Advice for the Lonely Hearts

By Janice Castro

After 25 years Abby and Ann are beacons for 130 million readers

To the confused and lonely hearted, to Idaho Woe and Been Around and Mr. Also, they are wise and steady friends. To 130 million readers from Tokyo to Tucson, they are the witty and no-nonsense "Dear Abby" and "Ann Landers." In real life, they are twin sisters, Esther Pauline ("Eppie") Lederer (alias Ann Landers) and Pauline Esther ("Popo") Phillips (Abigail Van Buren), together the most widely syndicated columnists in the world, with upwards of 1,000 newspapers apiece. Says Loyola (Chicago) University Psychologist Eugene Kennedy: "Their columns are the national mailbag. The advice they give is fundamental common sense, and no one has ever improved on that."

Abby celebrated her 25th anniversary last week. As usual, Sister Ann beat her to the punch, marking her own silver anniversary last October in Chicago. It was only the latest chapter in the rivalry --sometimes bitter--that started 62 years ago on the Fourth of July, when Landers contrived to be born 17 minutes before Van Buren. Growing up, the 5-ft. 2-in., blue-eyed, identical twins were virtually inseparable; they dressed alike, took the same high school classes, double-dated and even had a double wedding.

The trouble started in 1955 when Ruth Crowley, the original Ann Landers, died, and the Chicago Sun-Times ran a contest to find a successor; Eppie won by loading her sample answers with expert advice from such stellar sources as Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Sister Pauline volunteered to help answer the backlog of 5,000 letters.

Two months later, Pauline launched her own column in the San Francisco Chronicle, her nom de plume taken from Abigail in the Book of Samuel ("And blessed be thy advice") and President Martin Van Buren. Landers was miffed, to say the least. The sisters hardly spoke for several years. Coos Abby now: "We're so close." Admits a candid Landers: "If anyone had written to me with the problem, I would have said 'Forgive and forget.' " Despite the rift, both columnists flourished, piling up readers on five continents, giving opinions on everything from Thai singles bars to the efficacy of witch doctors. "It could be that the medicine man really did help you," Landers advised one South African correspondent.

Closer to home, the problems are often more mundane--but no less thorny. Last spring a reader asked Landers if toilet paper should unroll over or under the spool. Landers said under; thousands of readers wrote in to set her straight. Sniffed one: "Obviously you do not use the expensive kind of toilet paper with decals." No column was more painful than the one that appeared on July 1, 1975.

Wrote Landers: "The sad, incredible fact is, that after 36 years of marriage [my husband] Jules and I are being divorced."

Some 30,000 readers wrote to express sympathy.

As social issues have grown more complicated, the sisters have kept up with the times. The two now include information about heroin and venereal disease in their advice to teenagers. Landers, based in Chicago, confesses that while disapproving of teen-age sex, she no longer believes that "every girl must hang on to her virginity until marriage or death, whichever comes first." Like Ann, who pioneered the use of expert advice in her column, Sister Abby refers many readers to psychologists, clerics and other specialized counselors--but never before investigating the service. A former World War II Red Cross aide, she has donned a blond wig to visit, incognito, a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in New Jersey, a suicide prevention center in Los Angeles, even a Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis. Says she: "I learn more from my mail than a gerontologist can in an average practice."

That mail has not slowed over a quarter-century. Today, Van Buren, who started her newspaper career tapping out pithy answers on a portable typewriter balanced on a card table in her San Francisco den, needs four full-time mail openers, six matronly letter answerers and a research assistant to help with the 25,000 letters that pour into her Beverly Hills office every week. The top topics, to nobody's surprise: sex, loneliness and frustration. Sometimes the mail flow becomes an avalanche: a record 227,000 readers responded when Abby asked in her column last summer whether women over 50 enjoy sex (half were enthusiastic). Over the years the sisters' mail has provided grist for pamphlets and books, including the bestselling Dear Abby and the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.

The pair agree on almost everything, which often leads to the confused comment: "I read it in 'Ann Landers'--or was it 'Dear Abby'?" Some connoisseurs think they can detect a difference. When the Modesto Bee (circ. 65,490) asked its readers last October to vote on which column to run, Landers won by a landslide, 837 to 97. But most readers--and editors --agree with Austin American-Statesman (circ. 128,093) Managing Editor Jeff Bruce, whose paper, like many others, carries both columns. Says he: "I suspect most readers cannot tell one from the other." Big Sister Landers, who appears in the Sun-Times while Abby runs in its Chicago rival, pooh-poohs comparisons.

Asked about her sister's column, she replies sweetly, "Isn't it terrible--I never read the Tribune." --By Janice Castro.

Reported by Michael Moritz/Los Angeles and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago

With reporting by Michael Moritz, J. Madeline Nash

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