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What do psychologists think of the Wood character?

posted 15 years ago by CalvinJarrett
2 replies | jump to latest

CONTAINS SPOILERS

My wife and I were watching this - she's a licensed professional counselor. She cringed at how Wood's Helen Gurley Brown behaved toward her patient, the Tony Curtis character, Bob Weston. All the hand-holding and flirting, kissing, drinking. Even for the mid-sixties this would be highly inappropriate behavior for a psychologist to display towards his or her patient. I managed to get her to watch the whole film arguing that she probably knows he's not a real patient and that he works for the magazine that maligned her. She's going along with it to get him and the mag. in the end. But boy was I wrong! She really was that into him, and she really believed he was her patient. Even when she found out at the end, she still went off with him. And I thought this was supposed to be a progressive, women's lib-precursor of a movie. In fact, Wood's character sets the women's movement back before it even started! What I utterly cannot believe is that she played an actual writer, Helen Gurly Brown, down to the very three-part name. My question is, did any of this happen to the actual Ms. Brown? If it's a complete farce, Helen Gurley Brown has every right to be angry and I hope she sued. If it was based on her actual life and romance with the Tony Curtis character, then I have very little respect for her.

[–] falldogbombsmoon 15 years ago

Helen Gurly Brown was actually an editor for Cosmopolitan magazine after she wrote a book (Sex and the Single Girl, like the movie) - but never had any experience in psychology. Most of her writing encouraged women to use sexuality and appearance to get ahead in the world, to take on characteristics of the upper classes to seem more desirable to rich men. Although Brown was seen as an early proponent of women's lib, it was only to the extent that she believed they had power over their own appearances and personalities- she was not a feminist and only begrudgingly allowed a few feminist pieces into the magazine.
This movie is only based on Brown insofar as Natalie Wood's character has the same name, the women of the film find some form of sexual liberation from the book, and there is some involvement with a magazine.

"There is a fine line between paranoia and egomania, and you are dancing on it."

[–] CalvinJarrett 15 years ago

Thanks falldogbombsmoon. I'm glaad Brown was never a psychologist or behaved the way Wood did - I'd lose lot of respect for Helen Gurley Brown and I'd hope she'd have lost her license.