Ladies' Choice

The biggest U.S. women's magazine has; a slogan that hangs over advertisers' heads, like a poised rolling pin: Never underestimate the power of a woman. This week., to prove that admen don't, the October Ladies' Home Journal carried a staggering; $2,677,260 worth of ads on its 278 pages., more than any magazine had ever crammed, into a single issue. It was no one-shot freak; the Journal was breaking its own record, and next month will do even better, having just raised its ad rates.

From cover to hemline, the stylish-stout Journal has become something that Editor Edward Bok, who died in 1930, would barely recognize as his baby. Last year, it did more business than the next two women's magazines, Good Housekeeping and McCall's, combined. At a quarter a copy, circulation is a booming 4,520,982, three-quarters of a million over Crowell-Collier's second-place Woman's Home Companion.

Anonymity Is Out. The two chief reasons for the Journal's huge success are both named Gould. They appear on the masthead in 12-point type as "Bruce Gould and Beatrice Blackmar Gould, Editors." They are far better known to the public than most of the editing confraternity, because of such journalistic didos as cozy "interviews" with notables like Eleanor Roosevelt and Harold Stassen, which were actually written by Gretta Palmer and J. C. Furnas, respectively.

Bruce and Beatrice have been collaborating since college days. They went to the State University of Iowa together, married in 1923, worked on Manhattan newspapers, and wrote short stories and the

Theatre Guild play of 1929, Man's Estate, which for a time paid them $1,000 a week; Bruce Gould was already working on Curtis Publishing Co.'s Saturday Evening Post when shrewd George Horace Lorimer sent the Goulds to the Journal in 1935. As Beatrice was bringing up their daughter Sesaly, she insisted on spending only three days a week at the office--and still does.

"When we went to the Journal" says Beatrice Gould, "every women's magazine was in the same narrow rut. There was still a feeling that women's interests were confined to the home." It was a feeling the Goulds did not share. They set out to blast the Journal (then 10-c- a copy, with a circulation of 2,590,000) out of its rut.

Stuffiness Is Out. They threw out the stuffy editorials, the colorless layouts, the long "short" stories, and crusaded for public health, clean politics and flogging for child-beaters. They began campaigning against venereal disease, wrote a widely reprinted ad headlined OF COURSE I'LL TAKE A WASSERMANN. Circulation sat up, got up, and climbed.

The most famous Gould stunt has been the eight-year-old How America Lives series, in which the Journal not only reports on "typical" families in vast detail, but also fixes up their kitchens, their budgets (which never mention anything spent for liquor) or their personalities--whichever is in worst repair. They like to say that their readers are a jump ahead of them; the fact is that the Journal is out to educate women just as fast as it can, while rattling many a social skeleton in public.

In the past year the Journal ran the Stimson memoirs, the Stilwell diary, the Robert Capa-John Steinbeck Russian essay, a presidential series by Roger Butterfield, articles on bad housing, "The Alcoholic and His Women," and "Why Do Women Cry." By male tastes (which do not matter to the Journal), its "problem" fiction is below the standard of its articles --but it is not for want of hunting for new authors or problems. The Journal took twelve first stories (at a minimum of $750) by budding writers. Its fiction, food and architecture displays are decorated with wide-open, four-color layouts that are among the best in the business.

Everything that goes into the magazine must have a Gould O.K. They even approve (with a calculating eye on what's really good for women) the little epigrams that bloom back among the ads. A sample blossom:

Women, deprived of the company of men, pine; men, deprived of the company of women, become stupid.--Chekhov

Two-Front Career. The Goulds' offices are in Philadelphia (where Bruce has the bigger office) and Manhattan's RKO Building (where hers is bigger and chintzier). They split their week between New York, Philadelphia and "Bedensbrook," their 120-acre farm near Princeton, N.J., where the rooms are much more casual than the ones shown on Journal decorating pages.

When they bought the old farm, their friend Carl Van Doren gave them curt advice: "Pave it." Instead they let their next-door neighbor work it; now the place pays. Around home Gould is a relaxed, ruminative, cigarette-puffing host, lets his handsome, smartly dressed wife do much of the talking. The Goulds entertain simply, serve "a" cocktail, and, like a good Journal family, live well within their combined salaries of around $75,000 a year.

If there is ever an editorial argument between them, it is settled at the breakfast table. In general, Bruce, the general manager, is king in corporate affairs, and Beatrice, the idea woman, is queen in the Journal's shiny test kitchens and its fashion incubators. When one is away, the other rules both roosts. There is plenty of give & take between them and their staffers, who are encouraged to speak their minds and often do.

"I don't think that men edit women's magazines very well," says blue-eyed Bruce Gould. "They always take a superior attitude toward women." But as long as Beatrice is around on the Journal, there is no danger of that.

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