Arkansas Backstories

Helen Gurley Brown

By Joe David Rice

When I mention in conversations that Helen Gurley Brown hailed from Arkansas, most listeners are surprised, some even incredulous. Are you absolutely certain, they ask, that the late author of “Sex and the Single Girl” – which sold 2 million copies in three weeks – is a native Arkansan? Can it be true that the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine – who dispensed advice on affairs, orgasms and orgies during her 32-year reign and was responsible for the infamous 1972 centerfold of Burt Reynolds in the buff – was born in the small Ozark town of Green Forest? Is it accurate to state that the personality who set the stage for Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw character in HBO’s award-winning’s “Sex and the City” series was one of us? Correct on all counts.

Helen Gurley was indeed born in 1922 in Green Forest, a Carroll County community of some 900 residents at the time, located about halfway between Harrison and Eureka Springs. Her father, Ira, a schoolteacher who had served in the Arkansas General Assembly from 1919 to 1920, finished law school a year after her birth.

The Gurley family left Green Forest for Little Rock in 1929 and settled in the neighborhood now known as Hillcrest. First living on Rose Street, they soon moved a few blocks away to 404 N. Spruce. Ira worked for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and also clerked for the House of Representatives. Helen was a student at Pulaski Heights Elementary School when her father – who’d been rumored as a likely candidate for Secretary of State – died in a particularly gruesome elevator accident at the state Capitol in 1932. Following his death, the remaining family (Helen, her mother, Cleo and her sister, Mary) relocated to 419 N. Monroe.

In a 1967 interview with an Arkansas Gazette reporter, Helen fondly recalled her childhood days in Little Rock. After elementary school, she attended Pulaski Heights Junior High, took dance lessons, enjoyed movies at the old Prospect Theater and played in Allsopp Park. But her father’s death left the family in bad financial shape.

Seeking better opportunities and proximity to relatives, the Gurley clan moved to Los Angeles in 1937, where Helen attended high school and was valedictorian of her class. A 1941 graduate of Woodbury Business College, she worked a variety of jobs before accepting a secretarial position with one of the city’s prominent ad agencies. Helen climbed the corporate ladder, winning accolades from her peers, and eventually became one of the coun-

try’s highest-paid copywriters. Helen married Hollywood producer David Brown in 1959, who urged her to write a book based on her days as an unmarried woman. “Sex and the Single Girl” was the result, and this 1962 bestseller was published in 35 countries. Helen Gurley Brown authored nine more books during her career although none achieved the notoriety of her first effort. Her next big step occurred in 1965, when the Hearst Corporation hired her as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan which had been steadily losing readers. With Helen’s makeover featuring provocative covers and titillatingly titled articles, the publication’s circulation more than tripled to nearly 3 million copies an issue. Advertising revenues skyrocketed. Her transformation of the magazine likely kept Hearst from filing for bankruptcy. Targeting young and working-class women readers, Helen made sure Cosmopolitan dispensed advice on relationships that couldn’t be found elsewhere. She clearly knew a thing or two about relationships. Shortly after assuming control of the magazine, she confided to one of her associates that she’d bedded 178 men over the course of her career. The rejuvenated publication soon claimed 43 international editions. As she guided Cosmopolitan Photo courtesy of John Bottega through three tumultuous decades, Helen caught her share of criticism, especially from vocal feminists who felt she’d betrayed their cause. Sales eventually declined and, fearing that Helen had lost her magic touch, Hearst replaced her as editor-in-chief in 1997, although she continued to work on the magazine’s foreign editions. A classic overachiever, Helen was self-conscious of her modest upbringing and basically disavowed any connection with Arkansas until late in her life. With her early role models claiming trendy, big-city backgrounds, Helen did everything to avoid the “ordinary, hillbilly and poor” stereotype she loathed. Helen Gurley Brown died on Aug. 13, 2012, at the age of 90, in New York City. She’s buried with other members of her family in the small Sisco Cemetery near Osage, her grandmother’s hometown a few miles south of Green Forest. As for Green Forest, it’s now about three times the size it was during Helen Gurley’s youth, but remains a quaint country community. Yet this quiet hamlet somehow produced the very worldly Helen Gurley Brown.

Joe David Rice, former tourism director of Arkansas Parks and Tourism, has written Arkansas Backstories, a delightful book of short stories from A through Z that introduces readers to the state's lesser-known aspects. Rice's goal is to help readers acknowledge that Arkansas is a unique and fascinating combination of land and people – one to be proud of and one certainly worth sharing.

Each month, AY will share one of the 165 distinctive essays. We hope these stories will give you a new appreciation for this geographically compact but delightfully complex place we call home. These Arkansas Backstories columns appear courtesy of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System. The essays have been collected and published by Butler Center Books in a two-volume set, both of which are now available to purchase at Amazon and the University of Arkansas Press.