Pauline Phillips

In January 1956, new to the San Francisco area and carrying little in the way of formal work experience, Pauline Phillips picked up the phone and made a bold claim to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle: she could write a better advice column than the one she had been reading. Stanleigh Arnold gave her a stack of letters and told her to return in a week. She came back in an hour and a half. The writing, he told her, was “fabulous,” and she was hired that day. Under the name Abigail Van Buren, she began “Dear Abby,” a column that would become the most widely syndicated newspaper column in the world, appearing in 1,400 newspapers and reaching 110 million readers.

Phillips was born Pauline Esther Friedman on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa, to Russian Jewish immigrants Rebecca and Abraham B. Friedman, who owned a chain of movie theaters. Nicknamed “Popo,” she was the youngest of four sisters. Her identical twin, Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, known as “Eppie,” would become famous in her own right as the writer of the Ann Landers column. The sisters graduated from Central High School in Sioux City, then studied journalism and psychology at Morningside College, where they wrote a gossip column called “The Campus Rat” under the shared pen name “PE-EP,” drawn from their mirrored names.

The two sisters married in a double wedding ceremony on July 2, 1939, two days before their 21st birthday. Pauline married Morton Phillips of Minneapolis, and they had two children, Edward and Jeanne. When Pauline entered newspapers in 1956, she chose a pen name that mixed the Old Testament Abigail from 1 Samuel with President Martin Van Buren. Her rise also sharpened a family rivalry. That year she offered her column to the Sioux City Journal at a reduced price on the condition that the paper refuse her sister’s column. The sisters appeared to reconcile in 1964, but they remained competitors. By 1958, Life magazine described them as “the most widely read and most quoted women in the world.”

What set Phillips apart was the tone: funny, blunt, practical, and still sympathetic. Newspapers had long carried gossip and personal columns, but Phillips and her sister brought letters about a wide range of private problems into public view and answered them with common sense and sharp timing. One editor described their skill as something close to genuine wisdom. Diane Sawyer later called Phillips the “pioneering queen of salty advice.” From 1963 to 1975, Phillips also hosted a daily “Dear Abby” program on CBS Radio, extending her voice beyond the printed page.

Her views changed with the times. In the late 1950s she was seen as “the embodiment of female orthodoxy,” with a code of conduct that put husband and children first, and she once regarded women as “faintly ridiculous” if they could not make marriages work. Later, she did not avoid recommending divorce when a relationship became “intolerable,” especially when children were being harmed by conflict at home. She supported gay rights, and she took the pain in readers’ letters seriously: she did not publish the most sensitive ones, answered some privately, and called people by phone if they seemed suicidal.

Phillips co-wrote the column with her daughter Jeanne beginning in 1987, and Jeanne took over fully after Alzheimer’s disease made it impossible for Phillips to continue writing in 2002. Phillips died on January 16, 2013, at age 94, after battling Alzheimer’s for 11 years. Her best lines still sound like advice from someone who understood both drama and restraint. “The less you talk, the more you’re listened to” could stand for much of her method: say it plainly, say it sharply, and leave room for the reader to hear the truth.