Talk Shows: How Now, Brown Wren?

“I’m Helen Gurley Brown,” begins the mistress of ceremonies of the new TV show Outrageous Opinions. “I’ve written a few books, Sex and the Single Girl, etc., and now I’m editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. I’m terribly interested in women, and in men, too, and especially in the things they do together. We’re going to find out about the personal lives and loves and hopes and hang-ups and problems of some very well-known people. I’m not afraid to ask them anything. Don’t you be afraid to listen.”

The only thing to fear is the show itself. Syndicated in 15 U.S. cities since September, Outrageous Opinions takes on one guest at a time for half an hour, five days a week. The key subject, of course, is sex, but Mistress Brown cannot always make her guests come across. Norman Mailer, poet laureate of the orgasm, explained that he had come on the program to plug his new book. “I thought we were going to talk about ideas,” he said coyly.

Bishop James Pike obligingly discussed petting (“Technical virginity I have no respect for”). But when Comedian Woody Allen was asked if he had any lingering problems, he replied: “Yes, the compulsion to kiss a mailman. Probably the uniform and the leather pouch get me.”

To such leg-pulling, the star is blithely oblivious. “Most people,” she says, “expect Helen Gurley Brown to be fierce and fiery. They’re surprised to find me a nice old brown wren.”