Ann Landers

Journalist

• Born: July 4, 1918
• Birthplace: Sioux City, Iowa
• Died: June 22, 2002
• Place of death: Chicago, Illinois

American newspaper columnist

For close to fifty years, Landers wrote a daily advice column that was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers. Her widespread popularity, as well as her courage in addressing sensitive subjects that had long been considered taboo in newspapers, led to many opportunities for political and social activism. She was a positive role model for millions of readers.

Areas of achievement Journalism, philanthropy, social reform

Early Life

Ann Landers was born Esther Pauline Friedman, several minutes before her identical twin sister, Pauline Esther “Popo” Friedman. From an early age, the twins were encouraged to dress, speak, and act alike. They took all the same classes, attended the same college, and even had a double wedding two days before their twenty-first birthdays.

Eppie (as Landers was known) and Popo were the third and fourth daughters born to Abraham and Rebecca Friedman, Russian Jews who had emigrated to the United States in 1908. Although the Friedman family initially did not have much money, Abraham embodied the American Dream by working hard and becoming the successful owner of a string of movie theaters. By the time the twins reached high school, the family was fairly well off, and the attractive, well-dressed girls were very popular.

Upon graduation in 1936, the twins enrolled at Morningside College, where they took a journalism course and wrote a weekly gossip column for the campus newspaper. They did not take college seriously, however, and dropped out at the end of their junior year after becoming engaged. Before their wedding on July 2, 1939, one important change had taken place: Instead of marrying law student Lewis Dreyer, Landers married Jules Lederer, whom she had met while shopping for a veil for her planned wedding to Dreyer.

The twins’ double honeymoon was the end of their time together. Landers and Jules began their married life in Sioux City but moved several times for his work and military service. In addition to raising their only child, a daughter named Margo, who was born in 1940, Landers became involved in local politics and charitable organizations. In 1954 the couple moved to an apartment on fashionable Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

Reports differ slightly as to how Landers got the name “Ann Landers” in 1955. Most accounts indicate that Landers, looking for something worthwhile to do with her time, called an acquaintance at the Chicago Sun-Times and asked if their advice columnist, Ann Landers, needed assistance answering her mail. Coincidentally, Ruth Crowley, who had written the Ann Landers column for thirteen years, had died the week before, and although the news was not made public, the newspaper was holding an informal “contest” for a replacement. In her book Wake Up and Smell the Coffee! Landers claims that she was approached by the Chicago Sun-Times to enter the contest, and she “reluctantly agreed.” In any case, the sample batch of letters that she answered quickly landed her the job, changing her life in ways she could not have imagined.

Life’s Work

At the time Landers became the “new” Ann Landers, the advice column had been syndicated in about two dozen newspapers. A year later, the Ann Landers column “Your Problems” appeared in more than three hundred newspapers. The new Landers had two secrets to her success: Readers loved her lively, witty style, and she also had the good sense to consult experts when a particular problem went beyond her knowledge.

At first, Landers’s work brought her closer to her twin, Popo, who was living with her husband and children in California. Landers regularly sent her sister batches of letters, which Popo enjoyed helping her answer. The Chicago Sun-Times did not approve of this arrangement, however, and ended it. By then, Popo had found she enjoyed dispensing advice, and she approached the San Francisco Chronicle about writing her own column, “Dear Abby,” under the pen name Abigail Van Buren. Within a year, Dear Abby, as she came to be called, was syndicated in more than eighty newspapers, thus sparking the first rift in the twins’ close relationship. In fact, their competitive and rather public feud continued off and on for the rest of their lives.

In spite of the family feud, Landers’s life seemed charmed. Jules was increasingly successful in his business endeavors, and her own career was skyrocketing. Although Landers was technically an employee of the Chicago Sun-Times and did not own the rights to the Ann Landers name, she was allowed to make public appearances as Landers, and even appeared on What’s My Line?, a popular game show. The publicity generated by the twins’ feud created even more demand for their columns, leading Life magazine to feature an article on the sisters in 1958.

The feud was not the only reason for Landers’s success, however. From the earliest days of her column, she discussed important social issues such as sexual orientation, teenage sexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. She also used plain language, replacing long-used euphemisms with frank terms that had once been considered too explicit for newspapers. Landers’s increasing popularity led to invitations to travel, so that she was able to report in her column on conditions in places such as the Soviet Union and Vietnam, and she drew much needed attention to social issues. Her influence was undeniable when she wrote about a cancer research bill awaiting U.S. president Richard M. Nixon’s signature. Readers responded by flooding the White House with clippings of that column, leading to the signing of the National Cancer Act in 1971. In addition, after her first decade as Landers, the Chicago Sun-Times syndicate rewarded her with legal ownership of the Ann Landers name, which allowed her to publish several books and increase her influence still further.

In 1975, Landers suffered a devastating blow when she learned that Jules, her husband of thirty-six years, had been seeing another woman. Landers announced her split from him in her column, although she worried that her divorce would alienate her readers. Instead, she received more than thirty-five thousand letters of support. Encouraged, Landers found that her work sustained her through the difficult period, and she and her twin even reconciled for a time.

Landers had always indicated that she had no intention of retiring, and at the time of her death from cancer in 2002, a few weeks’ worth of her columns still remained to be printed. At one point she had offered to her daughter, Margo, the opportunity to carry on the column as Ann Landers after her own death, but Margo declined, and Landers subsequently said in interviews that she did not want anyone else to use the Ann Landers name. Margo did, however, pen the last column to appear in Ann Landers’s space, a farewell message to the readers on her mother’s behalf, thanking them for their forty-seven years of loyal readership.

Significance

Landers was a popular confidant and adviser to countless Americans, a media leader who made a mark on American culture. She affected social issues and politics for almost fifty years with her daily advice column, which was read by millions who looked to her for guidance on every imaginable problem. A single column could generate thousands of letters, either to her or to the political figures she suggested readers contact to make their views known. Along with her twin sister, Dear Abby, Landers reshaped the nature of the American advice column, transforming it from a gentle, often useless exercise to a phenomenon that had real power to shape public thought and policy.

Bibliography

Aronson, Virginia. Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Part of the Women of Achievement series, this juvenile biography of Ann Landers and Dear Abby contains a chronology, an index, and dozens of black-and-white photographs taken throughout the sisters’ lives.

Grossvogel, David I. Dear Ann Landers: Our Intimate and Changing Dialogue with America’s Best-Loved Confidante. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1987. This book follows Landers’s evolving views on subjects such as marriage, divorce, and families over the course of her career.

Howard, Margo. Eppie: The Story of Ann Landers. New York: Putnam, 1982. Written by Landers’s only daughter, this biography emphasizes Landers’s family relationships, including the decades-long feud with her twin, advice columnist Dear Abby.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Life in Letters: Ann Landers’ Letters to Her Only Child. New York: Warner Books, 2003. Contains forty-four years worth of letters from Ann Landers to her daughter, organized chronologically by events in Howard’s life.

Kogan, Rick. America’s Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers. New York: William Morrow-HarperCollins, 2003. Written by Landers’s last editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, this memoir contains remembrances contributed by both notable personalities and other readers who benefited from her advice.

Landers, Ann. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee! Advice, Wisdom, and Uncommon Good Sense. New York: Villard, 1996. Divided into topics such as marriage, sex, children, pets, addiction, and physical abuse, this collection contains both humorous and serious reader letters to Landers as well as her responses.

Pottker, Janice, and Bob Speziale. Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987. Although unauthorized, this carefully researched biography contains interviews with many of the twins’ friends and acquaintances about their lives, as well as thirty additional pages of explanatory notes.