The Woman's Day team give you a rare behind-the-scenes look at working for the mag in '70s...
Mary Falloon
— editor 1977-1980
The whole team were eccentric, clever women who were ahead of their time and often financially responsible for raising children. And they were very supportive of each other. They never made a fuss about it, they got on with it.
It's like a family working at The
Day. Very much so. And I think people were supporting each other with what they were doing, you always had someone around that you could ask a question of.
The subbing standard was very high. They were very precise and accurate and careful and they still are. But the sub-editors were in a sense the taskmasters.
The ten dollar facelift
Writer Ailsa Craig had a ten dollar facelift for the magazine. I loved Ailsa Craig, she was so eccentric!
Someone had worked out that you could get a facelift for $10 from Medicare so that was what was on the cover of the magazine — the $10 facelift. With before and after photos of Ailsa with this eyelift. And the ironic thing about that is that Ailsa was the most casual person about the way she looked.
Out of a very large handbag she would take a powder compact and there would be this scrap of cloth that passed for a puff and she's scrabble the cloth in the compact and not use a mirror, she'd put on lipstick without looking in the mirror.
I remember coming into work and Ailsa had a dress with a fastening on the front and bumps on the back. I got around to saying Ailsa, "What's with the dress?" And she had deliberately put it on backwards to change the look! Very eccentric.
She was entertaining and attractive combined with pure cleverness. And she wrote The Middletons — no one knew that at the time. She was a brilliant lady.
Alisa and Ainslie
Joan Reeder was the editor in the early '70s. She was a very, very clever woman with a really acute, quick brain — and one of her big gets in that time was that
Woman's Day published the story of Ainslie Gotto.
Gotto had come into the limelight as the good-looking 22-year-old principal private secretary of the prime minister, John Gorton. The serialised story was being written by Ailsa Craig. She often used to write from home. We all had a battered portable typewriter that we'd carry around.
I was then a sub-editor, or maybe I was assistant editor. Anyway there was a pressing deadline for the next instalment of the Ainslie Gotto story, and Ailsa was seen to be at home working on it. It was getting a bit chancy as to whether the deadline was going to be met, so I was sent out to get the copy from her.
When I got out there, Ailsa was sitting at her kitchen table pounding away on the typewriter. There was burning toast and kettles boiling over, and she was able to just totally ignore anything else going on around her.
Somehow or other we got that story back in time without the house burning down.
Julie Redlich
— fiction editor, started in 1972 as a freelancer for WD's sister mag Woman's World
In the '70s we wrote everything on typewriters. There wasn't even anything electrical at all in the office.
When I was subbing for
Woman's Day we would all sit around a big table. It was an L-shape, you could walk into the centre. We all looked at each other! We were probably more social in those days. We always went to lunch, there was none of this sitting at the desk and grabbing a sandwich. All the subs would go out to the Graphics Arts Club and the Journalists Club or just the local pub next door.
By the time I came back to the office after freelancing for a decade it had changed so much! Everyone was working on computers and now it is a very glamorous office to work in. I am only in two days a week. It's good for me to come in and see everyone. I couldn't bear not to come in the office and be involved.
Never pass up a free lunch
When Meg Post left as fiction editor of
Woman's Day in the late 70s I was on the subs' desk and I thought fiction would suit me. Because on the subs' desk you work very long hours and I still had four little children — five if you count my husband — and I thought I could probably cope with the hours of fiction so I asked the editor Anne Goldie if I could do the job.
It was difficult in those days because you couldn't do anything raunchy — it was Barbara Cartland. Or the mysterious Victoria Holt — who was just one of Eleanor Burford's many pen names, she was also Jean Plaidy and Phillippa Carr. One day I heard from her publisher she was coming out on a cruise and I said I'd love to take her to lunch.
Jerry Fetherston was news editor then and I asked if I could take her to a gorgeous restaurant in Potts Point. I was with the photographer and she was a fairly old lady and I said we'd like to take her to lunch and she said she didn't normally have lunch — just a glass of skim milk and Limits diet biscuits. I said, "No! We're going to lunch!"
We weren't missing out a free lunch! So I spoke to the chef and we organised something very special for Eleanor to eat and she was a very lovely lady. Lovely to talk to and she researched all her history subjects very well.
Beryl Giles
— chief sub-editor, 1971-78, 1992-98, and 2005-present
I first worked with the mag when Joan Reeder was editor and Sally Baker was deputy editor. It was a time when Margaret Whitlam, the wife of the PM, wrote a column for us and told us all about the comings and goings at The Lodge — something that simply wouldn't happen these days. Margaret shared all sorts of titbits with us from
her visits with Imelda Marcos to the advantages of traditional Indian dress and what the Malaysian PMs palace was like. She was part of the diplomatic jet-set and readers loved her column because of her wit and style.
Journalist Liz Hickson also had a column called "Lunching With Liz" — she interviewed all the famous people who'd come to Australia and was featured on the inside front cover every week. It was a time when movie stars were never seen in their jeans and they wouldn't be seen dead without their make-up and looking completely perfect which meant the readers put them on pedestals.
A new editor, Mary Falloon, started in 1977 and was a very glamorous woman in her own right. She was the one who took the mag from fires, floods and disasters to have the celebrity bent it does to this day. I remember once she asked for a story on John Travolta and none of us knew who he was!
She was also an advocate of woman's rights and gave the magazine a particularly feminist flavour. One day she came into the office and told a hilarious story about how she had come home to find her husband had done his washing and not hers — he thought he was doing the right thing! She was so incensed she got a pair of pinking shears and cut all the sheets and towels in half giving him a very memorable lesson!
Millie Trinder
In the '70s we had a production editor called Millie Trinder. She was getting on in years and was just a quiet little lady who didn't say much but then it was somehow revealed she had had an amazing past.
When we questioned her about her younger years it turned out she had run away to join the circus when she was 16 years old. But there was an even more startling revelation to come — the unassuming Millie had also been one of the great Australian artist Norman Lindsay's nude models! Imagine our surprise!
Lillian Roxon
Friends with David Bowie and Linda McCartney and credited with being the inspiration for Helen Reddy's iconic hit
I Am Woman, the feminist and communist sympathiser Lillian Roxon was the first Australian female to work as an overseas correspondent. She mixed with Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed and members of The Velvet Underground.
With those sorts of connections her rock 'n' roll column for
Woman's Day in the early '70s was always a fascinating read. While she had access to all the big name stars in the US Lillian also helped Aussies like The Easybeats and Lynne Randell break into the New York scene.
She would come back to Sydney occasionally and drop into the
Woman's Day office — she always wanted to know who was sub-editing her column and, unlike other 'precious' columnists, all Lillian wanted to do was buy the sub lunch.
Why the Day?
Beryl Giles:
I think the magazine is a good friend to many women. I speak to a lot of readers — if they can't get a clue in a certain puzzle they'll call us or if they're looking for an old recipe or a knitting pattern they'll call us. There are some things that haven't changed about the magazine — we have always done stories on the big celebrities. And there have always been good food, health and services pages.
We are a reliable source of regular stuff — the readers always know they can share their feelings in the letters pages, share photos of their kids with us, call the helpline so they can find an old knitting pattern and stay up to date on the latest fashion and beauty.
The Middletons has also been a constant in the mag since the early '60s — readers know it's fiction but they follow it as if it's fact and it's hard not to be a fan. People have grown up with Janet Middleton and her family.
Julie Redlich:
The magazine is like a friend. It's something very comfy. It's like they do in the ads, the reader settles back in the bath or on bed or is sitting outside and you know what you're going to get. It's a lot of good beauty and fashion and the food is lovely. Everything is very reliable and so accessible. It caters to the everywoman.
I think the recipes are really terrific. I have cooked
Woman's Day's recipes for ever and ever. Especially when I am working in the theatre directing a play or something and I want to take something along, then I'll bake a cake from the
Woman's Day recipes and it will always get a compliment. If you don't try them out you never know how good they are.
We have travel and pets and Dr Rosie, she's fabulous. And so much more. It's your week's reading.
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