Enter Helen Read Online Free Page B

worse.”
    The only way to get Helen past it was to practice—to put her through her paces. Letty made herself the interviewer in an impromptu press conference, right there in the living room. How would Helen respond when people blamed her for corrupting the minds of young girls? What would she say when they accused herof being a home wrecker? How would she answer when asked what kind of husband would let his wife write such a book in the first place? A girl like her didn’t deserve a husband—she was a manipulator, a phony!
    If all went according to plan, Helen and her book would be featured on the local and national news, on the Today show and the Tonight Show , and on every major radio station in every major city. She needed to have an answer for every question, or at least an out, and she needed to keep cool and stay focused. She had a job to do—and that was to sell as many copies of her book as humanly possible.
    For now, they would start from the beginning. Most people tended to ask an unoriginal opening question, along the lines of, “How’d you come to write the book?” “Unless they’ve read the book—and most people will have only dipped in—you basically have to control the interview,” Letty said. “If people aren’t asking the questions that you want the reader to know the answers to, you have to answer no matter what the question.”
    She shouldn’t answer too literally, though, Letty advised. No one would care about the technicalities. Readers would want the rags-to-riches story about a poor little girl from a nowhere town who thought she’d never get out. They would want to hear about the father who died young, the crippled older sister, and the poverty-stricken mother, all territory that Helen had covered in her book. Most of all, they would want to hear about how that poor little girl eventually made good, working her way through seventeen secretarial jobs and surviving countless broken hearts before becoming a successful career woman—and (at the ripe age of thirty-seven) landing the husband of her dreams. Because if Helen could do it, maybe they could, too.
    From hillbilly to Hollywood: It was as exploitable a story asthe hooker with the heart of gold, but Helen had to do more than tell her story. She had to sell her story. She had to do more than talk to her audience—she had to get people to talk among themselves. The most precious commodity would be word-of-mouth advertising.
    â€œSo, Helen,” Letty asked, “how did you come to write this book?”
    Once again, Letty was aware of David’s presence in the room, and though it was distracting at first—not to mention a little weird—she soon saw the added benefit.
    Long after Letty left, David would still be there to run Helen through whatever questions he had thought up, so she would not fall apart when the time came to step into the studio lights.

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    T HE S TORY E DITOR
    1959–1962
    â€œIf you would please your woman, put her to work and help her succeed.”
    â€”David Brown, in an early interview with Cavalier
    H ow did Helen come to write Sex and the Single Girl ? The story the Browns decided to share with the public was Hollywood-simple. Helen was out of town visiting family when David came across carbon copies of letters she had written. In the press, Helen claimed the notes in question were to her former boss, Don Belding, when she was his executive secretary at the advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding, butDavid also discovered some love letters she had sent to another man.
    His name was Bill Peters, he was married, and he worked as an account executive at the Manhattan ad agency J. Walter Thompson. Helen met Bill on a flight from Los Angeles to New York in May 1949 (she was twenty-seven), and after that initial meeting, they wrote to each other for nearly two years. In letter after letter, Helen regaled Bill with engaging, funny