Enter Helen
Page 40
36: FAKE PICTURES
269“That’s the whole enchilada, darling”: Liz Smith, “The Park Avenue Call Girl,” Cosmopolitan, July 1968.
269“We’ll tape it,” Liz said: Liz Smith, Natural Blonde (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 205. Additional background information on trying to find a call girl as a source per interview with the author, May 2013; and in Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, July 1968.
270sweet “civilian girls”; “Too much free stuff around”: Liz Smith, “The Park Avenue Call Girl.”
270“The day before at lunch”: Ibid.
270Liz got a call from the director Alan Pakula: Liz Smith, Natural Blonde, p. 205.
271“It was a great feat of imagination on my part”: Liz Smith, interview with the author, May 2013.
271blood on the streets: Account of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago from Anthony Lukas, “Police Battle Demonstrators in Streets,” New York Times, August 29, 1968.
271it was meant for simple, small-town girls: Helen Gurley Brown, “chat with david” memo, December 9, 1973, HGB Papers, SSC.
272“On this cruise, you can even board ship”: Harriet La Barre, “The Travel Bug,” Cosmopolitan, September 1968.
272“Oh, hundreds! Hundreds!”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.
272George Walsh brought the fewest: Helen Gurley Brown complained about Walsh’s lack of original story ideas in a miscellaneous note to herself, “PROBLEMS,” November 1973, HGB Papers, SSC.
272“One day I found myself taking a swipe at my mother”: Helen Gurley Brown, “NOTES ON GIRLS WHO GET HIT OR VISA VERSA,” alternatively titled, “FAMILY FISTICUFFS,” Cosmopolitan article ideas, 1970s–1980s, HGB Papers, SSC.
273“major emo” or “major non-emo”: Account of Cosmo’s story-assigning process came from various interviews done by the author, as well as from a folder labeled “article ideas,” in which Helen collected examples of pitches for Cosmopolitan, HGB Papers, SSC. In addition to explaining her filing process in a separate note, Helen labeled many of the sheets according to these designations of “major” emotional stories, etc.
273“THOSE OTHER PEOPLE . . . the ones who belong”; “more intellectual”; “even when you belong at them”: Cosmopolitan article ideas, 1970s–1980s, HGB Papers, SSC.
273“now, the reason all this is occurring to me is that i am one of the kinky ones”: Helen Gurley Brown, “THE YOU NOBODY KNOWS,” Cosmopolitan article ideas, 1972, HGB Papers, SSC.
274“She grew up in an age when movie stars”: Walter Meade, email exchange with author, February 2014.
274“I think Scarlett is closer to Helen”: Ibid.
37: THE ACTRESS
275“To be a woman is to be an actress”: Susan Sontag, “The Double Standard of Aging,” Saturday Review, September 23, 1972.
275“too serious a step”: Background on Linda LeClair story per Judy Klemesrud, “An Arrangement: Living Together for Convenience, Security, Sex,” New York Times, March 4, 1968.
276they handed out leaflets calling their case “a Victorian drama”: Background on the LeClair Affair from Paul Starr, “LeClair Trial Set for Today; Seen as Housing Rule Test,” Columbia Daily Spectator, April 11, 1968; Deirdre Carmody, “Barnard Considering Decision on Student Living with a Man,” New York Times, April 17, 1968; Deirdre Carmody, “President Delays Action on Defiant Girl,” New York Times, May 9, 1968; William A. McWhirter, “‘The Arrangement’ at College,” Life, May 31, 1968; and David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 96–98.
277“A sexual anthropologist of some future century”; “unalluring”: William A. McWhirter, “‘The Arrangement’ at College.”
277What connection did Helen . . . “None”: Susan Edmiston, interview with the author, May 2015.
278Shulamith Firestone, a twenty-three-year-old rabble-rouser: Background on Firestone from Martha Ackelsberg, “Shulamith Firestone: 1945–2012,” Jewish Women’s Archive Encyclopedia, jwa.org; Margalit Fox, “Shulamith Firestone, Feminist Writer, Dies at 67,” New York Times, August 30, 2012; and Susan Faludi, “Death of a Revolutionary,” New Yorker, April 15, 2013.
278She also called pregnancy “barbaric”; “shitting a pumpkin”: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 1970); referenced by Susan Faludi in “Death of a Revolutionary.”
278“WE SUPPORT”; “AUNT TOM OF THE MONTH”: New York Radical Women, “NOTES FROM THE FIRST YEAR,” June 1968, Duke University Digital Collections.
278Susan didn’t especially like Helen: Susan Edmiston and Donna Lawson Wolff provided background on Helen’s relationship with young staffers, including art director Judith Parker.
278“on the blink”: “Eye’s Alright,” “Eye,” Women’s Wear Daily, May 17, 1968, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.
279“I remember hearing that they were on acid”: Donna Lawson Wolff, interview with the author, June 2015. Additional background information from Sheila Weller’s book Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation (New York: Washington Square Press: 2008), p. 265; Jeanette Wagner spoke of the locks being changed in “Master Class: Jeanette Wagner,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 1, 2001, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.
279“Perhaps they were handicapped in handling the boat”: Susan Edmiston, email exchange with author, May 2015.
280Along with Richard Deems, Helen personally interviewed: Helen Gurley Brown to John R. Miller, August 9, 1968, 7:30 p.m., HGB Papers, SSC.
280Sitting at her desk one night at seven thirty: Ibid.
280Helen estimated that Eye was taking up nearly a third of her time: Ibid.
280“Dear John, I’m in trouble” and following: Ibid.
281“Where is George Walsh”: Ibid.
281“John, I have told you before”: Ibid.
282Hearst suspended publication after the May 1969 issue: “A Dropout,” “Eye,” Women’s Wear Daily, March 26, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.
38: A GROOVY DAY ON THE BOARDWALK
283“As they glide back and forth”: Penelope Orth, “There She Is . . . ,” Eye, April 1968.
283Helen eventually used Cosmo’s newsstand success as a bartering chip: Helen Gurley Brown to John Miller, September 27, 1968; and to Richard Deems and Miller, November 26, 1968, HGB Papers, SSC.
283In 1968, a civil rights activist: Susan Brownmiller gave an excellent account of the hatching and actualizing of the idea for the Miss America protest in her book In Our Time: Memior of a Revolution (New York: Dial Press, 1999), pp. 35–41.
283“the Annual Miss America Pageant will again crown ‘your ideal’” and following: Robin Morgan, “No More Miss America!” August 22, 1968; the press release available at www.redstockings.org/index.php/42-uncategorised/65-no-more-miss-america.
284“woman-garbage”; “Lots of other surprises”: Ibid.
284“Ain’t she sweet, makin’ profits”: Lyrics by Bev Grant. Reproduced with permission.
285“Atlantic City is a town with class”; “WELCOME TO THE MISS AMERICA CATTLE AUCTION”: Background is from Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the Women’s Movement and the Leaders Who Made It Happen (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988), p. 150; and “Miss America: People & Events: The 1968 Protest,” American Experience, PBS, pbs.org/wgbh/amex/missamerica/peopleevents/e_feminists.html.
285Elsewhere, a woman wearing a top hat and her husband’s suit: Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, pp. 35–41.
285“Step right up, gentlemen”: Ibid. Brownmiller wrote about the mock auction, performed by an artist named Florika and another protestor, Peggy Dobbins. For online footage, see: “Miss America, Up Against the Wall” (also known as “Ms. America, Up Against the Wall”), a women’s liberation documentary available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=awCRaGkowjY.
285Later that night, the first Miss B
lack America: Judy Klemesrud, “There’s Now Miss Black America,” New York Times, September 9, 1968.
285“How can people live together more peaceably?”: Miss America 1969—Judith Ford, Pageant Center, pageantcenter.com; Alumna Judi Ford Nash, Miss America 1969, ultoday.com (covering the University of Louisiana and the UL District), October 12, 2011.
286“No more girdles, no more pain!”; “Down with these shoes!”: Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, p. 39; Charlotte Curtis, “Miss America Pageant Picketed by 100 Women,” New York Times, September 8, 1968.
286A woman sick of doing the dishes: Charlotte Curtis, “Miss America Pageant Picketed by 100 Women.”
286“Why don’t you throw yourselves in there!”; “Go home and wash your bras!”: Ibid.
286“Women use your minds”: Jacqui Ceballos, interview with the author, October 2014.
286Someone else threw in a copy of Cosmo: Robin Morgan, “No More Miss America!”; the press release invited protestors to throw out their copies of Cosmopolitan.
286Hanisch and another protestor hung a banner: Susan Brownmiller vividly recalled this scene in In Our Time, p. 40.
287nobody ever set fire to one: Ibid., p. 37.
287“The WLM can put down bras all they like”: Deedee Moore, “Take It Off, Push It Up, Fill It Out: The Mad, Mad Bra Industry,” Cosmopolitan, March 1969.
39: BEFORE AND AFTER
288“We had all these young assistants”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.
288She wanted to be with her girls: Liz Smith, eulogy for Helen Gurley Brown, October 18, 2012, available at “Liz Smith Remembers Helen Gurley Brown,” wowowow.com/culture/liz-smith-remembers-helen-gurley-brown/, October 24, 2012.
288“I have not been single for years” and following excerpt: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,” Esquire, February 1970.
289“one of the first things I ever did in which I found my voice as a writer”: Nora Ephron to Helen Gurley Brown, undated (possibly circa 1996), HGB Papers, SSC. Background on threatened lawsuit by Fairchild per Ephron in her introduction to her reprinted essay, “Women’s Wear Daily Unclothed,” in Wallflower at the Orgy (New York: Bantam Books, 2007), p. 60.
289“nighttime look”; “de ringlets in de front and de shaggy in de back”: Nora Ephron, “Makeover: The Short, Unglamorous Saga of a New, Glamorous Me,” Cosmopolitan, May 1968, SSC.
289“not pretty-pretty”; “Told me my face too narrow”: Ibid.
290“Ringlets have lost curls”: Ibid.
290“What’ll I do? My hair’s a mess”: Edited by Mallen De Santis, “The Great Hair Disaster . . . And How to Recover!” Cosmopolitan, February 1968.
290“The simple process was to make them look as awful as possible”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.
291“a pretty little mouse of a girl”: “Mouse into Sexpot,” Cosmopolitan, September 1968.
291Other girls simply needed some fine-tuning: Background provided by Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012; and Barbara Hustedt Crook.
291“same age, same dreams, same potential”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, February 1968.
292“All the senior editors knew it was kind of a lark”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.
40: A VIPER IN THE NEST
293“You can’t really talk about bosom techniques”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, October 1969, SSC.
293Helen’s recent request for her own private john: “The Press,” “Eye,” Women’s Wear Daily, October 7, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.
293“Nobody took it seriously”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.
294“Robin, would a Cosmo girl think like this?”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, April 1968.
294“Give me your definition of a bitch”; “Have you ever dated a very wealthy man?”: From Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,” Esquire, February 1970.
294“Has a woman’s magazine” and following: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, June 1969.
294“TO—Girl Staff Members” and following excerpt: Helen Gurley Brown, to Girl Staff Members, undated [“(1969)”? notation], HGB Papers, SSC.
295“If we do this tastefully”: Ibid.
295“This is your personal reminiscence”: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”
295Linda Cox had just started working as an assistant art director: Backstory and career details provided by Linda Cox, interview with the author, June 2015.
296“It was passed around”: Per Linda Cox, who wrote up an account of the bosom-memo debacle and shared it with the author, June 2015.
296“feathery touches”; “no feeling-the-melons pinching”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, email exchange with the author, October 2014.
296she assigned two different writers: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”
297“BROWN STUDY: Eye is in receipt”: “BROWN STUDY,” “Eye,” Women’s Wear Daily, March 13, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.
297“She was outraged”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, email exchange with the author, October 2014.
297“The person responsible would be immediately fired”: Linda Cox account, June 2015.
297“WHAT MEN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WOMEN’S BOSOMS”: Cosmopolitan, June 1969.
298“She said she would right away”: Linda Cox account, June 2015.
298“Helen was still livid”; “I could never, ever face Helen”: Ibid.
298“This big brouhaha started”: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”
298“The actual use of anatomical words bugs them”: Ibid.
299“We’ve decided to wait”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, October 1969, SSC.
299the boys, he explained, wanted it to be “a stag affair”: Richard Berlin to Helen Gurley Brown, June 25, 1969, HGB Papers, SSC.
41: WOMEN IN REVOLT
300“One of the first things we discover”: Carol Hanisch, “The Personal Is Political,” in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation—Major Writings of the Radical Feminists, ed. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt (New York: Radical Feminism, 1970), available on Hanisch’s website, www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html.
300On March 21, 1969, nearly three hundred people filled the basement: Background is from Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time (New York: Dial Press, 1999), pp. 107–9; Susan Brownmiller, “Everywoman’s Abortions: ‘The Oppressor Is Man,’” Village Voice, March 27, 1969; and Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2003), chapter 1.
300“the real experts on abortion”: Redstockings. Jennifer Nelson gave a thorough account of the disruption in Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, chapter 1.
301“I bet every woman here has had an abortion”: Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, p. 109.
301“I was one of those who kept quiet”: Ibid.
301Gloria had gotten an abortion in London: Ibid.
301After the event, she typed up her article: Gloria Steinem, “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” New York, April 4, 1969.
302“Suddenly, I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong”: Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, 1995), p. 21.
302A few days after the speakout: Susan Brownmiller, “Everywoman’s Abortions.”
302“Everyone was saying the same thing”: Judy Gingold in Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), p. 52.
303They compiled newspaper clippings: Background on sexism at Newsweek from Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt; and Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison, “Young Women, Newsweek, and Sexism,” Newsweek, March
18, 2010.
303In the fall of 1969, a lawyer friend told Gingold: Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt, p. 55.
303On March 16 of that year: Background ibid., chapter 1.
304Susan Brownmiller . . . led another group of women: Brownmiller gave another vivid account, this time of the Ladies’ Home Journal sit-in that she helped organize, in In Our Time.
305“We demand that the Ladies’ Home Journal hire a woman editor-in-chief”: Ibid., p. 86.
305“The Women’s Liberation Movement represents”: Ibid.
306“We can do it—he’s small”: Ibid., p. 91.
306“He was a quiet little man”: Jacqui Ceballos, interview with the author, October 2014.
306They also agreed to give members: Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, p. 92.
306Plans were already in the works for a new column, “The Working Woman”: Per Letty Cottin Pogrebin, follow-up interview, May 2015.
307“a baby feminist”; “My editor at Doubleday warned me”: Letty Cottin Pogrebin, interview with the author, January 2014.
307“I think we passed over it very quickly”: Susan Brownmiller, interview with the author, January 2014.
42: THE STRIKE
308“The feminist movement was so joyous”: Jacqui Ceballos, interview with the author, October 2014.
308Hardly a day passed: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,” Cosmopolitan, June 1970.
308“Like many other women”: Ibid.
308“Why does a man usually instigate sex”: Ibid.
309“I was finally too embarrassed”: Betty Friedan, Life So Far (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 224.
309“I propose that women who are doing menial chores”: Ibid, pp. 232–33.
310They didn’t have the tens of thousands of demonstrators: Ceballos, interview with the author, October 2014. Ceballos recalled a conversation she had with a fellow activist about recruiting demonstrators, after hyping the upcoming march and strike to the press: “I said, ‘How are we going to get fifty thousand to march?’”
310In early August: Account of Lucy Komisar at McSorley’s from Grace Lichtenstein, “McSorley’s Admits Women Under a New City Law,” New York Times, August 11, 1970; and background about Statue of Liberty takeover from Ceballos’s recollections of events leading up to August 26, 1970, posted on Veteran Feminists of America’s website, vfa.us, as well as from Ceballos’s interview with the author, October 2014.