End of the Conversation

''My wife," said Bruce Gould, "has a true appreciation of women. She likes women. Curiously enough, so do I. We have always believed that women are not only women but are people. They're not special creatures. They're up to their elbows in life. We just treated women as people." As editors of the Ladies' Home Journal, Charles Bruce and Beatrice Blackmar Gould wove'this simple and sympathetic creed into every issue of their magazine.

They were a remarkably effective team.

Nothing went into the Journal that did not please them both, though Bruce often bowed graciously to his wife's instinct for what was right. "I don't think that men edit women's magazines very well," he once said. "They always take a superior attitude toward women." The Goulds looked upon the Journal's readers as part of the family, and chatted amiably in print about the places they had visited, the people they had seen. Last week they sadly bade their huge family goodbye.

After nearly 27 years, the Goulds were leaving the Journal and passing its custody to other hands.

Emancipated Tastes. The Goulds are gentle people, and they came to the Journal in a gentler time. Both Iowa-born, they met as students at the University of Iowa, were married in New York in 1923, and embarked on careers in journalism and writing. Man's Estate, a play they wrote together, ran 56 performances on Broadway in 1929--and paid for their 120-acre farm, Bedensbrook, near Hopewell, NJ. In 1934 Bruce Gould, who had already sold eight stories to the Saturday Evening Post, one of the magazines printed by Curtis Publishing Co. in Philadelphia, joined the Post as an associate editor. The following year Post Editor (and Curtis Chairman) George Horace Lorimer offered the Goulds joint editorship of Curtis' women's magazine, the Journal.

The Journal was then an undistinguished second in an equally undistinguished field of six women's magazines,* all of which took the patronizing view that a woman's interests were largely confined to the home. The Goulds did not share this view. Guided by Beatrice's sure feeling for the emancipated woman's tastes, it invited its readers to plunge up to the elbows not only in bread dough but in life. The Journal, which once opposed woman suffrage, broke out in passionate campaigns for purity in politics as well as in maternity wards. It crusaded against venereal disease (a famous Journal ad showed a pretty girl with the caption "Of course I'll take a Wassermann"), hotly recommended flogging for child beaters.

The new editors filled the pages with provocative articles, e.g., "Why Do Women Cry?", and fiction from some of the world's bestselling writers: John P.

Marquand. Isak Dinesen, Rebecca West.

The magazine considered feminine health problems with an obstetrician's candor, nourished the dreams of fat girls everywhere with an endless array of case histories ("I Lost 160 Pounds and I Am Just Beginning to Live").

Challenging the Queen. By 1943 the Journal was queen of the field. Its circulation of 4,375,000 ranked it as the largest women's magazine in the world, and it continued to grow. By 1953 it had 5,000,000. by 1960, 6,000,000. But editorially, the magazine had lost some of its steam. With few alterations, it remained the same product that the Goulds had conceived in 1935.

In 1958 the Journal abruptly found itself in an unladylike contest for the throne. That year McCall's, equipped with a vigorous new editor, Herbert Mayes, and plenty of money from its new proprietor, West Coast Industrialist Norton Simon, set out to topple the complacent queen. By 1961, McCall's had passed the Journal in both ad revenue ($37.6 million to $27.1 million) and total circulation (7,400,000 to 7,200,000), though the Journal still enjoyed a narrow lead in newsstand sales.

Stepping Aside. To beleaguered Curtis, which has spent a fortune refurbishing the slipping Saturday Evening Post--without yet reversing its downhill course--the time had come for a change at the Journal. Not only the Goulds were affected.

Wilhela Cushman, Journal fashion editor for 25 years, stepped aside for Catherine di Montezemolo (maiden name: Murray), wife of an Italian marchese and a Vogue senior fashion editor for the past eight years.

The Journal's new editor, 33-year-old Curtiss M. Anderson, was hand-picked by the Goulds as their successor. A graduate of the University of Minnesota ('51), he spent nine years with Des Moines's Meredith Publishing Co. (Better Homes and Gardens). He joined the Journal in 1960 as an associate editor, moved up to managing editor last year. Well aware that he will have his hands full regaining the magazine's lost diadem, crew-cut Curt Anderson (he is now letting his hair grow out) is keeping his own counsel. "The Journal's basic character will be retained." he said, "but there will be changes." At week's end the Goulds quietly slipped off to the Bahamas for an extended rest. "Our career on the Journal," said 63-year-old Bruce Gould, "has never seemed a task. It has been more like a continuous and absorbing conversation with friends on matters of mutual concern about the home, the community and the world. But the time always comes to step aside and let somebody else take over."

* The Journal, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Pictorial Review, Delineator and Woman's Home Companion. Only three survive today.

Delineator folded in 1937, Pictorial Review in 1939, and Companion in 1957.

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