(Sex and the S1ngle Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, Bernard Geis...)
Sex and the S1ngle Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, Bernard Geis Associates, (Random House), 1962, 6th printing. 267 pages. Fine in fine dust jacket. Description: Book; Blue boards with red lettering to spine only, top edge stained red, maroon endpapers. Dust jacket; Sea-green with light green and black lettering to spine and front, photo of author on back panel, front flap not price clipped, lower edge of flap dated 5/62. Condition: book; Fine. Bright, tight copy that is unmarked and appears unread. Top stain is bright and not sunned, and the spine lettering is bright and unbroken. Light rubbing to the top of the spine, else fine. Dust jacket; Fine. Bright and unmarked, not sunned, the bottom edge of the spine has one small rub mark, else fine
The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women over 50
(The author of Sex and the Single Girl describes what it i...)
The author of Sex and the Single Girl describes what it is like to grow old, discussing emotional security, marriage, money, sex, beauty, clothes, food, exercise, health, doctors, and work. 100,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. Tour.
Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor
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Dear Pussycat:
Some of us find it easier to say in a l...)
Dear Pussycat:
Some of us find it easier to say in a letter whatever it is we want to express -- love, rage, outrage, affection, resentment, enthusiasm, a request to do a chore -- than we do person to person or even phone to phone. I've been writing letters, somewhat successfully I think, since I was eight years old. I got President Franklin Roosevelt to write to my wheelchair-bound (from polio) sister by dropping him a line at the White House. Some of my letters don't quite make it, of course -- trying to get New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger to fire his vicious play reviewer Frank Rich who tore apart my husband's perfectly fine play, A Few Good Men. He wouldn't do it -- no recourse but to write the reviewer himself, "Dear Frank, you bastard! etc." I've thanked designer Emilio Pucci for turning small bust and big hips into goddess stature with whammo fabric and genius engineering, kept a few beloved employees from jumping ship or into the river with careful flattery, consoled the grieving. Wouldn't you like to see a little collection of my best, meanest and happiest notes that reflect a pretty fascinating New York life, a career they don't make many like, love and friendship with junior high school buddies and a few razzle-dazzle celebrities? Okay...if you like good old-fashioned staying-in-touch by correspondence, here they are!
Helen Gurley Brown
Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money Even If You're Starting With Nothing
(The editor of "Cosmopolitan" gives advice on dealing with...)
The editor of "Cosmopolitan" gives advice on dealing with men and women, sex, marriage, career success, becoming more attractive, making money, and staying healthy with frank accounts of her own experiences in those areas
I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts
(The former editorinchief of Cosmopolitan discusses her ri...)
The former editorinchief of Cosmopolitan discusses her rise to the top, from working in the secretary pool to her current post as head of the magazine's international sections, sharing her thoughts on life, romance, work, sex, style, and writing. Original.
Helen Gurley Brown was an American author and editor who first achieved fame for her book Sex and the Single Girl, an immediate best-seller. After Gurley Brown became editor of the faltering Cosmopolitan, she transformed it into a sexy, upbeat top-selling magazine for young women in over 27 different countries.
Background
Helen Gurley Brown was born on February 18, 1922 in Green Forest, Arkansas, the second daughter of Ira Marvin and Cleo Fred (née Sisco) Gurley. Both parents had worked as schoolteachers. Ira Gurley moved his young family to Little Rock when he was elected to a seat in the state legislature. When Helen was ten years old, tragedy struck when her father was killed in an elevator accident, leaving her mother to support her daughters during the Great Depression, a period of high unemployment. Cleo moved to Los Angeles. But her oldest daughter, Mary, contracted polio there, and large medical bills strained the family's finances.
Education
In high school, Brown set about working harder than anyone else, wrote for school publications, and wound up finishing at the top of her class. She attended Texas State College for Women from 1939 to 1941 before returning to Los Angeles, where she attended Woodbury Business College. She received her LL. D from Woodbury in 1987.
Career
Gurley Brown's first job was with radio station KHJ where she answered fan mail for six dollars per week. From 1942-1945 she worked as an executive secretary at Music Corp. of America, a Beverly Hills talent agency. A major career move for her occurred in 1948 when she became the first woman to hold a copywriter position at Foote, Cone & Belding, a Los Angeles advertising agency. She worked for Kenyon & Eckhardt, a Hollywood advertising agency, as an account executive and copywriter from 1958-1962.
Gurley Brown's first book, Sex and the Single Girl (1962), revolutionized single women's attitudes towards their own lifestyle. At a time when Reader's Digest and The Ladies Home Journal still insisted that a "nice" girl had only two choices, "she can marry him or she can say no, " Gurley Brown openly proclaimed that sex was an important part of a single woman's lifestyle. In 1965 she was hired as editor-in-chief of Hearst Corp. 's faltering general interest magazine Cosmopolitan. She revised the magazine's cover image, creating a devil-may-care, sexy Cosmo girl.
The new Cosmopolitan often provoked controversy, especially when it published a nude male centerfold of actor Burt Reynolds in 1972. Relentlessly upbeat, the magazine, like its editor, was filled with advice on how to move ahead in a career, meet men, lose weight, and be an imaginative sexual partner. There was no time for the negative. By 1990 Cosmopolitan had grown from a circulation of 800, 000 in the United States to over 2. 5 million. Hearst Corp. claimed that with its 27 international editions Cosmopolitan was now one of the most widely read women's magazines in the world and had become the sixth best-selling newsstand magazine in any category.
In the 20 years between publication of Sex and the Single Girl and Having It All (1982), Gurley Brown's advice changed little. She still refused to print four letter words but graphically described techniques for oral stimulation. During a Fortune magazine interview in October of 1996, she shared several of her rules for being a good executive. Her guidelines included saying something complimentary before criticizing, saying "no" to time wasters, doing what you dread first, and working harder than anybody else.
In January 1996 Bonnie Fuller, founding editor of Hearst Corp. 's magazine Marie Claire, was named Gurley Brown's successor and new editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. Fuller served an eighteen-month internship under Gurley Brown while Gurley Brown continued as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan's international publishing program. In 2000 her eighth book I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts was published. Filled with stories, the book revealed information on her face lifts, staying thin, and how to keep a man and succeed in a career.
Achievements
Gurley Brown’s ability to produce bright, arresting prose won her two Francis Holmes Advertising Copywriters awards during her tenure at Foote, Cone & Belding (1948 - 1958). Her book Sex and the Single Girl became a national best-seller. As editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Gurley Brown made the formerly conservative magazine the female equivalent to the men's magazine, Playboy. She quickly won a large audience for the magazine by introducing sexier cover models and controversial topics. By the time she "retired" as editor in chief, she had transformed it into one of Hearst's most successful magazines.
She also received several awards for journalism, including a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Southern California in 1971, an award for editorial leadership from the American Newspaper Woman's Club of Washington, D. C. in 1972, and the Distinguished Achievement Award in Journalism from Stanford University in 1977. In 1985 she received the New York Women in Communications Matrix Award. In 1986 Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism established the Helen Gurley Brown Research professorship. Gurley Brown has been dedicated as a "living landmark" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. She was inducted into the Publisher's Hall of Fame in 1988.
Quotations:
"I never met a completely happy single woman…or a completely happy married one!"
"I like skin, I like pretty. I don't want to photograph the girl next door. "
Connections
In 1959, at the age of thirty-seven, Helen Gurley married David Brown, then vice president of production at the 20th Century Fox movie studio. In later years David co-produced films such as Jaws, Cocoon, and The Sting. The couple had no children. Helen once remarked that one secret of the success of their marriage was that her husband never interrupted her on Saturdays and Sundays when she was working upstairs in her office.
Father:
Ira Marvin Gurley
Mother:
Cleo Fred Sisco Gurley
She quit teaching to raise her two children.
Spouse:
David Brown
He encouraged her to write a book about her experiences as a single woman.
