53“At long last someone has written a book”: Anne Steinert, “Being a Single Girl Can Be Fun,” New York Journal-American, May 23, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
53“sometimes shocking but always stimulating philosophy”: Mildred Schroeder, “‘Sex and the Single Girl’—Startling, Stimulating,” San Francisco Examiner, May 30, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
53“racy and sassy”: Initials T. M., “1962 Baedeker for ‘Les Girls,’ Houston Chronicle, date unknown, HGB Papers, SSC.
53“‘Do I dare go on?’” and following: Miss Zora Ann Krneta, “Handbook for ‘The Chase,’” Charleston Gazette, West Virginia, June 10, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC. Quote is slightly condensed.
54“David Brown in for new scrutiny”: Information about Sex and the Single Girl’s success is from Helen Gurley Brown’s memo, “Brief Resume of What’s Happened With the Book So Far,” July 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
54“Now it’s time to get down to work”: Diane Patrick, “Royal Correspondence: PW Talks with Helen Gurley Brown,” Publishers Weekly, February 23, 2004. Helen spoke about her Royal manual typewriter in this interview as well.
8: SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE
55“Honey, nothing can live”: The Misfits, Seven Arts Productions, 1961.
55The film was troubled from the start: Background on Something’s Got to Give and David’s impressions of Marilyn Monroe taken from David Brown’s memoir, Let Me Entertain You (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990), p. 53.
56they didn’t know her: Background on Marilyn Monroe’s life from Donald Spoto, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), passim.
56“She used to come into my office and sit on my lap”: David Brown, Let Me Entertain You, p. 53.
56Unfortunately, it didn’t last: Background on Monroe’s psychiatrist’s meddling and the Fox lawsuit from Donald Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, passim.
56David had committed to producing a historic drama: Murray Schumach, “Fox Will Step Up Filming for 1963,” New York Times, March 26, 1962.
56There were many other films on Fox’s list: Ibid.
57“the greatest grossing film of all times”: Kenneth S, Smith, “Skouras Defends ‘Cleopatra’ to Stockholders,” New York Times, May 16, 1962.
57Costs for Cleopatra . . . skyrocketed: Ibid. Additional background on Cleopatra remake from David Kamp, “When Liz Met Dick,” Vanity Fair, April 2011.
57“intemperate vamp who destroys families”: Referenced by Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), chapter 17. Also, reference to pope: David Bret, Elizabeth Taylor: the Lady, the Lover, the Legend, 1932–2011 (Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 2011), p. 156.
57“a big picture” on “a big subject”: Background on Cleopatra movies from David Brown, Let Me Entertain You, p. 73.
58“Only the Romans left more ruins in Europe”: Ibid., p. 76.
58Warner Bros. was offering $200,000: Information on the film option and adaptation challenges of Sex and the Single Girl from Shana Alexander, “Singular Girl’s Success,” Life, March 1, 1963.
59also busy trying to sell the stage rights: Lucy Kroll to David Brown, June 25, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
59“You’re old enough, do you want a little sip?”: Impressions, descriptions, scenes, and dialogue in this chapter taken from extensive interviews and email exchanges between author and Helen’s cousin Lou Honderich, 2013–15.
61“Do you think you might possibly be homesick?”: Ibid.
62“We’re going to go shopping!”: Ibid.
63“Where are all the bags?”: Ibid.
63“What do boys at your age do?”: Ibid.
64Lou could tell that David liked her company: Impressions, descriptions, scenes, and dialogue, ibid.
64Her cousin had been her “glamorous go-to”: Ibid.
65“You don’t have to be perfect”: Ibid.
66the friends and relatives who had read it were shocked: Ibid.
66“She sold her family down the river”: Cleo’s comment, per Lou Honderich, from an email exchange with the author.
66“Would your mother mind if you read it?” Lou Honderich, interview with the author, November 2013.
66“Absolutely . . . I believe the things I said”: Ibid.
9: THE WOIKING GIRL’S FRIEND
67“She’s a phony”: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Jurow-Shepherd, 1961.
67“I’ve never been able to flirt before”: David Brown described some of the fan mail that Helen received in “Sex and the Single Girl as Seen by David Brown,” Cavalier, April 1964.
68“The best way to get this across”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, June 8, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
68She said yes to all kinds of meet-and-greets: Details are from various correspondence between Helen Gurley Brown and Bernard Geis Associates, as well as from collected book tour itineraries and miscellany, 1962–69, HGB Papers, SSC.
68“female-type supervisors”: “FEMALE DAY,” Jack Mauck, circa 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
68“Once a year the dimly illuminated S.H.I.T. Society”: Ibid.
69Among the ideas Helen and Berney discussed, over time: From collected memos between Helen Gurley Brown and Bernard Geis, March 1962 and later, HGB Papers, SSC.
70“not too old nor too unattractive”: Helen Gurley Brown, “The Girls of Beverly Hills” (in addition to the treatment for this novel, Helen saved her other early book proposals, including ones for “Topic A” and “Executive Wives”), early 1960s, HGB Papers, SSC.
70“She is not the performer with her husband”: Helen Gurley Brown, “The Girls of Beverly Hills,” HGB Papers, SSC.
70“The doctors I’ve talked to tell me”: Helen Gurley Brown to Bernard Geis, March 5, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
71“The book I could write best”: Helen Gurley Brown to Bernard Geis, March 14, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
71“We are beginning to get fervent letters”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, June 7, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
71the post office in Pacific Palisades refused to deliver the mail: Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 149.
71“Hold onto your lovely wig”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, October 9, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
72“I am something of a little star now!”: Helen Gurley Brown to Bernard Geis, October 10, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC. Helen detailed the hassle of her recent appearances.
72Eventually, “Woman Alone” would reach: Background on the offer and Helen Gurley Brown’s syndicated newspaper column gathered from collected “Woman Alone” correspondence, clippings, and financial material, 1962–65, HGB Papers, SSC.
73To pay for Cleopatra: Background on the cost of Cleopatra, the crumbling of Fox, the iron hand of Darryl F. Zanuck, and David Brown’s eventual firing taken from David Brown, Let Me Entertain You (New York: William Morrow & Co. 1990), pp. 73–77. Additional background on Cleopatra remake from David Kamp, “When Liz Met Dick,” Vanity Fair, April 2011.
73“The ‘We’ explains why he oozes security”: Cindy Adams, “He Made Her a Married Woman,” Pageant, December 1963.
73David was offered a position: Helen Gurley Brown in David Brown’s memoir, Let Me Entertain You, p. 106.
10: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
75“I was a country girl from Los Angeles”: Helen Gurley Brown, quoted in an unidentified publication in collected clippings about her apartments and offices, November 22, 1993, HGB Papers, SSC.
75extensive newspaper strike: Background information from Scott Sherman, “The Long Good-Bye,” Vanity Fair, November 30, 2012; Sheldon Binn, “114-Day Newspaper Strike Ends as Engravers Ratify Contract; Loss Is in Excess of $190,000,000,” New York Times, April 1, 1963; and “Newspaper Panel to Hear Disputes,” New York Times, February 14, 1964.
76“These were costumes for women with energy
to burn”: Jeanne Molli, “Balenciaga and Givenchy Styles Offer Last Word on Spring,” New York Times, Western Edition, March 1, 1963.
76She barely left the apartment: David Brown described Helen’s fearful reluctance to leave the apartment in Let Me Entertain You (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990), p. 255. Helen wrote about her earlier visit to New York with David, recalling how Bruce’s mother brought her a scarf and mittens, in her unpublished autobiography, 1962–63, HGB Papers, SSC.
77Outside, it was gray, always gray: Helen documented her early impressions of New York that spring in “NEW YORK NEW YORK NEW YORK,” March 11, 1963, HGB Papers, SSC.
77She wondered how New Yorkers felt when they went out west: Ibid.
78The day they were supposed to leave 515 Radcliffe Avenue: David Brown, Let Me Entertain You, p. 254–55.
78Once in the city: Ibid.
78she stood in the doorway of No. 17C and cried: Background on Helen’s first days in 17C from unidentified publication in collected clippings about her apartments and offices, November 22, 1993, HGB Papers, SSC.
79she missed the feeling of having somewhere to be: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2004), p. 281. Helen confided in the reader that, while at home writing Sex and the Office, she missed office life.
79“CALLING ALL WIDOWS, DIVORCEES, BACHELOR GIRLS”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Woman Alone,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate, reprinted in Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions (New York: Bernard Geis Associates in Cooperation with Avon Books, 1966), p. 17.
79Her efforts to win over doormen: Helen Gurley Brown, “NEW YORK NEW YORK NEW YORK.”
81“In many ways it’s like Pittsburgh”: Ibid.
81“The west is for the babies”: Helen Gurley Brown, untitled, undated notes on New York (different from above), HGB Papers, SSC.
11: THE MEANING OF LUNCH
82“Lunchtime is fraught with possibilities!”: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2004), p. 96.
82“You see them every morning at a quarter to nine”: Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 1.
83She would suggest two Brown Paper Bag Plans: Helen observed the lunchtime habits of working girls and then offered these solutions in Sex and the Office, pp. 100–4.
83“American Beauty Lunches”: Ibid., p. 100.
83“My idea is that a kind of secretarial handbook”: Helen Gurley Brown to Bernard Geis, November 8, 1962, HGB Papers, SSC.
84“I’m best when I’m angry”: Ibid.
84“The girl is sent as a bribe”: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office, p. 257.
84“office wolves”; “If your instinct goes ‘sniff, sniff—peculiar, peculiar’”: Ibid., pp. 220–21.
84“It makes me feel small and helpless”: Details about the material that Bernard Geis cut out of Sex and the Office are taken from “Three Little Bedtime Stories,” a chapter not used, from an early draft of Sex and the Office, HGB Papers, SSC.
85“full of sincerity and friendship”: The story of Claudia and the young model is also from “Three Little Bedtime Stories.”
85“and then her mouth was THERE”: Ibid.
86“Boys Will Be Girls . . . and Vice Versa”: Helen Gurley Brown, outline for a draft of Sex and the Office, undated, HGB Papers, SSC.
86“I thought it was going to be about how to handle temperamental homosexuals”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, February 19, 1964, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
86It was the idea of a matinee that was truly “icky”: Helen Gurley Brown to Bernard Geis, February 8, 1964.
86“No objection was made by me”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, February 19, 1964, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
87On an average day, 2,700 people entered the Playboy Club: Background information on the Playboy Club from Thomas Buckley, “Playboy Club Busiest in City Despite Its Failure to Win Cabaret License,” New York Times, April 5, 1963.
87“I get a lot of mail about how to keep from having a baby”: “Playboy Interview: Helen Gurley Brown,” Playboy, April 1963.
87“There is some chance of becoming barren”: Ibid.
88“It’s outrageous that girls can’t be aborted here”: Ibid. 88 “I just hit the roof”: Ibid.
88“Au contraire. She’s asking for it”: Ibid.
88“I don’t know of anything more ruthless”: Ibid.
12: A STRANGE STIRRING
89“The truth is that I’ve always been a bad-tempered bitch”: Betty Friedan, Life So Far (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 379.
89“top money”: From the Playboy ad that ran in Gloria Steinem’s article, “A Bunny’s Tale,” Show, May 1963.
89Pretending to be a former waitress: Ibid.
90“all women are Bunnies”: Steinem detailed the aftermath of her Show exposé in her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, 1995), p. 75.
91“It was a strange stirring”: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 50th anniversary edition (New York: Norton, 2013), p. 1.
91Originally from Peoria, Illinois: Background on Betty Friedan’s upbringing, career, and family life from Friedan, Life So Far, passim.
91“I later learned he was having an affair”: Ibid., p. 78.
92“one night, he hit me”: Ibid., p. 87.
92Betty was asked to conduct a survey of her Smith classmates: Background on the survey that led to The Feminine Mystique is taken from Betty Friedan’s account in Life So Far, pp. 97–105.
92The final survey asked about: Ibid.
93After that meeting, Betty got a $3,000 book advance: Ibid., p. 109.
93“Sometimes a woman would tell me”: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 8.
94“The only way for a woman . . . to know herself as a person”: Ibid., p. 416.
94“I’ll tell you this”: Helen Gurley Brown, original first chapter for Sex and the Office, “Come with Me to the Office,” which was later cut. HGB Papers, SSC.
94“They call her brilliant, this highly paid Circe”: Philip Wylie, “The Career Woman,” Playboy, January 1963.
95“We haven’t been introduced”: Helen Gurley Brown’s original first chapter for Sex and the Office, “Come with Me to the Office.”
96“Most girls—probably 90 per cent”: Bernard Geis to Helen Gurley Brown, February 4, 1964, HGB Papers, SSC. Reproduced with the permission of Bernard Geis Associates.
96She was willing to tone down that chapter, not to lose it entirely: Background is from Helen Gurley Brown’s letter to Bernard Geis, February 8, 1964, HGB Papers, SSC.
96“Tell her she not only isn’t unfortunate”: Ibid.
97“Explain to your husband”: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2004), p. 276.
97“The Inquiring Camera Girl”: Background from “The Inquiring Camera Girl camera,” www.jfklibrary.org, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston, MA; and Dorothy McCardle, “Jackie Kennedy—Ex-Girl Reporter, Part 3: She Found Out What It Takes to Be Nation’s No. 1 Hostess,” St. Petersburg Times, September 30, 1960.
13: WOMEN ALONE
98“No matter how accustomed to your own community”: Max Wylie, Career Girl, Watch Your Step! (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964), p. 92.
98a massive crowd of 250,000 people: Accounts of the march and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech from James Reston, “‘I Have a Dream . . .’ Peroration by Dr. King Sums Up a Day the Capital Will Remember,” New York Times, August 29, 1963; and “The March on Washington; March Returns to Site of Dr. King’s Great Dream,” New York Times, October 16, 1995.
98“I have a dream”: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington, 1963, www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf.
99That same day, two young women were brutally stabbed: Selwyn Raab, “30-Year-Echoes from Slaying of 2,” New Yo
rk Times, August 29, 1993.
99On the floor, the bodies of the two roommates: Background on the murders largely taken from T. J. English, The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), passim.
99“The Career Girls Murders lit up the city like a hit Broadway show”: Ibid, p. 25.
100tabloids found new ways to package the stories: Ibid.
100“girls were asking superintendents about double locks”: Gay Talese, “Air of Fear Grips Sedate East Side,” New York Times, August 31, 1963.
100“a wave of fear ran through single women in New York”: Jane Maas, interview with the author, February 2015.
101“The police [are] under intense pressure”: Homer Bigart, “Killing of 2 Girls Yields No Clue,” New York Times, September 27, 1963.
101The headline was . . . not subtle: Helen Gurley Brown, “Woman Alone,” Los Angeles Times Syndicate. “HOW DO YOU KEEP FROM GETTING MURDERED?” was reprinted in Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions (New York: Bernard Geis Associates in Cooperation with Avon Books, 1966), pp. 280–82.
101“Scream,” he advised: Ibid.
102“Is there so much more crime”: Ibid.
102“Well, maybe girls alone should stay away”; “it will have nothing to do with where she lives”: Ibid.
102“the fringe element” and following: Max Wylie, Career Girl, Watch Your Step! p. 68.
102“Don’t think of yourself as being safe”: Ibid., p. 58.
103“You’re Helen Gurley Brown”: Barbara Seaman told the story of the meeting between Helen and Jacqueline Susann in Lovely Me (New York: William Morrow, 1987), p. 282.
103“truck driver in drag”: Referenced by Abby Hirsch, “Novels and Stories, Kitsch and Quality,” New York Times, July 11, 1976.
104“I loved the way she looked”: Helen Gurley Brown quoted in Barbara Seaman’s biography of Susann, Lovely Me, p. 283.
104He had taken her here shortly after they married: Helen Gurley Brown, unpublished autobiography, 1962-63, HGB Papers, SSC.
104New York intimidated her: Helen mused about her gradual New Yorkification in I’m Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 37–42.
Enter Helen Page 36
