Helen Gurley Brown, the World Trade Center and Nobel Prizes…
A look back at the world in Smithsonian Magazine’s first year
Where Are They Now?
Helen Gurley Brown
Editor of Cosmopolitan
Not only is Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan from 1965 to 1997, still widely known for her bestselling book, Sex and the Single Girl, and its sequel, Sex and the New Single Girl, published in 1970, but she insists that its pre-feminist message remains as apt today as when she first declared it. "All the suggestions about pleasing men are as viable as ever," says Brown, 83. "Whatever age you are, you should be flattering to a man about the way he looks."
Gloria Steinem called her a "pioneer" for insisting that women should seek sexual parity with men, "but she’s fooling herself if she thinks her message is a feminist one."
After retiring as Cosmo's editor, Brown became head of the magazine's international editions, a job she holds to this day. She and husband, David Brown, 89, a producer of such films as Jaws and Chocolat, live in New York City.
— Mimi Kirk
One World Trade Center welcomes its first tenants December 16. Businesses move onto the 10th and 11th floors while construction to complete the 110-story building continues. At its dedication in April 1973, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller calls the twin skyscraper a "great marriage of utility and beauty."
In The News
Fifteen Basque separatists go before a court-martial December 3 on charges of killing Melitón Manzanas, head of the political police in the Spanish province of Guipúzcoa on the French border. Less than a month later, six of the separatists are condemned to death, nine to lengthy prison sentences. Generalissimo Francisco Franco commutes the death sentences to 30-year prison terms December 30. Franco dies in 1975 at age 82.
On December 22, activist and UCLA lecturer Angela Davis, 26, is booked on charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy for her alleged involvement in an attempted escape by three convicts, including George Jackson, from the Marin County, California, courthouse August 7. In June 1972, she was acquitted of all charges. Davis is now a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her latest book, Abolition Democracy, will be published this month.
1970 Nobel Prizes
Luis Leloir, Chemistry
Paul A. Samuelson, Economics
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Literature
Norman Borlaug, Peace
Hannes Alfvén, Physics
Louis Néel, Physics
Julius Axelrod, Medicine
Ulf von Euler, Medicine
Sir Bernard Katz, Medicine
Comings & Goings
BORN:
DMX
Rapper/actor, December 18
DIED:
Rube Goldberg, 87
Cartoonist, December 7
"I was never exactly sure that I understood what Mao meant."
—Nikita S. Khrushchev, in reminiscences attributed to him by Life magazine, in the December 14 New York Times