Helen Gurley Brown,
1922–2012,
Part II
By 1996, thirty-three years after Helen Gurley Brown became the dynamic US editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, its circulation began to decline, supposedly because Helen had lost touch with her readers. It was alleged that she had played down the risk of AIDS for heterosexual women, publicly disparaged the charges of sexual harassment of prominent men such as Justice Clarence Thomas and Senator Robert Packwood, and stated that sexual attention from men is always flattering.
Her last US issue was in 1997, after which she was transferred to become editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan’s international editions. Fortunately, Helen grew its world coverage substantially. The magazine became published in thirty-five languages and was distributed in more than a hundred countries. Women the world over obviously savored reading about sex. Helen kept this job until her death in 2012 when she was ninety years old. Cosmopolitan was then the world’s top-selling young women’s magazine, with sixty-four international editions.
Over the years, Helen Gurley Brown was listed in Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and the World Book of Facts. In 1988 she was inducted into the Publisher’s Hall of Fame; in 1995 she was the first woman to receive the Johnson Fisher Award, the magazine-publishing industry’s highest honor; and in 1996 she received the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame Award.
Helen and her husband, David Brown, adored each other during their fifty years of marriage. Previously, due to David’s two-divorce marital history, he had been determined never to remarry, but Helen wanted to have a husband. After fifteen months of dating David, Helen had said, “I love you, and I’ll miss you. Don’t call me unless it’s to tell me you want to get married.” David reluctantly married her, but he was never known to have any regrets throughout the marriage.
On their wedding day, Helen had $8,000 in the bank, saved through her secretarial work and one year of copyediting. David was penniless, though employed as executive vice president of creative operations at 20th Century Fox. We can reasonably suppose that David’s limited financial situation was due to his past divorces and his one son. Regardless, David later became celebrated and financially successful when he and Darryl Zanuck formed their own production company, whose highly acclaimed films included The Sting (1973), Jaws (1975), The Verdict (1982), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Without Zanuck, David produced Angela’s Ashes (1999) and Chocolat (2000). He also produced various musicals including Sweet Smell of Success: The Musical (2002) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005). In addition, he bought the film and stage rights to the play A Few Good Men (1989), which enjoyed a run of 500 performances.
David had more formal education than Helen because she hadn’t been able to afford to attend a university. Her father had died when she was ten, and her mother then had to support Helen and her polio-stricken older sister, Mary, on a schoolteacher’s salary. When she was a secretary, the thrifty Helen began to send money to her mother and sister.
The first considerable wealth Helen and David experienced was when Helen received the $200,000 for movie rights to Sex and the Single Girl. Helen credits David with investing it wisely. Eventually both of them became regular cash cows.
Even before Helen attended school, she was fascinated by and drawn to rich people. During their courtship, David, despite his shallow pockets, introduced Helen to famous people connected to the entertainment world. She reveled in the surrounding affluence and glamor.
In contrast with David’s prenuptial lack of savings, Helen liked Madonna’s song, Material Girl, and considered herself one, though those lyrics didn’t become familiar until twenty-five years after Helen’s marriage. She advised, “Marry a rich man for big diamonds, or a less wealthy man for smaller diamonds, or better yet, buy them for yourself.” Helen taught that female financial independence felt good and was alluring. She believed—and publicly declared—that her healthy fiscal status had helped attract David.
The two remained emotionally and physically close through their later years. In a 2000 Newsweek essay, Helen wrote, “I had sex last night. I’m seventy-eight and my husband, David, is eighty-three.” Twenty years before David died in 2010, he agreed to be buried in the Ozarks where Helen planned to be buried. He said, “I want to be wherever you are, and besides, I’ve always liked to go to new places.” The front of his gravestone bears an etched Oscar statuette, and on the back reads, married to helen gurley brown.