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Helen Gurley Brown 1922 - 2012

Helen Gurley Brown of New York, New York County, New York United States was born on February 18, 1922 in Green Forest, Carroll County, AR. She was married to David Brown, and died at age 90 years old on August 13, 2012 in New York, NY. Helen Brown was buried on May 24, 2013 at Sisco family cemetery near Route 103 in Osage. in Osage, Arkansas U. S. A..

Helen Gurley Brown

Helen Marie Brown (Gurley)

New York, New York County, New York United States

February 18, 1922

Green Forest, Carroll County, Arkansas, 72638, United States

August 13, 2012

New York, New York, United States

Female

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Helen Gurley Brown Helen Brown (1922 - 2012)

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Helen Gurley Brown's History: 1922 - 2012

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Introduction

HELEN GURLEY BROWN (HELEN GURLEY BROWN) Helen Gurley Brown Brown was born Helen Marie Gurley in Green Forest, Arkansas, the daughter of Cleo Fred (Sisco) and Ira Marvin Gurley. Her mother was born in Alpena, Arkansas, and died in 1980. Her father was once appointed Commissioner of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas after Ira won election to the Arkansas state legislature. He died in an elevator accident on June 18, 1932. In 1937, Brown, her sister Mary, and their mother moved to Los Angeles, California. A few months after moving, Mary contracted polio. While in California, Brown attended John H. Francis Polytechnic High School. After Brown’s graduation, the family moved to Warm Springs, Georgia. She attended one semester at Texas State College for Women and then moved back to California to attend Woodbury Business College. from which she graduated in 1941. In 1947, Cleo and Mary moved to Osage, Arkansas, while Brown stayed in Los Angeles. After working at the William Morris Agency, Music Corporation of America, and Jaffe talent agencies she worked for Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency as a secretary. Her employer recognized her writing skills and moved her to the copywriting department where she advanced rapidly to become one of the nation’s highest-paid ad copywriters in the early 1960s. In 1959 she married David Brown, who would go on to become a noted film producer. In 1962, when Brown was 40, her book – Sex and the Single Girl was published in 28 countries, and stayed on the bestseller lists for over a year. In 1964 the book inspired a film of the same name starring Natalie Wood. In 1965, she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and reversed the high-toned content expected of the magazine. In the 1960s, Brown was an outspoken advocate of women’s sexual freedom and sought to provide them with role models in her magazine. She claimed that women could have it all – “love, sex, and money”. As a result of her advocacy, glamorous, fashion-focused women were sometimes called “Cosmo Girls”. Her work played a part in what is often called the sexual revolution. In 1997, Brown resigned from her role as the U.S. editor of Cosmopolitan and was replaced by Bonnie Fuller. When she left, Cosmopolitan ranked sixth at the newsstand, and for the 16th straight year, ranked first in bookstores on college campuses. However, she stayed on at Hearst publishing and remained the international editor for all 59 international editions of Cosmo until her death on August 13, 2012. In September, 2008, Brown was named the 13th-most-powerful American over the age of 80 by Slate magazine. After more than 50 years of marriage, her husband, David Brown, died at the age of 93 on February 1, 2010. Together with her husband David, Brown established the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. This institution is housed at both the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford’s Engineering School. Their $30-million donation to the two schools develops journalism in the context of new technologies. At the age of 90, Brown died at the McKeen Pavilion at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia after a brief hospitalization. In its statement announcing the news, Hearst Publications did not disclose a cause. The company said, “Helen was one of the world’s most recognized magazine editors and book authors, and a true pioneer for women in journalism – and beyond.” Entertainment Weekly said that “Gurley Brown will be remembered for her impact on the publishing industry, her contributions to the culture at large, and sly quips like her famous line: ‘Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.'” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement said, “Today New York City lost a pioneer who reshaped not only the entire media industry, but the nation’s culture. She was a role model for the millions of women whose private thoughts, wonders and dreams she addressed so brilliantly in print.”
02/18

1922

Birthday

February 18, 1922

Birthdate

Green Forest, Carroll County, Arkansas 72638, United States

Birthplace

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Early Life & Education

Little Rock Arkansas. Los Angeles, CA and Texas State College for Women and then moved back to California to attend Woodbury Business College. from which she graduated in 1941.
Professional Career

After working at the William Morris Agency, Music Corporation of America, and Jaffe talent agencies she worked for Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency as a secretary. Her employer recognized her writing skills and moved her to the copywriting department where she advanced rapidly to become one of the nation’s highest-paid ad copywriters in the early 1960s. In 1959 she married David Brown, who would go on to become a noted film producer. In 1962, when Brown was 40, her book – Sex and the Single Girl was published in 28 countries, and stayed on the bestseller lists for over a year. In 1964 the book inspired a film of the same name starring Natalie Wood. In 1965, she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and reversed the high-toned content expected of the magazine. In the 1960s, Brown was an outspoken advocate of women’s sexual freedom and sought to provide them with role models in her magazine. She claimed that women could have it all – “love, sex, and money”. As a result of her advocacy, glamorous, fashion-focused women were sometimes called “Cosmo Girls”. Her work played a part in what is often called the sexual revolution.
Personal Life & Family

Cosmopolitan Magazine.
08/13

2012

Death

August 13, 2012

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

New York, New York United States
Death location

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05/24

2013

Gravesite & Burial

May 24, 2013

Funeral date
Sisco family cemetery near Route 103 in Osage. in Osage, Arkansas U. S. A.
Burial location
Obituary

Helen Marie Gurley Brown (1922–2012) Helen Gurley Brown was a native Arkansan whose career includes landmark achievements in advertising and publishing. She was considered a spokesperson for the women’s liberation movement and sexual revolution in the mid-twentieth century as author of the bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. Helen Marie Gurley was born on February 18, 1922, in Green Forest (Carroll County) to a family of modest means. Her father, Ira Gurley, finished law school in 1923 and was soon elected a state legislator. The family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and settled in the Pulaski Heights neighborhood. In 1932, as her father was preparing to run for Arkansas secretary of state, he was killed in an elevator accident at the Arkansas State Capitol. While her mother, Cleo, attended typing school and took in sewing, Helen Gurley was able to play with friends at the Little Rock Country Club during the years she attended Pulaski Heights Junior High. In 1937, when Helen was fourteen, the family moved to Los Angeles, California. A few months later, Gurley’s sister Mary was stricken with polio. Gurley attended John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, where she was in the top ten percent of her class academically. After high school graduation in 1939, she attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University) in Denton but was forced to withdraw after one semester for financial reasons. She then returned to Los Angeles, where she enrolled at Woodbury Business College (now Woodbury University), graduating in 1941. When Gurley was twenty-four, her mother and sister returned to Arkansas to live with her mother’s family in Osage (Carroll County), but she remained in Los Angeles, visiting Arkansas only occasionally. Gurley’s opinion of her home state was rarely very high. Noting the relative lack of anti-Semitism in Arkansas, for example, Gurley wrote, “We were pretty busy with Apartheid.” In 1948, she took a secretarial job with the Los Angeles advertising firm of Foote, Cone and Belding, where she worked for advertising executive Don Belding and advanced to writing copy. She rose rapidly in advertising, winning three Frances Holmes Advertising Copywriters awards and becoming one of the nation’s highest-paid copywriters. She joined the Los Angeles advertising agency of Kenyon & Eckhardt in 1958 as copywriter and account executive. The following year, at age thirty-seven, she married movie producer David Brown, who went on to produce such films as The Sting (1973), Jaws (1975), Cocoon (1985), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). With her husband’s encouragement, she documented her memories of her time as an unmarried woman and, in 1962, published the book Sex and the Single Girl. It became an immediate bestseller, was turned into a movie, and revolutionized the perception of a single woman from a sad spinster to the “glamour girl of our times.” It covered beauty, dating, finance, work, and sex—a subject previously off limits to a proper unmarried woman. Along with assuring her readers that sex could be natural, respectable, and healthy, she underscored the importance of what came to be known as self-esteem. A full, rich life was not determined by great beauty, brains, or money, she said, but rather by a woman’s belief in herself, her willingness to develop her own potential, and her protest against remaining content as a quiet little “mouseburger.” In a time when women were expected to remain in the home, Brown emphasized the vital importance of paid, meaningful, continuing outside employment for women as a means to achieve those goals. Brown and her husband drafted plans for a magazine aimed at eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old single women. In 1965, she was named editor-in-chief of the existing Cosmopolitan magazine and implemented their plan, moving the publication away from its staid, serious image and transforming it into an upbeat, glitzy, high-profile magazine glorifying the “Cosmo Girl.” Her advocacy of the liberated woman and “having it all” played a significant part in what is termed the sexual revolution. Brown published ten books, including Sex and the Office (1964), Helen Gurley Brown’s Outrageous Opinions (1966), Sex and the New Single Girl (1970, an updated version of her first book), Having It All (1982), The Late Show: A Semi-Wild but Practical Guide for Women Over 50 (1993), The Writer’s Rules (1998), I’m Wild Again (2000), and Dear Pussycat (2004). In 1985, Brown established the Helen Gurley Brown Research Professorship in magazine publishing at Northwestern University in Chicago. In 1988, she was inducted into the Publishers’ Hall of Fame; in 1995, she received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award from the Magazine Publishers of America; and in 1996, she was named to the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame. She resigned as editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan in 1997, remaining at the helm of its international editions. In 2000, Brown and her husband visited Arkansas, where they were met in Little Rock by Governor Mike Huckabee and Secretary of State Sharon Priest. Priest, who held the office Helen’s father planned to run for before his death, presented Brown with a packet of photos and other information pertaining to her father’s service in the Arkansas General Assembly. In Arkansas, the Browns were planning to look at gravesites. Her husband David Brown died of kidney failure at their home in New York City on February 1, 2010, at age ninety-three. In 2012, Brown gave $30 million to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Stanford University School of Engineering to establish the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Brown died on August 13, 2012, in New York following a brief hospitalization. In 2013, during an unusual May snowstorm, her ashes were laid to rest next to her husband’s in the Sisco family cemetery near Route 103 in Osage.

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Helen Gurley Brown lived 19 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 90.

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10 Memories, Stories & Photos about Helen

Amanda S. Stevenson

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01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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01/21/2021

David Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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01/21/2021

David Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

David Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

01/21/2021

Helen Gurley Brown

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Helen Brown's Family Tree & Friends

Helen Brown's Family Tree

Parent

Helen Gurley Brown Feb 18, 1922 - Aug 13, 2012

Partner

Child

Sibling

Marriage

David Brown