Brown, Helen Gurley 1922–

PERSONAL: Born February 18, 1922, in Green Forest, AR; daughter of Ira M. (a teacher and politician) and Cleo F. (a teacher; maiden name, Sisco) Gurley; married David Brown (a film producer and executive), September 25, 1959. Education: Attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman's University), 1939–41, and Woodbury College, 1942; also took extension courses in writing at University of California, Los Angeles. Politics: Independent. Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES: Home—One W. 81st St., New York, NY 10024. Office—Cosmopolitan, The Hearst Corp., 959 8th Ave., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer, editor. Music Corp. of America, executive secretary, 1942–45; William Morris Agency, executive secretary, 1945–47; Foote, Cone & Belding (advertising agency), Los Angeles, CA, copywriter, 1948–58; Kenyon & Eckhardt (advertising agency), Hollywood, CA, advertising writer and account executive, 1958–62; Cosmopolitan magazine, New York, NY, editor-in-chief, 1965–97, editorial director of international editions, 1972–. Supervising editor, EYE magazine, 1967–68. Host of syndicated daily television show Outrageous Opinions, WOR-TV, New York, NY, 1967–68; has appeared as a guest on numerous television and radio programs.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of America, American Society of Magazine Editors, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Eta Upsilon Gamma.

AWARDS, HONORS: Frances Holmes Achievement Awards for outstanding work in advertising copywriting, 1956–59; Distinguished Achievement Award, University of Southern California School of Journalism, 1971; special award for editorial leadership, American Newspaper Woman's Club, 1972; named one of the twenty-five most influential women in the United States by World Almanac, 1976–81; Distinguished Achievement Award in journalism and honorary alumnus, Stanford University, 1977; LL.D., Wood-bury University, 1987.

WRITINGS:

Sex and the Single Girl, Geis (New York, NY), 1962, revised edition published as Sex and the New Single Girl, Geis (New York, NY), 1970, published as Sex and the Single Girl, Barricade Books (Fort Lee, NJ), 2003.

Sex and the Office, Geis (New York, NY), 1964, Barricade Books (Fort Lee, NJ), 2004.

Outrageous Opinions, Geis (New York, NY), 1966.

Single Girl's Cookbook, drawings by Frank Daniel, Geis (New York, NY), 1969.

Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You're Starting with Nothing, Linden (New York, NY), 1982.

The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over Fifty, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

The Writer's Rules: The Power of Positive Prose—How to Create It and Get It Published, Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 2000.

Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of foreword to Cosmopolitan's Love Book: A Guide to Ecstasy in Bed, Wilshire (Chatsworth, CA), 1978, and Cosmopolitan's New Etiquette Guide, Borden Publishing Co. Author of column "Woman Alone," distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate to over fifty newspapers throughout the world, 1963–65.

ADAPTATIONS: Sex and the Single Girl was adapted by Joseph Heller and David R. Schwartz for film, produced by William T. Orr, directed by Richard Quine, and released by Warner Bros. in 1964; Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You're Starting with Nothing, was adapted for audiocassette, Newman Books-on-Cassette, 1985; The Late Show: A Semi-wild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over Fifty was adapted for audiobook and read by Brown, Dove Audio, 1993.

SIDELIGHTS: Judy Klemesrud of the New York Times has called Helen Gurley Brown "the woman who, by her outspoken advice, has probably removed more girls from their virginity than anyone else in the world." An exaggeration, perhaps, but it is true that when Sex and the Single Girl was published in 1962, Brown became famous for her promotion of a concept that many considered shocking at the time: that sex can be fun, even for single women.

However, as Brown told Claudia Dreifus in a 1975 Miami Herald interview, the single women to whom the book was directed were not the ones who were shocked, "because girls have been sleeping with boys without being married to them forever. The ones who were not participating—older women, fathers—were horrified." Besides, as she says, she was not advocating promiscuity. She told Conversations author Roy Newquist: "I don't believe in 'sleeping around.' I don't think it's fun to have too many lovers; it gets very confusing. Therefore, I would never lead a girl toward that kind of activity, nor even encourage her to have one affair (although it certainly can work out well)." On the other hand, she does believe that "a girl who is terrified that a man is going to deflower her before her wedding night has a problem, socially. She sets up icy waves around her, and perhaps she can't help it. Something has made her believe that men are dangerous until you marry them, and then they are okay…. This is a rather incendiary subject, and it sounds as though I'm pushing sex, saying, 'Go out there and get your share.' I'm not, really. I dare say that there are girls so anesthetized that they are happier not doing anything about sex; they would be desperately unhappy if they tried to change, so they should stay as they are."

Brown also explained to Newquist that she sees "a different moral code for young girls, even girls in their twenties, and women in their thirties and forties. A girl of thirty-six is not a girl of sixteen, yet in this country some persons believe girls of all ages live by the same rules. I'm all for girls staying chaste as long as they can, really, up to a reasonable age. There's no hurry. I think that being innocent when you're young is desirable and lovely. You can make love to a man until you're seventy, so what's the rush? However, to carry innocence past a certain age may defeat its purpose."

The idea for Sex and the Single Girl was provided by Helen's husband, David, a motion picture producer of such films as Jaws and Deep Impact. He had come across some copies of old letters his wife had written to a former boyfriend and, impressed by her bright, witty style, encouraged her to attempt a book on a subject she was well acquainted with: the life of a single woman. Having been single until the age of thirty-seven, she felt comfortable advising others in such matters as careers, money, apartments, wardrobe, make-up, diet, and—particularly—men. These were all areas that she felt had been neglected by other publications, most of which were aimed at married women, or at least at women who wanted to be married. "At the time I wrote about single girls," she told Newquist, "nobody was championing them. Volumes had been written about this creature, but they all treated the single girl like a scarlet-fever victim, a misfit, and … you can't really categorize one-third of the female population [of the United States] as misfits…. I picked up a torch, I guess you'd say, and became the standard-bearer for this particular group."

The combination of helpful, constructive advice and, as Brown puts it "the inherent sexiness of the subject and fairly easy-to-take writing," worked so well that the book sold in the millions of copies and led to a second book, Sex in the Office, as well as a syndicated newspaper column, "Woman Alone," and eventually to her position as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. The idea for a magazine devoted to the needs of single women was inspired, to a great extent, by the enormous amount of mail generated by Sex and the Single Girl. The number of letters soliciting advice on personal problems left little doubt that a large segment of the population was not being reached by the women's magazines of the day. David and Helen worked out a format for a publication, tentatively entitled Femme, which would serve to answer some of the questions being asked by the readers of her first book; initially, however, they were unable to find a publisher willing to back the rather expensive project.

Luckily, Bernard Geis, who had published Helen's first two books, knew the president of the Hearst Corporation and was able to arrange a meeting. The Hearst people were not particularly interested in starting a new magazine, but they were willing to turn over editorial control of their ailing Cosmopolitan, a periodical whose sales had dwindled by twenty percent in the past year. Helen changed the format of the magazine, moving its appeal away from the housewives of its previous incarnation toward the new "Cosmo girl," someone who, she told Dreifus, "looks as good as she can, works as hard as she can, and the smarter she is, the better off she is." When Brown took over in 1965, Cosmopolitan sales did not skyrocket overnight, but the magazine did begin a steady rise from a circulation of around 800,000 to over three million copies (with a readership of approximately twelve million), making it one of the most successful periodicals in the world.

Although Cosmo has articles on make-up and grooming, apartments and decorating, diet, health, pets, finance, fashion, and celebrities, the magazine's premier topic is male-female relationships. Brown explained to Newquist that "we do a lot of stuff about men and women because about ninety percent of the mail I get is about a man's relationship with a woman or the other way around…. I'd say that seventy percent of this mail is from women who are mixed up with the wrong man but they won't admit it; they can't stand to hear it. So we have a great deal to say about divorce, about the man who won't marry, the homosexual man, the lukewarm boy." She says that "we deal with all subjects of emotion, because I think emo-tions come first. They really motivate everything we do. I think most decisions are visceral, really. Therefore, every month Cosmopolitan has an article on jealousy, shyness, the uncontrollable temper, or insecurity—things that stem from emotional states."

One topic that is assiduously avoided in Cosmopolitan is the domestic scene; articles about natural childbirth, babies, and child-rearing are definitely not part of the Cosmo image. Brown recognizes that a lot of her readers are mothers but chooses to disregard that area of their lives because, as she mentioned in the Newquist interview, "my format says we do not do children and domesticity". And, she notes, the format has worked, so why tamper with it? The closest Cosmo might come to an article about children would be one advising single women on how to deal with a divorced lover's offspring, or perhaps one on how to get along with a friend's kids for a weekend. This philosophy has led to some comparisons between Cosmopolitan and Playboy, which similarly ignores the family life of men. Although Cosmo is "less racy by far" than Playboy, Brown acknowledges the comparison and says that she is not in the least offended by it. "Nothing gets into Playboy that is not presumably for the Playboy man," she told Newquist, and "every single thing that goes into Cosmopolitan is for the consumption and enjoyment and self-improvement" of the Cosmogirl.

Brown, who through the decades as has proudly maintained her status as the ultimate Cosmo girl, wrote a book directed at women over fifty years old. In The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over Fifty Brown offers the type of advice she and her magazine have historically dished out. She presents her thoughts on physical appearance, sex, and values "in her trademark exhortative, chirpy, ad-copy style," as Joanne Kaufman described it in People, adding that the Cosmo queen "unabashedly parades her neuroses, parsimony … split ends and plastic surgery." Regardless of age, being skinny and wealthy and maintaining a sex life (even if you have to resort to relations with a married man) are among Brown's high priorities. A Publishers Weekly assessment more positively appraised The Late Show, concluding: "However frothy, this little advisory offers comfort and cheer—possibly even for those who have neither sex nor money."

After more than three decades leading Cosmopolitan, in 1997 Brown reluctantly left her position as the magazine's editor-in-chief, although she remained director of international editions. The following year she published The Writer's Rules: The Power of Positive Prose—How to Create It and Get It Published. The 1998 release received some unenthusiastic reviews. A Publishers Weekly critic, for example, called it a "mish-mash … pockmarked by … [the] trademarks of her style and of the gossipy, rhetorical, narcissistic voice of ads for that certain magazine, Cosmo." The reviewer further felt her advice was neither novel nor, at times, sensible. Though acknowledging the book as being weaker than other how-to-write publications, Brown's "fluffy little book on writing" offers her "positive attitude" and "knowledge of what magazine editors want," assessed Library Journal contributor Lisa J. Cihlar.

With I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts Brown once again gives readers a look at her perspective of life, this time adding more of her life history. "A savvy seductress, Brown, 78, wastes not time titillating her readers in this frisky, off-the-cuff memoir," remarked Paula Chin in People. After reading the book, Chin described Brown as "refreshingly self-deprecating." In a "relentlessly candid" manner, observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Brown muses over her life, career and philosophy." "Brown's voice is uniquely hers, although the book feels padded and repetitions," asserted the critic. According to Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper, the "collection of Brown's all-too-random thoughts … is part rehash … part dish … and part (way too big a part) intimate details about the author's body."

Brown shares more of her professional life in the 2004 title Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, Brown "bares more of her irreverent self through letters written over the years." Jamie Rosen, writing in WWD, noted that while Brown "is famous for her unique brand of 'you-can-have-it-all-and-then-some' feminism,… this modern woman has a very old-fashioned hobby: writing letters." Collecting over three hundred such letters from her years at Cosmopolitan, Brown produced more a memoir than a how-to for letter writers, but the Publishers Weekly critic still felt that readers could learn epistolary arts from Brown, "whose grace, style and candor will always be a template for polishing one's art of communication."

When asked about her writing, Brown told CA: "What first got me interested in writing was writing letters at about age six (after I learned how to write). Communicating by letter to relatives, friends or whoever through the years convinced me that writing was pleasurable, especially since I got good responses.

"My writing process is to put two pieces of paper in my typewriter (one to protect the roller from being typed against) and off we go. I don't use a computer, can't even use an electric typewriter because they are too noisy—all that buzzing indicates to me that I've got to get on with it and I find the message intimidating. Whatever I'm writing, I always triple-space so I will have room to edit by hand. When the writing, for whatever purpose, is completed, my beloved assistant, Susie, will type up the pages and off they go to whoever has requested. If nobody has requested and I'm simply writing speculatively, a soliciting letter will go on top.

"The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is that somebody would publish what I wrote. My book, Sex and the Single Girl, was the first published work and I had been writing since I was six years old!

"My favorite book is always the most recent one that I have written because I never know whether there will be another book inside me. In this case, the book is a collection of my letters—Dear Pussycat. Somebody told a publisher that people saved my letters; the publisher, St. Martin's Press, asked if we could round up some for them to see. That's what we did and the book was published. If I had it to do over, I would write more ideas of how to write a good letter—they do reward you—rather than just publishing letters I had written. Haven't written a book since that time so it's technically still my favorite book. Aside from that, I think my best book may have been Having It All—a very clear delineation of how to go from being a mouseburger (mousy, not pushy, only mildly talented) to being a success. I think it has the most useful and realistic advice of any of my books, although it really isn't about sex!"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Diamonstein, Barbaralee, Open Secrets, Viking (New York, NY), 1972.

Leterman, Ehner G., and T.W. Carila, They Dare to Be Different, Meredith Press (New York, NY), 1968.

Newquist, Roy, Conversations, Rand McNally (New York, NY), 1967.

PERIODICALS

50 Plus, November, 1982, Maggie Paley, review of Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You're Starting with Nothing, p. 68.

Advertising Age, January 22, 1996, Keith J. Kelly, "New Fuller Era Dawns at 'Cosmo,'" p. 4.

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Ilene Cooper, review of I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts, p. 738.

Columbia Journalism Review, November-December, 2004, Gloria Cooper, review of Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor, p. 67.

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 1985, Karlene Lukovitz, "Still Cosmo after All These Years," p. 73.

Library Journal, December 1, 1982, review of Having It All, p. 2261; May 1, 1993, Nancy Paul, review of The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over 50, p. 133; September 15, 1998, Lisa J. Cihlar, review of The Writer's Rules: The Power of Positive Prose; How To Create It and Get It Published, p. 88; June 14, 2005, Michael Rogers, review of Sex and the Office, 111.

Los Angeles Magazine, December, 1982, Tom Link, review of Having It All, p. 322.

Miami Herald, August 24, 1975, Claudia Dreifus, interview with Brown.

Modern Maturity, May-June, 1997, Nancy Lloyd, "Helen Gurley Brown: Still the Same Ol' Tease," p. 54.

New York, November 27, 1995, Maer Roshan, "Between Us Girls," p. 58.

New York Herald Tribune Book Review, June 17, 1962, review of Sex and the Single Girl.

New York Herald Tribune Magazine, November 22, 1964, review of Sex and the Office.

New York Times, December 31, 1967, Judy Klemes-rud, review of Outrageous Opinions.

New York Times Book Review, March 14, 1993, Judith Viorst, review of The Late Show, p. 8.

People, November 1, 1982, review of Having It All, p. 54; May 24, 1993, Joanne Kaufman, review of The Late Show, p. 31; March 6, 2000, Paula Chin, review of I'm Wild Again, p. 55.

Playboy, March, 1997, Stephen Randall, "Was Helen Gurley Brown the Silliest Editor in America—or the Smartest?," p. 24.

Psychology Today, March-April, 1994, "Bad Girl Helen Gurley Brown, the Original Cosmo Girl, Defies Every Label," p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, September 10, 1982, review of Having It All, p. 70; September 23, 1983, Sally A. Lodge, review of Having It All, p. 71; January 19, 1993, review of The Late Show, p. 454; August 3, 1998, review of The Writer's Rules, p. 68; December 20, 1999, review of I'm Wild Again, p. 65; February 23, 2004, review of Dear Pussycat, p. 60.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1962, review of Sex and the Single Girl.

Time, November 1, 1982, John Leo, review of Having It All, p. 72; January 29, 1996, "Stepping Down, Helen Gurley Brown," p. 19.

Variety, October 12, 1998, Richard Natale, "Behind Every Successful Cosmo Girl, There's a Man," p. NY5.

Washington Monthly, October, 1982, Donna Fenn, review of Having It All, p. 57.

Washington Post, November 3, 1982, Jonathan Yard-ley, review of Having It All, p. C1.

WWD, August 27, 1999, Lisa Lockwood, "Just Call Her Helen 'Girly' Brown," p. 14; Jamie Rosen, "What's New Pussycat?," p. 4.

ONLINE

Bookrags, http://www.bookrags.com/ (March 16, 2006), brief biography of Helen Gurley Brown.