INTERVIEW, Page 62Living By the LetterTo her 90 million readers, ANN LANDERS is the last word onmatters as mundane as toilet paper and as painful as divorceBy Elizabeth Taylor
Q. When you started out in the advice business 33 years ago,
you were a square, Midwestern Jewish girl leading a life without
woes. How did you relate to people with problems, and how did you
find your voice? It seems to be a mix of liberal politics and
conservative morals.
A. And I have learned from them. But I don't believe that you
have to be a cow to know what milk is. You don't have to have lived
through an immense amount of agony and pain in order to relate to
people who are suffering. I really care about what happens to
people, and when I first began to read those letters, it was an
eye-opener. I came from a very solid Midwestern Jewish home. You
see, I led a very sheltered life. I had never seen a man hit his
wife. I had never seen any drunkenness. I had never seen any
poverty. I knew these things were happening, but they never
happened to me. The mail grew me up in a hurry.
Q. You have attributed much of your success to luck. What role
does ambition play?
A. I think there's such a thing as serendipity. You have to be
lucky. You have to be at the right place at the right time. But
once you are lucky, you have to know what to do with your luck. And
I knew what to do with my luck.
Q. You are tremendously driven, and I wonder how much of that
results from being the twin sister of Dear Abby?
A. Competitiveness is a factor, I'm sure, as with all siblings.
But I was the first one to go into this work, and the drive was
there from day one.
Q. Do you read most of the letters you receive every day? Do
you read 100 at a sitting?
A. Oh, yes. Reading those letters is a very important part of
doing the job, because selecting the letters is the lifeblood of
that column. If the letters aren't well selected, the column is no
good. I must be alone when I read.
Q. When you started out, you hesitated to mention the word sex,
but now . . .
A. Hesitated? I printed a letter on homosexuality the first
year that I was writing the column, and the publisher in St. Joe,
Mich., let us know that he was not running that column. He printed
a box on Page One saying there would be no Ann Landers column today
because she's dealing with a subject that we feel is not fit for
a family newspaper. Of course, everybody in town ran to buy the
Detroit Free Press to see what it was that Ann Landers was talking
about that the paper wouldn't print.
Q. Your candor cannot endear you to right-wingers.
A. You are right on. They say you can judge a man's value by
his enemies. I have an interesting assortment. The National Rifle
Association, pro-lifers, the animal-rights people. For years I have
fought to abolish Saturday-night specials and those cop-killing
bullets that explode on impact. I have taken a strong stand against
the church or state telling women what they can and cannot do with
their bodies. We need animal models (for experiments), and I've
been fighting this battle for years. It gets tougher and tougher.
The animal-rights people are powerful and rich.
Q. A wide range of subjects provokes intense feelings among
your readers. What is it about toilet paper, for instance, that
prompted more than 15,000 letters?
A. Incredible, isn't it? A woman went to visit her cousin in
Cincinnati and she said, "Look, you're hanging the toilet paper
wrong." Louise replied, "What do you mean?" The cousin said,
"You're hanging it so it goes over the top. You're supposed to hang
it so that the toilet paper goes down along the wall." I figured
this is a subject everybody can relate to, and it was -- well --
different. And I wondered, "How many people really care?" Then I
thought, "I care, and I bet thousands of others do too." So I
printed it. I discovered 15,000 did care. I like to hang it down
the wall. Talk about a compulsion! If I'm a guest in a home and the
paper is hung the other way, I'll change it. I know this is crazy,
but we all have our areas of nuttiness.
Q. When you started the column it didn't seem that you were as
quick to recommend psychotherapy as you are now.
A. Actually, I do send my readers for professional help much
more than I used to, but I am less inclined to suggest a
psychiatrist. I tend more to send my readers to psychiatric social
workers, psychologists, trained counselors, rabbis, priests and
ministers.
Q. What's wrong with psychiatrists?
A. I am well aware that there are not a great many competent,
caring, dedicated psychiatrists out there. The Karl Menningers in
the field are few and far between. I am disturbed by the fact that
1 out of every 10 psychiatrists admits, get that, to having had sex
with patients. If 1 out of 10 admits it, how many more do you think
have actually been involved? I find this reprehensible. These
people are so vulnerable. They trust their psychiatrist. He's
father; he's God. To violate that trust is hideous.
Q. You seem to have changed your views on divorce since the
days when you advised couples to stay together for the sake of the
children.
A. Yes, that's true. I began to see an awful lot of children
who were screwed up because the parents were screaming all night.
I decided that it wasn't really great advice to say "stay together
for the sake of the children."
Q. Did your own divorce, as your daughter Margo suggests in
her book, make you more human?
A. I think I was pretty human before I was divorced. Mine was
not a terribly painful, miserable, rotten divorce with animosity
and anxiety. I just knew that my life was going to have to change,
and I was determined that I was going to make it better. The
divorce was going to improve my life. And it did.
Q. How so?
A. Well, I have to tell you. This may sound terribly selfish,
but I love the freedom that I have. I don't have to worry about
anybody but myself. I don't have to worry about a man's wardrobe,
or his relatives, or his schedule, or his menu, or his allergies.
I would not be married again.
Q. Because you couldn't give up the freedom?
A. Right. Since I've been divorced, there has always been a man
in my life. I enjoy male company enormously, but I like to keep my
personal life private, and I've succeeded in doing just that. But
I cannot imagine my life without a man. I think when I'm 90 I'll
still have a fella.
Q. I'm wondering about the effect of the women's movement on
you. In the early days, you encouraged homemaking and homemakers,
and yet you worked.
A. Well, my daughter was 15 years old when I went to work. And
actually, I didn't go to work. I worked at home. So when she came
home from school, I was there. I don't think she realized that I
was a workingwoman. I never felt like a workingwoman.
Q. Do you feel that way now?
A. You know, this sounds crazy, but no. Yet I work harder than
anybody I know. Somehow I don't think of it as work, because I
really love what I do. Also, the freedom of being able to make my
own schedule is marvelous. Most people who work have to get up in
the morning and go to an office or a store. If I want to sleep
until 10 o'clock, I can do it.
Q. Why do you stop short of calling yourself a feminist when
you support a traditionally feminist cause such as a woman's right
to an abortion?
A. I don't want anybody calling me Ms. I have certain ideas
that I had even before the feminist movement came along. I always
believed in these things, like equal pay for equal work, but I
can't say that I went out and fought for those principles.
Q. If you were still married, would you continue to have JULES'
WIFE embroidered in your fur coats?
A. Yes, I would. Being Jules' wife was more important than
being Ann Landers.
Q. What happened to those fur coats after your divorce?
