Who was hot-hot-hot on the presses in the '70s? WD insiders recall...
Elizabeth Taylor
The seven weddings of Elizabeth Taylor — especially her two to Richard Burton — were closely followed by
Woman's Day readers who were swept up with the romantic notion that she could marry one of Hollywood's handsomest screen stars twice.
They first wed in 1964 after meeting on the lavish set of Cleopatra (when she became tinsel town's highest paid actress taking home $1 million for the film). She was also still married to Eddie Fisher, whom she had stolen from actress Debbie Reynolds in 1959.
Taylor and Burton, who was her fifth husband, stayed together for 10 years with the trials and tribulations of their marriage mirroring their on-screen performances in emotional classics like
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? They divorced in 1974 only to secretly remarry again 16 months later while on safari in Botswana.
However their reunion was short-lived when Burton began drinking heavily again and they separated the next year in February 1976.
"In 1972 Heather Kennedy, who was our London correspondent at the time, managed to gatecrash Elizabeth Taylor's 40th birthday party that was being held somewhere fabulous by Richard Burton," says former editor, Mary Falloon. "That took a really bold approach from Heather. She was a very clever writer, still is."
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
"How could you forget Jackie O?" asks former editor Mary Falloon. "She was a constant source of cover photos and so on. Her life was fabulously tragic in so many ways. Right from the Camelot era to when she married Onassis and beyond."
Joan Collins
"Joan Collins was one I remember — how could I forget!" says fiction editor Julie Redlich.
"We were allowed five minutes to talk to Joan Collins so I said to her, 'If you hadn't been an actress what would you have wanted to be?' And she said, 'I wanted to be a detective. Because when I was little I used to listen to a radio serial called Dick Barton Special Agent'.
And I told her I was president of my school's Dick Barton club and she said, 'No!'
"We started talking about Snowy White and Jock Anderson and then we sang the signature tune to each other and 15 minutes later the publicist came up and said I had to go. But Joan and I had had such fun with each other, reminiscing about Dick Barton. That was so long ago.
"You do get to meet these people and experience wonderful things," says Julie.
Cover girls: '70s style
"I would have always considered Audrey Hepburn to be a cover girl," says '70s editor Mary Falloon. "There was a time when Sophia Loren was a highly attractive spirit, there was good mileage there. And The Grimaldis — Princess Caroline and Stephanie and Albert — they were just little children so they were good camera fodder.
"I spent a lot of time looking at photographs on the light box and trying to work out whether I could afford to pay for them! Although I don't recall that the word paparazzi was in my vocabulary.
"Prince Charles was still single at that stage too. I remember going to a function where he was and the only thing that struck me about him is that he wasn't very tall. For some reason I get the feeling that celebrities are tall people when in fact they're not."
The Queen and other royals
"For more than four decades of
Woman's Day Queen Elizabeth II was our enduring cover girl," says Beryl. "From
her coronation in 1953, to the births of their three children Charles, Anne and Andrew, readers have been fascinated by the Queen and Prince Philip who were considered forward thinking parents in their day. In the '70s the then editor Joan Reeder, would send a team of photographers on all the Royal tours and when she would find a lovely shot of the Queen on her light-box she'd have it printed off and duly send it off to Buckingham Palace with a little note saying she thought Her Majesty may like the result. And more often than not the Queen would send an appreciative note back to Joan."
"The celebrities in my days as editor from 1977-1980, well, the major ones, was the Royal family," says Mary Faloon. "We had Princess Anne as one of our chief targets in those days and Princess Margaret too." The big Royal wedding of the 70s was Princess Anne's when she wed Mark Phillips in 1973.
"I met Margaret at a function once when she came out here," adds Mary. "We liked her because she was rebellious and didn't toe the line and she was quite attractive in those days — she smoked and drank — she was full of intrigue."
Beryl Giles agrees: "Princess Margaret was an up-and-coming renegade Royal and the readers loved her!
Return to the Woman's Day 1970s page 
