the times I bundled them up, camera bag and diaper bag in tow, and brought them with me on my shoots. Even as toddlers and young kids, they came along when I was shooting. And as a family, no matter where the four of us went, Christopher and I always had a camera or two hanging off our shoulders while we held their tiny hands. I can’t tell you how many close calls we had when a camera case or telephoto lens almost clunked one of them on the head. And like my mother did for me, I have kept meticulous photo albums for my children and have started new ones for the next generation.

  I glance about the room and see Elaine, who has returned from the Hamptons in time to be here. She and Christopher are off to the side, talking with Trudy and Milt, who flew in from St. Louis just for my show. They smile at me, raising their glasses, a toast in my honor.

  I mentally take a step back from it all and observe the gallery walls. I see how some of the photos, especially the earliest ones from that summer of 1965, captured that pivotal time for me in New York. So new to the city, I remember wanting to photograph everything in sight. It was during my first few months that I really began to sharpen my eye and appreciate the extraordinary findings in life’s everyday moments. In many ways, I was like a photograph myself, coming into focus, developing not just my art, but my life.

  Across the room I see my husband and the family he gave me, but up on the walls, I see the career I gave myself. I get up every morning and do the work I love. That’s a privilege and one I’ve never taken for granted. And if she were here now, I know exactly what Helen would say: “Oh, pussycat, you did it. You found your love, your happy pill.”

  I think about the women closest to me—Trudy and Elaine, here with me tonight, and my mother and, of course, Helen, with me now in a different sense. They have been my four corners, keeping me grounded and serving as my frame so I could grow and shine. And now this girl from Youngstown, Ohio, has her heart and soul on display in this fashionable Chelsea gallery, and those women in my life are the ones who truly understand what it took to get me here.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Though Alice Weiss is a fictional character, I used her to tell the real story of Helen Gurley Brown’s early and transformative days as editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. Helen really didn’t have any previous magazine or editorial experience, and several editors and staff members did quit almost immediately. She was also met with great resistance from the Hearst executives, who were conservative gatekeepers trying to tone down her message to single women. Despite this, Helen went on to establish a track record of selling over a million copies each month. Under Helen’s reign, the magazine’s advertising revenue more than quadrupled and helped to make Hearst what it was and still is today. Helen Gurley Brown changed the face of women’s magazines and spawned countless imitators, all trying to capture that Cosmo magic.

  But in 1997, after Helen had been editor in chief for thirty‐two years, Hearst had to face the fact that Helen’s message was no longer connecting with her young readers. In the 1980s, her claim that her girls were immune to AIDS because it was a homosexual disease was as out of touch as her statements a decade later that women in the workplace should be flattered by sexual attention and advances from their male colleagues. Finally, Hearst forced Helen into retirement at the age of seventy-four. As a consolation prize, they gave her the editorship of the international editions, but she knew her ride with Cosmopolitan was, for all intents and purposes, over.

  A word about David Brown, who really was her greatest fan and biggest supporter: Not only was he very instrumental in her landing the job with Hearst, but, prior to marrying Helen, David had also been an editor at Cosmopolitan and knew the business inside and out. He wrote many of the cover blurbs for Helen and was always at her disposal. She did have a direct line put in that went from her office to his, and the two of them often worked on the magazine during long cab rides that they called “nooners.” But what David Brown was best known for, aside from being Mr. Helen Gurley Brown, was his success as a movie producer, having brought such classics to the screen as The Sting, Jaws, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, A Few Good Men, Chocolat and many others, including, of course, Helen’s Sex and the Single Girl.

  Because Park Avenue Summer is a work of historical fiction, I want to share a few places where I took some creative license for the sake of the narrative and purposes of storytelling. While it’s true that Hearst had intended to fold Cosmopolitan and did try to rein in Helen by killing story ideas and protesting her cover line about The New Pill That Promises to Make Women More Responsive to Men, some scenes and incidents were embellished. Richard Berlin, Richard Deems and Frank Dupuy were Hearst executives, but Erik Masterson is purely fictional. The initial friction between Helen and the Hearst management has been well-documented; however, in the interest of plotting, I magnified the conflict, especially when it came to her relationships with Richard Berlin and Dick Deems. My research indicated that their interactions were not as contentious as I’ve portrayed here. It should also be noted that over time, they all became Helen’s champions and supported her wholeheartedly.

  Helen’s famous bosom memo was indeed leaked to Women’s Wear Daily, and she did warn her staff that there was a viper in the nest, but this incident occurred later in her career, in 1969 rather than 1965. I also have a scene where Hearst slashes her budget, which was my own plot device. However, it should be noted that from the start, Helen was given an impossibly tight operating budget of only $30,000 per issue. (A sum that hadn’t been increased since the early 1940s.)

  There’s definitely some urban myth regarding the Jax photo shoot, which produced the provocative cover shot for the July issue. No one knows for sure who, if anyone, actually turned Renata’s shirt around to expose her breasts, but regardless, no one had ever featured such a thing in a woman’s magazine, let alone on the cover. While Francesco Scavullo did not shoot the famous Renata cover, he did go on to shoot Cosmo’s covers for three decades.

  Bernard Geis Associates was the actual publisher of both Sex and the Single Girl and Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, but Elaine Sloan is a fictional character. And yes, there really was a fire pole at the publishing house that Geis employees used to go from one floor to the next.

  Helen Gurley Brown was a fascinating woman. A true trailblazer. She was famously frugal, did ride the bus and, according to Lois Cahall, always managed to run her stockings and fishnets.

  If you would like to
read more about her, I highly recommend the following books: Not Pretty Enough: The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown by Gerri Hirshey, Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman by Brooke Hauser, and Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind “Cosmopolitan” Magazine by Jennifer Scanlon. And, of course, there’s no better way to get to know Helen Gurley Brown than through her own words in Sex and the Single Girl, published in 1962.

  This book was great fun to write, but it never would have come together without the help and generous support of many people, starting with Andy Gross, who introduced me to Lois Cahall, the woman who probably knew Helen Gurley Brown better than anyone else. My sincere thanks to Lois for vetting the manuscript and helping me paint a more accurate portrait of this iconic editor.

  Also, much gratitude to Kevan Lyon, my wise and wonderful agent, who continues to take excellent care of me and my career. To Amanda Bergeron, my editor, who has amazing instincts and the patience of a saint. This was our first book together and it was a joy from beginning to end. My thanks also to the entire Berkley team at Penguin Random House, especially Claire Zion, Craig Burke, Jeanne‐Marie Hudson, Fareeda Bullert, Jennifer Monroe, Danielle Keir, Roxanne Jones, Elisha Katz, Ryanne Probst, Emma Reh, Yuki Hirose and all the people behind the scenes, including Stefan Moorehead and, of course, my dear friend Brian Wilson.

  I offer special thanks to Taryn Fagerness for her incredible work with foreign rights. Also to Andrea Peskind Katz, Lauren Blank Margolin, Stephanie Nelson and Colleen Oakley, who gave my manuscript early reads and provided invaluable feedback and much‐needed encouragement.

  Thanks as well to my trusted writing buddies, friends and colleagues: Karen Abbott, Tasha Alexander, Robin Allen, Julie Anderson, Stacey Ballis, Scott Goodwillie, Andrew Grant, Maxwell Gregory, Sara Gruen, Stephanie Hochschild, Julia Claiborne Johnson, Brenda Klem, Pamela Klinger‐Horn, Lisa Kotin, Elizabeth Letts, Mindy Mailman, Kelly O’Connor McNees, Jill Niehaus Miner, Amy Sue Nathan, Marianne Nee, Mary Webber O’Malley, Javier Ramirez and Suzy Takacs.

  And lastly, my gratitude and love to my amazing family: Debbie Rosen, Pam Rosen, Jerry Rosen, Andrea Rosen, Joey Perilman, Devon Rosen and, of course, my one and only, John Dul. At the end of the day it all comes down to you!

  BEHIND THE BOOK:

  A CONVERSATION WITH RENÉE ROSEN

  Where did the inspiration for Park Avenue Summer come from?

  I had been binge-watching Mad Men and just fell in love with New York during that time period. I knew I wanted to set a book in Manhattan in the ’60s, but despite my background in advertising (prior to writing fiction), I didn’t want to tread on Mad Men’s territory so I started thinking of other so-called “glamorous” businesses and the world of magazines came to mind.

  Originally, I was thinking of creating a fictional magazine where a group of marginalized secretaries would take over a failing publication. That was the germ of the idea—but while talking with my editor, Amanda Bergeron, it dawned on us both that a great real-life story was just sitting there. We agreed to take the plunge and that the novel should be about Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan. I remember we were both so excited because we just knew we had hit on the right subject for this book.

  You tell the story from the fictional Alice Weiss’s point of view. Why did you decide to do that, rather than writing from Helen’s point of view?

  I actually wrestled with that decision in the very beginning, but it soon became apparent that because so much has already been written about Helen Gurley Brown, not to mention her own memoirs, to simply retell her story from her point of view would bring nothing new to readers. By writing from Alice’s point of view, it allowed us to explore some new angles and show the impact that Helen Gurley Brown had on single girls. Or at least on one single girl.

  How do you approach the research in your books?

  Each book has come together in a way that’s been totally different from the previous book(s). I never know exactly how I’ll find the heart of the story, which makes the process both maddening and thrilling. Sometimes it comes out of the research, and other times it comes from the writing, in which case, then I go back and fill in the blanks with the research.

  For Park Avenue Summer, I did a good deal of reading about Helen Gurley Brown before I started writing and talked to people who either knew Helen Gurley Brown and/or were magazine editors. I felt that I needed to have a solid understanding of the culture, the magazine industry and, most importantly, Helen Gurley Brown’s journey before I could begin putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, as the case would be. But having said that, I continued researching, spent time in New York (as you’ll see below) and added more factual details while I was drafting and polishing the manuscript.

  Your previous books were set in Chicago. What was it like writing about New York, and how were you able to capture life in New York City so vividly?

  After four novels set in Chicago we felt it was time to expand my backdrop, which was a great challenge for me. I did live in New York for a brief period of time, but that was long ago and despite my visits to Manhattan since then, this book required a special research trip. I needed to observe the city from a different perspective. It’s so easy to get swept up in the energy there that you can miss all the wonderful details that are uniquely New York. I felt a little like Ali, taking hundreds of pictures of quirky things—like garbage on the curb, steam rising up from the manholes, etc.—all little details that later found their way into the book.

  I also thought it was important to go to the places that Helen Gurley Brown frequented including the Russian Tea Room, the 21 Club, the Plaza and the St. Regis. It was great fun. I also paid a visit to Helen Gurley Brown’s apartment building when she lived on Park Avenue.

  That was Helen’s world but I also needed to get a feel for the fictional Alice’s world. I figured out exactly where Alice would have lived on the Upper East Side and looked at an actual apartment, which served as a reference for her efficiency in the book. I also followed the route she would have taken from her place to the Cosmopolitan offices on West 57th Street. I even had breakfast at the Lexington Candy Shop where Alice and Trudy always went.

  Was there anything particularly exciting or unexpected that happened while you were doing the research for Park Avenue Summer?

  I remember I was having brunch one day with Andrew Gross, who just so happened to be in Chicago. He asked what my new book was about, and as soon as I said Helen Gurley Brown, he said, “I have to put you in touch with Lois Cahall. Helen was like a second mother to her.” Well, this was like hitting the research jackpot!

  Lois could not have been more supportive of this book. She probably knew Helen Gurley Brown better than anyone and shared many stories, some personal photographs and even vetted the manuscript for us to make sure we had authentically captured Helen Gurley Brown. I had the opportunity to meet Lois while I was down in Palm Beach so I could thank her in person.

  What’s your writing process like? Do you write every day? Are you an outliner?

  I do tend to write every day, but the amount of time I spend actually putting words down versus reading and researching depends on which phase of the process I’m in. Drafting a new novel is always slow going for me. I don’t outline and don’t know where the story is headed (beyond a few historical landmarks) or what the characters will do from scene to scene. If I can write for four hours at a stretch while I’m drafting, I consider it a good day. Once I have a working draft with a beginning, middle and end, then I go back to page one and I’ll write for eight or nine hours a day. That’s pretty much the pace I work at from that point on. It takes many, many rounds of revisions for me to get a manuscript to where I think it needs to be. And then, there’s still much work to be done when I enter the editing phase.

  When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

  I knew I wanted to be a wr
iter from the time I was a little girl. I have no idea where this notion came from, as I didn’t come from a family of writers, but I have vivid memories of playing on my grandfather’s typewriter (which I still have). I had notebooks of poems and short stories and plays that I wrote as a little girl. When I was in high school, I wrote a horrible first novel, which thankfully will never see the light of day. Ironically, I was a writer before I was a reader, which is not something I’d recommend! I didn’t discover my love of reading until I was in my early twenties so I’m still playing catch-up ball in that department.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Do you think Helen Gurley Brown was a feminist? How do you think her brand of feminism compared to Betty Friedan’s or Gloria Steinem’s?

  What did you think of Helen’s advice to Alice regarding her Don Juan? Do you agree that Don Juans are unavoidable and that every woman has that one man she can’t say “no” to?

  Speaking of Alice’s Don Juan, did you understand why she got involved with Erik? Were you sympathetic to her situation or did you want her to break it off with him sooner? Or not enter into it at all?