Helen Lawrenson

Helen Lawrenson (born Helen Strough Brown, October 1, 1907 – April 5, 1982) was an American editor, writer and socialite who gained fame in the 1930s with her acerbic descriptions of New York society. She made friends with great ease, many among the rich and famous, notably author Clare Boothe Luce and statesman Bernard Baruch.

At the height of the Great Depression, she was an editor of Vanity Fair. She later became notorious for an article called "Latins Are Lousy Lovers", published in Esquire in 1936. She also wrote profiles of Joan Crawford, Warren Beatty and Jane Fonda, among many others. She supported herself by writing articles for the rest of her life.

Lawrenson's two autobiographies, Stranger at the Party and Whistling Girl, are full of anecdotes and strong opinions – especially about New York society, politics left and right, and dense with anecdotes and vehement statements not easily corroborated.

Early life Helen was born on October 1, 1907, in La Fargeville, New York, Helen claims to have learned to read at three; her childhood was spent in voracious reading, with few friends.

In New York City for a year at age 7, she attended the Ethical Culture school. Then she was taken under the care of her maternal grandmother, who took her to Syracuse and exposed her to much culture. She got to hear Paderewski and to see Pavlova dance and was awed, as well as various Shakespearean companies. She was largely supported by her grandmother, first at private school and then the elite Vassar College for two years. Lawrenson was the first woman to write for men's magazine Esquire. There, her first article, "Latins Are Lousy Lovers" (1936), initially published anonymously, in which she ridiculed machismo as "quantity rather than quality", caused a sensation and was considered probably the "most notorious piece" in an Esquire collection from 1973. According to Lawrenson, Jackie Kennedy was very aware of her husband's "hundreds of women". Lawrenson wrote an uncustomarily negative article about Julie Andrews, calling her background not "compatible with reticence and timidity".

She continued to support herself precariously by writing articles the rest of her life.

Communist spy

She was recruited as a spy once, which took her into danger in South America.

At Communist party headquarters on East 13th street, in 1938, she was given a spying assignment by a Venezuelan she knew only as "Ricky". Ricky told her to find out about canals in Chile, which had been used by the Germans in World War I. The trip was well publicized (her cover story was to write travel articles), but her experience was harrowing because of her own initiatives. Some of these initiatives nearly got her killed. In every city she tried to meet left-wing politicians. She was more than once fired upon in crowds, closely escaping death at least once. Her comments on American ambassadors in South America are scathing.

Personal life and death Lawrenson did not shy away from seedier places. During Prohibition she found that when the speakeasies were closed, whorehouses kept serving liquor. She was associated with men such as Bernard Baruch, Rabbi Wise, and Condé Nast. Her husbands were author and activist Heinz Norden (m. 1931, div. 1932), Venezuelan diplomat Louis López-Méndez (m. 1935, div. 1935) and finally union organizer Jack Lawrenson (co-founder of the National Maritime Union), her true love (m. 1940 until his death in November 1957).

Lawrenson, 74, died on April 5, 1982, apparently following a heart-attack, after failing to show up for lunch with longtime agent Roz Cole and representatives of the Simon & Schuster publishing house. At the time, she was finishing up her first novel, Dance of Scorpions, which was published posthumously later that year.