An Old Timey Podcast - 75: Advice Column Rivals: Dear Abby and Ann Landers (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Ann Landers was thrilled. She’d just landed a job as the new syndicated advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her new role gave Ann something to call her own. Then, just three months later, her twin sister Abby shared some news. She’d gotten a job as an advice columnist, too.Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: The book “Dear Ann, Deary Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren” by Jan Pottker and Bob Speziale“Twin lovelorn advisers torn asunder by success,” by Paul O’Neil for Life Magazine The book, “The Best of Ann Landers: Her Favorite Letters of All Time,” by Ann LandersThe book, “The Best of Dear Abby,” by Abigail Van Buren“Pauline Phillips, better known as ‘Dear Abby,’ dies at 94,” Washington Post“Ann Landers, advice giver to the millions, is dead at 83,” by Margalit Fox for the New York Times“The rivalry of Dear Abby and Ann Landers,” by Melissa Baron for BookRiot.com“Landers’ death renews family feud,” South Florida Sun Sentinel“Pauline Phillips, longtime Dear Abby advice dies at 94,” by Michael Martinez for CNN“Columnists/ daughters carry on the feud,” by Beverly Beyette for the Los Angeles Times“Competition between Iowa sisters who penned Dear Abby, Ann Landers fueled advice columns,” Des Moines RegisterAre you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso. And I'm Normie C. And on this episode, Anne Landers gets her column. And so does Abby. Ooh, the rivalry. It's heating up, folks. Oh, it's on. In this episode, it is on. I mean, again, before you told me about this topic, I had no idea they were rivals. I didn't even know they were related. So this is, all. You'd never even heard of a newspaper before I started this. This is all breaking news to me. It's all fascinating. Welcome to an old-timey podcast where we bring you breaking news from 70 years ago. Kristen, I actually do have some breaking news for you. Okay. So this is, this is hot off the press. Hang on. This is hot off the press. Usually people talk a little faster. They have a little more energy. You're kind of like, eh. Just ran the numbers through the machine. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We are now predicting the future on an old-timey podcast.

My goodness, okay. Stuff we say on this show happens in real life. Kristen, last week, I made a joke about how the Army only wants sexy soldiers. Oh, my God, yes! Yes! Right? Yes, you did. Okay.

The following week, our Secretary of War, Mr. Pete Heg-Seth, gave a speech to a bunch of military generals, and he announced that he also only wants sexy soldiers in his outfit. So no more long hair, no more beards, which my boy William Ticomza Sherman would disagree with, that rule. Yeah. I was shocked that what we joked about happened in real life, Kristen. Norm, you're a genius. I think what you have done here is manifested, what you wanted to see in the world, which is just a bunch of hot, sexy soldiers.

I did. With 0% body fat. Congratulations, Norm. It's happening, baby. I feel like you'd be dead with no body fat, right? We'll allow them to have 10% but not a penny more. So look, here's the deal. I ran the numbers.

The machine gave me some incredible results. And, you know, I got to pay for some repairs to the machine because the machine starts smoking. Okay. When I was running the numbers. So folks, we're going to need your donations. So please start supporting this small, sexy, independent podcast over on patreon. dot com slash old-timey podcast. Consider becoming a non-threatening fan for just $5 a month. You'll get access to our monthly bonus episodes with full video and you get to cheaty chat in the Discord. But if you're ready

to commit full-time, get in on that $10 pig butter investor tier, bonus episodes, sign card and stickers, early ad-free video episodes, access to our monthly trivia parties, 10% off all merch and ad-free episodes of Kristen's old podcast. Let's Go to Court. So, head on over at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast to sign up. And if you do sign up, I just want to let you all know, anybody who signs up is sexy to me. No matter what. No matter what.

No matter. You are a sexy history ho. Okay. Take it away, Kristen. Previously on an old-timey podcast. We learned about the early years of Anne Landers and Dear Abby, or as we called them in last week's episode, the Friedman twins. Growing up, the Friedman twins spent way too much time together. They wore the same

clothes. They attended the same classes. They had the same hairstyle. They shared a room. They even shared a bed. On their 21st birthday, they had a double wedding. Abby married Mort Phillips, heir to his family's liquor business. And Anne married Jules Lederer, heir to a strong work ethic. As young mothers, Anne and Abby lived very different lives. While Abby hobnobbed with movie stars, Anne lived in hell. Excuse me, St. Louis, Missouri. Whoa! But when Abby's husband offered Anne's husband a job at his family's company,

Abby and Anne were back together again. And it didn't go great. Abby wanted to be seen as the more prominent one, the twin who'd won at life. Have you heard of her husband? He was the Mort Phillips. But Anne? Anne charted her own path.

She got into local politics. She even got elected as the chair of the county's Democratic Party. But Anne's political career came to a halt when she, Jules, and their daughter Margo, up and moved to Chicago, where Jules became the president of a ballpoint pen company. It was called TruePoint? Auto Point. That's it. Norm, we were.

We can't afford mistakes in the pen business. They don't come with erasers. By that point, Anne was 37 years old, and she was bored. She wanted to do something. So, legend has it, that she called up the Chicago Sun Times, hoping to help out with the Anne Landers' advice column, only to discover that the woman who'd been writing that column had suddenly died. And now the paper was holding a contest to determine who would become the next Anne Landers.

In today's episode, the woman I've been referring to as Anne Landers enters the Anne Landers contest. Will she win? And will I win the suspense building contest? No, nope. I entered and I did not win. I think you're winning, Kristen.

Thank you, Norm. I'm on the edge of my seat. You better be careful with all this St. Louis slander, Kristen. We might be going off the air in St. Louis. You keep it up. Uh-oh. We're living in a new era. An era where people say, no, you can spend four days in St. Louis.

I swear, you'll like it. I just don't know. Before it was three maximum. Absolutely max. I think maybe four now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, so remind me again, Ann Landers is Esther.

Epi. Epi. And Abby is... But yes, Esther. Yeah. And Abby is... Popo. Popo.

But they are... are Anne and Abby now. You don't have to worry about that. I know, but last week we had Ann Landers' because Ann Landers was applying to be Ann Landers and there was another Ann Landers, you know. Well, um, be prepared for more of that. Here we go! So, Anne entered the contest to become the Chicago Sun Times new advice columnist, and OMG, she needed to win it. It would be so cool. And truth be told, Anne just really needed a win in general. She and Jules had just moved to Chicago and things were not going great. I mentioned in last week's episode that Anne's husband had a very different background than Abby's husband. Right. Abby's husband came from a family that was exactly

like how I like my baked potato loaded. Whoa. But Anne's husband came from a family that was struggling to get by. But Anne had always seen something in Jules. She saw his ambition, his incredible work ethic. She knew that one day he would achieve his dreams. And guess what, Norm? Now, roughly 15 years into their marriage, Anne had been proven right. Jules had started from the bottom. He didn't have a fancy degree, didn't even have a high school diploma, but now he was the president of a company. It was what he'd always dreamed of. Who was the boss? He was. He was a boss. He was a high school diploma. He was the boss. The boss of ballpoint pens.

That's right. That's a cutthroat industry. You might think so in a minute. Oh, shit. Norm, there's something so beautiful about this story. It's the kind of American success story that makes us all rock hard for the red, white, and blue. I'm about to bust. It would have been great if Jules had taken a moment to congratulate himself,

to think back on all the hard work he'd done and how much he'd accomplished to get to where he now was. Yeah, gratification. Sure. But Jules couldn't seem to do that. Instead of feeling proud of all that he'd accomplished, he walked around with a chip on his shoulder. He was deeply insecure. Ooh, been there, Jules.

I hope you're going to stop identifying with him so much. Uh-oh. Because here we go. Uh-oh, did I speak too soon? Well, working for Jules' letterer was no picnic. Jules was a workaholic. He worked holidays. and he expected his employees to do the same.

No, nope, nope, nope. Exactly. Absolutely not. Thank you, Norm. This ridiculousness, I mean, how do people justify it to themselves? Sir, you're the president of a ballpoint pen company. It can't be that serious. Sir, it's Columbus Day.

Please give us the day off. Have you no heart, sir? Everyone knows Columbus Day is a big day in the pin industry That's right Yeah, working holidays That's no good Jules strike one All right, I'm tallying this up over here

Okay Get ready for another one Okay Jules used the fact that he had dropped out of school As a way to belittle employees Who were better educated than he was Oh man Oh man

Oh my God, no No, no, no. Strike two. You ready for this? Oh, you haven't even heard the whole thing. I don't think I need to, but go ahead. So most sources say that Jules dropped out of high school in either the ninth or tenth grade, but sometimes when an employee would screw something up,

he'd say something like, I dropped out of the eighth grade and I know how to do that. Oh, I had some YouTube colleagues that would do this. Okay. I am so glad you brought this up. I thought of them as I was writing this up, but please, go for it. Well, there are people in the YouTuber industry that have gotten big without going to secondary education. Right. Like college, community college, tech school, whatever.

Right. And instead of acknowledging, like, wow, I'm very fortunate and grateful and lucky that I'm in this position, Instead, they announced to all of their fans, hey, I didn't go to college and look how I turned out. You don't need to go to college. And it always pissed me off. Yeah. Because I think a lot of YouTubers who get big never acknowledge the luck it takes.

Yeah. Never. Yeah. And I've always been aware of the luck I had. Yeah. Like time and place. It's so interesting you say. because that is something Jules would say.

You don't need college. You don't need an education. You don't need... Look how I turned out. Yeah, look at me. First of all, the dude worked his ass off to get to where he was. And yeah, there was some luck. Sorry, but who he married was a big factor in his success.

Yeah. And it does send a kind of dangerous message to people to be like, it's just this easy. Look at me. Exactly. And the flip side of this is when we were growing up, we were taught that you have to go to college or you will just fail, you know?

People like go into huge amounts of debt to go to a four-year school and they shy away from like technical colleges or community colleges. And now you see the situation we're in where, oh, there's a shortage of tradespeople because that career was frowned upon when we were growing up.

Like, oh, you don't want to be a carpenter. Like, you should go to school and become a engineer, a computer person, or whatever. Well, you don't want to end up like Jesus. That's what this is all about. Right. Yes. But yeah, that's just, that mindset always bugs me. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so Jules, strike two. Uh-huh. Strike two. I'm hoping he gets a ball, you know, so he can stay at the plate, you know. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Please don't throw any more sports references at me.

I was like, gets a ball. What are you talking about? Kristen, you've done two episodes on baseball. Uh-huh. Excellent. Yeah. I feel like you're still kind of struggling with the rules. Norm, it's not my fault that when I hear ball, I think we're talking about testicles.

Okay, that's society that did that to me. There we go. I knew that sound would come in handy again. Okay. What's next for Jules? We ready for another strike? Jules was short, very short. Like physically?

Well, yeah, I guess he could be short-tempered, which he also was, but also short in stature. Okay, well, I'm not going to strike that against him. I'm not, you're not letting me finish, buddy. We got the short kings. We do have short kings. Here's a short asshole, you ready? He had this weird thing where he loved to hire tall people, really, really tall people. He went out and found an admittal.

administrative assistant who was six feet tall, which let me tell you, as a tall woman myself, I am stunned when I see a woman taller than me. It is a rarity, yeah. And Norm, the people who worked for jewels developed a theory that the reason he hired really tall people was because he loved looking way up at him and letting those Skywalkers know who was boss. Skywalkers? That's how we in the tall community were.

to ourselves. Thank you, Kristen. I won't lie to you. I googled insults for tall people and that was the one that AI handed me that I Skywalker. That's pretty good. AI also warned me to, you know, be cautious with these sick burns

because people do get sensitive. Yeah, be very careful calling a tall person a Skywalker. I apologize to all you tall, gangly freaks out there. Okay. I'm not going to strike that against them. If he wants to hire tall people, that's fine. To yell at them? Oh, that's why he wanted to look up and yell at him.

Well, okay, that seems a little, we can't say that for sure. No one's ever going to admit to that. But, I mean, he did have a weird thing where he loved yelling at people and he loved cranking that neck up and letting them have it. At first I thought, you know, this is some sort of like fetish or kink or something, you know, like, don't crush me or something, you know. I don't know if he had a chub as he did this norm that didn't come across my table here today. But we can't rule it out. No. And so we shan't.

Of course, Jules had always been a workaholic, but it seemed like the move to Chicago marked a change in Anne and Jules' marriage. As the wife of a big business boy, Anne was expected to entertain to play hostess to be a charmer. And even though she was charming and had always been. been charming, it became deeply obvious to everyone around them that she just wasn't into it. There was a chilliness in their marriage, although for the record, Anne and Abby both were the types of women who would always be like, oh my God, my marriage is the best, my husband is the best, I'm so lucky, all we do is live, laugh, and love. Oh, I love my husband. Also, please help send a greased up young stud with a yonny cassette tape. Whoa.

What? What does that mean? Graced up Young Stud with a cassette tape. A Yanni cassette tape. Oh, Yonnie, because they're turned on by Yanni. Well, we all are, Norm. Come on, get with it. I'm just saying, you know, I think sometimes when people go too far about how great their husband is, it's like...

We've talked about this. Uh-huh. Like, this man. This man right here. Before I met him. Before I met him, I was scum. And now look at me. Do you remember when we stayed in that log cabin in Colorado and it was just filled.

to the brim with Yanni tapes. Norm, why do you think I made that joke? I'm just telling the people. Everyone, one time, years ago, Norm and I stayed in a cabin in Colorado. It was a great time. Tragically, there was no internet access, but there were plenty of Yanni cassette tapes

to keep us company. And the film 9 to 5 on VHS, which we watched. Yeah, good film. And we enjoyed greatly, Dolly Parton. So, all this to say, that when Anne entered the Anne Landers' contest, She really wanted to win.

She wanted something that was all her own, something that would do more than just occupy her time, something that would put her in a position of influence, something that would allow her to be creative and persuasive and best of all, a little judgy. And because you listeners are called history hoes and not stupid hoes, I think you figured out that Anne did indeed get that job. But I'd like to tell you how she got the job.

If you'll remember from last week's episode, both Anne and Abby had a tendency to play around with the truth a little bit, especially when it came to sharing their all-important public narrative. And of course, the story of how Anne Landers became Anne Landers is a bigan. It's important to have a really good story. So, here's Anne's version of the story. Of how she got the job? Yeah.

Okay, let's hear it. Okay. The Chicago Sun Times was holding a contest for who would take a... over as the new Anne Landers. By that point, 27 other women had applied for the job. As part of the contest, each applicant was given a set of three sample questions. They were instructed to answer those questions as though they were the Anne Landers. One of the questions was about an interfaith marriage. One of the questions was about psychosomatic hives. And the third question was about a fruit tree? A fruit tree? Or was it a walnut tree? The exact tree has been lost to time, but the question

appears to have been, who is entitled to the fruit or nuts that fall off a neighbor's tree? What? For real? Yes. I can't wait to hear the answers. Don't you dare laugh at these questions, Norm. There's a lot on the line here. Uh-huh. Either a handful of nuts or some fruit. So do we get to hear Ann Lander's answers to these questions? It depends on if you let me finish my story. I'm sorry. I'm just excited. Norm, all those other applicants just answered the questions.

But Anne, Anne did something else. Something that no advice columnist had ever done before. She flipped through her rolodex and she made some phone calls. For the question about interfaith marriage, she reached out to the president of Notre Dame University. Oh, she called in the experts, which is what they do on Bar Rescue as well. They bring in experts. I was praying, hoping and praying that Bar Rescue would be mentioned on this episode. I'm sorry to all the listeners for how many times I mentioned Bar Rescue.

But whenever I hear the word expert, it is like burned into my head. Norm, that is tragic. And we need to see somebody about that, an expert, if you will. Oh, no, I've triggered him again. Oh, boy. For the question about hives, she reached out to the head of dermatology for the Mayo Clinic. Ever heard of it? Ooh, future topic for sure.

Yes. And for the question about whose nuts were D's nuts? She reached out to a judge on the Supreme Court. What? How did she get that? Contact info. Got some real connections here. Yeah.

She was well connected. That is a brilliant move. Yeah. By Ann Landers. Norm, as us sports fans like to say, and I don't know if you've heard this before, but we like to say she knocked it out of the park. Mm-hmm. Okay? She hit a home run.

Excuse me? Go. But when the newspaper editors reviewed her submission, they were like, Hey, sweetheart, this is great, but we can't just make up quotes. This is a newspaper. Okay, you can't make it up. All right. Bye-bye. So they didn't believe she knew all these people. That's right. Yeah. And that's when Anne, like the casually impressive haughty that she twas, said,

those are real quotes. Those are all people I know. So I called them up and asked them to weigh in. I'm sorry, did I just nonchalantly impress the hell out of everyone? Suddenly, the choice for the winner of the Anne Landers contest was crystal clear. cue the confetti somebody get a sheetcake epiletterer was a new and leddered and that is her version of the story oh shit i forgot that's her version i could tell you forgot you were so impressed i was like uh oh norm doesn't realize he's in a dream sequence i know okay yeah i'm in fantasy land okay so what's the real story okay so anne's biographers tell a different and sadly less grandiose version of how she got the job i don't think there was a sheet cake norm Damn. For starters, they point out that the idea that she was the first advice columnist to ask an outside expert to weigh in is just bullshit. Other advice columnists had done that.

But to her credit, she was probably the only applicant in this contest who'd done it. Right. The most well-connected applicant. Sure. Second, they point out that over the years, as Anne told and retold the story of how she got her column, The story got better and better and better, to which I say, I'm sorry for being great at telling stories. For example, for that question on interfaith marriage, she really did call an expert, but it was a priest who she'd known back in Wisconsin. Oh.

No offense to him. So not a guy from Notre Dame. Not the president of Notre Dame. Okay. And the question about hives? Well, she did talk to a dermatologist, but it wasn't the head. of the dermatology department at the Mayo Clinic. And as for that Supreme Court judge,

well, when asked much later in life, Justice William O. Douglas was like, uh, no. I mean, we are friends, but I've never helped out with her column. So again, we're coming up against Anne's tendency to embellish a bit. But the thing is, she'd beaten out other actual journalists for this job.

And she'd done that because she'd done that because she did have talent and she took the job very seriously. That's certainly a reason to roll out the sheetcake. But if you need another reason, here it is. I don't, but let's hear it. And got that job at what would turn out to be the perfect time to reinvent the advice column. By 1955, advice columns were at this kind of weird place culturally. Writing an advice column was seen as a woman thing, which meant that in the newsroom, it wasn't always super respected by the dudes in the room. But at the same time, advice columns were and are like pizza. Even the bad ones are still pretty good. And so a lot of people read advice columns and a lot of women aspired to be advice columnists.

And in that sense, advice columns occupied that weird, familiar space where some people loved them, and other people love to look down on them. And I think that if we all get very still and reflect on that, we'll hear the sweet tunes of Taylor Swift, Yanni, and of course, disco duck. Disco, disco, disco. Norm, you always impress me with that impression. Hey, we saw the disco duck album at Flea Market the other day. Norm, don't make the people jealous of our lives.

Okay, okay, stop asking about it. Yes, we saw a disco duck, all right, fine. It's totally normal day for us. It might be a big deal for you listening. Yeah, mm-hmm. Sorry, that's just how we live. So, even though we all know that advice columns and advice columnists are very cool, by 1955, they were a little stale.

Now, I'm going to ask you to hold on to your petticoats because I'm about to take you on an old-timey tangent. Norm, you'll look worried. Don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe. Okay, okay. Advice columns as a thing really took off decades earlier when a woman who went by the pen name Dorothy Dix became the OG queen of advice columns. Oh, that name is familiar to me?

Oh, really? Yeah. What do you know about Dorothy Diggs? Really nothing. I do know that she was an advice columnist, though. And I didn't just learn that from you. I swear I've heard the name before. I bet you have.

Hold on tight here. Dorothy Dix was the most widely read woman journalist of her day, and very likely the highest paid woman journalist. Her work was read by millions. She was a phenomenon. Fun fact, she was not known just for her advice column. She was also known for her coverage of murder trials. Oh. Oh, she covered all our passions in life. Dorothy Dix was a trailblazer And I'd love to tell you that she's an uncomplicated hero

But I've got good news and bad news By the way, I don't have to tell this story I shouldn't, it's not really relevant here But I learned it, now you have to know it too Okay, good news, ready for good news? Dorothy Dix campaigned hard for women's right to vote Yay! Yeah! Love it! Love it! We applaud that.

Are you ready for very bad weird news? Mm-hmm. In 1910, she gave a speech at the National American Suffrage Convention, okay? The title of her speech was, the reason why women cannot vote. Now, she delivered that speech sarcastically. Okay, good.

In character, and a fun voice. Yeah. As a fictional black person. Oh. Oh. Hmm. Can we get a hell no? Yeah, that kind of complicates things a little bit.

And I just want to say, I've never understood why we, Women of color have such a problem with white feminism. Yeah. Boy, that's upsetting. Anyhow. Never meet your heroes. Can you imagine you time travel?

You're like, oh, so cool, and I'm going to hear her speech. What the? Oh, my God. Yikes. Okay. Well, yeah, thanks for sharing that, Kristen. I did not know that. No problem.

You didn't want to know, didn't need to know, and yet, here we are. Anyhow, Dorothy Dix's advice column really peaked in 1940, and she died in 1951. And so by the time Anne Landers got the Anne Landers gig in 1955, the genre really needed a makeover. But the 1950s weren't exactly a time when people shook things up. Conformity was in, baby. Yeah. And yet, when Anne landed that job as an advice columnist, she didn't want to just go with the status quo. She had ambition. The fact that she'd gotten a syndicated advice column as her first

paid job ever was a huge deal. She wasn't going to waste it. She had something to say and she was going to say it right from the start and brought something fresh to the genre. Over time, she'd come to be known not just for good common sense advice, but for her witty turns of phrase. And it all started with that very first column. Would you like to be known? Would you like? to hear it. No, no thanks. Oh, damn it! Of course. Okay. So this is the very first question she answered. Yep, on October 16th, 1955. Okay. Dear Mrs. Landers, I've always regarded most marital mix-ups as very humorous. Until now, that is, when the noose is tightening around my own neck. We have been married 10 years and have two sons. I like auto racing.

but my wife has no interest in it, so I've always gone without her. I've fallen for a woman with three children who is also very fond of auto racing. Oh my God. Her husband is ignorant and impossible. This may sound corny, but I think she would be a wonderful companion for me. I suppose you think I'm a louse, but I am stumped. I would like to have your advice on this problem. Signed, Mr. Kay.

Okay. So he is not into his wife anymore because she doesn't like auto racing, which is a huge deal. Absolutely. Can't be overlooked. Maybe the biggest. She probably hid that from him in order to trap him with the marriage and the two sons. We can all agree. She sucks.

Right. Right. Okay. So let's hear Anne Landers's answer. Dear Mr. Kay, time wounds all heals and you'll get yours. Do you realize that there are five children involved in your children? little racetrack romance. Don't be surprised if you wake up one of these days and wish you had your wife and sons back. You are flirting with a muddy track on Black Friday. And the way you're headed,

you will get exactly what you deserve. Whoa. Bitch. She didn't call him a bitch, but we all heard it. We all know. Spicy. You know what? That's a good answer. Norm, that opening line, time wounds all heals that is brilliant that is brilliant wordplay time wounds all heels i knew i'd have to explain hey i let me think about it okay time heals all wounds is the original phrase yep time wounds all heels h e e l s so heels is an old-timey kind of insult for someone so basically If you behave badly, it's going to catch up with you. Yeah. Got it.

Okay. It's only a matter of time. You didn't specify that that's how Heels was spelled. You know what? I was really confused. I apologize. These advice columns are written and I should have spelled every word out. Dear Anne Landers, my wife is very sarcastic with me and insults me regularly live on the air for millions of listeners across the world.

What do I do? But yeah, that's a great answer, though. Yeah. You can see why she took off, right? I mean, it's snappy, it's engaging. In like three sentences or something. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't think I have to tell you that Ann Landers was a hit. People loved it. And as tempting as it is to only play the hits, the party pooper in me must tell you that in one of her early columns Anne responded to a teenage girl who wrote in to ask about heavy petting. Uh-oh. And Anne told that child to keep in mind that once a lemon gets squeezed too many times, it becomes garbage. Oh, my God.

And I think a lot of people would argue that that's a terrible thing to say to a child. But in Anne's defense, it was a very slutty child. I was going to make a joke that an actual lemon had written in Timenders. How dare you? How dare you? Oh, wow. Anne was really feeling good about herself. She had a new identity, kind of, as Anne Landers.

She was in a position of authority. Her picture was in the paper every day, and not just in the Chicago Sun Times, but in all the other newspapers that carried her column. She was a public figure, sort of. Okay. What? I'm immediately wondering how Jules is feeling about all this,

as an insecure man. Well, you should know that, you know, she obviously made some money from the column, but he felt very strongly that she should not be paying any bills with that. It should all be hers because as the man of the house, you know, it's his job to provide, which this is the kind of sexism that I want to bring back. Can we bring it back? Campany to bring it back. We want sexism back, but just certain aspects of it. Listen, I don't want to get drafted. I want to spot on the life.

boat. I want my bills paid for me and also don't fuck with my reproductive care. All right? I don't ask for much. It was all so fun and cool, but it was also a lot. When Anne took that job, she was stunned to discover that she didn't have an office. She didn't even have an assistant. Instead, she just had mail, tons and tons of mail from people who'd written into her to ask for advice on everything from, this is not a joke, whether you should wash your banana after you peel it to how to get your husband to stop watching football. Okay. Washing a banana after peeling.

That is some psycho behavior right there. If I saw you doing that, I think I'd call 911. You're telling me you're just raw-dog and these nasty bananas norm? You gotta wash them. Get the blue dawn. It's what the peel is for. It protects it. It's not like you pick the banana off the tree, you know, without the peel.

Then I would wash it. but like it's nature's shell for the banana. Norm, you should have taken over this column. You would have gone on a rant on this person. I'd have been like, furthermore. Webster's dictionary defines. But the good thing was that Anne wasn't alone in writing her column. She had Norm to yell about bananas.

But she also had her twin sister Abby. Oh, did she run some stuff by her sis? Well, Norm, that's a little controversial about what happened and what didn't happen. Yeah. What we can say, for sure, is that in those early days, Anne was working hard on her column, and she often turned to her sister Abby for advice. And maybe for more than advice. To hear Abby tell it, they basically did what they did back in college when they co-wrote that gossip column for the college newspaper.

Peep. In fact, she... Oh, good memory, Norm. Yeah, their pen name was Peep, right? Uh-huh. In fact, she, Abby, did all the best writing. Hello, she was the best one. Uh, yeah, according to her, right?

Yeah. Yeah. What's not up for debate is that one day, Anne let it slip to her editor, that her twin sister was helping with the column. And he was like, what in the double mint gum is going on here? People are writing those letters to you. You need to be the one answering them. Also, I know that this is your...

first paying job you've ever had in your whole ding-dang life. And I know you slept in the same bed as your twin until your literal wedding night. But when we hired you, we did not ask for a bogo deal, you absolute weirdo. Well, that's just his ignorance because by law, they had to be together as twins, you know. Clearly, this is why you needed to be there. You're like, excuse me, sir, all twins sleep in the same bed. And yeah, one of them works for free. That's just the way it is. Yeah. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go slap some bananas out of some ladies' hands because they're about to wash them and we all know that's nuts. Nuts.

How do you feel about washing chicken, Kristen? I actually think it's a good idea. Okay. I have always washed chicken. Yeah, get the slime off. But apparently that's bad. No, it's not. Because you get chicken juice in your sink and you contaminate everything.

Oh, so that's so much better than eating the chicken juice? Disgusting. Get away from me. Well, here's the deal. I'm always rubbing my face in the sink. Just constantly. You're like a cat. You just rub your face against it.

It feels good. Yeah. I've always done it and I'm not changing. But yeah, I always wash the chicken. Uh-huh. And I guess we're not supposed to do that. But you know what? To hell with all that, I'm still going to wash the chicken.

Yeah. I thought this was America. I wash it and pat it dry and then it is ready to be seasoned, okay? That's right. You'd hate for Bar Rescue to come in and see you washing the chicken, though. John Taffer would suplex me off the top rope if he saw me washing chicken. You would be honored. to be suplaced.

Yeah, I would. So, Anne told Abby, oh, sorry, my editor says we can't work on this together anymore. Now, from Anne's perspective, this wasn't a big deal, you know, so what if Abby couldn't help with a column anymore? Abby had her own life. By that point, she and Mort and the kids were living in Hillsborough, California for Mort's new job. Oh.

He was the president of the family liquor business now. Plus, they had a beautiful home. They lived near Bing Crosby, ever heard of him? And Randolph Hurst. Ever read of him? And they had a pool. Ever swam in one? Kristen, you'd be real jealous of that, huh?

Listen, I would be washing my bananas in that pool, living my best life. And if you're wondering, gee, how did Abby decorate the place? I could tell you're not wondering, but I'm going to tell you anyway. She filled it to the brim with ceramic monkeys. Because, you know, she had that monkey section. Right. She liked monkeys. She even had a big fabric monkey hanging over a doorway.

And of course, of course, a portrait of herself hanging over the fireplace. Oh, I thought you were going to say a portrait of herself as a monkey hanging over the fireplace. And I was like, well, that's very special. It would be special. We can all agree. Oh, Norm. She was living that hot gal life. She had a home with a lot of TVs in it.

In fact, she'd turn all the TVs to the same. channel and just do laps in her house and that's how she got her exercise. But the thing is, it wasn't enough. Ceramic monkeys don't make up a life, Norm. I hate to tell you again. There's more to life than these ceramic monkeys. And when Ann called Abby up and said, hey, my editor says you can't help me anymore with the column, Abby took that person.

Oh, I know. She didn't take it as a directive from Anne's editor. she took it as Anne, feeling threatened, threatened by Abby's talent. She was furious. To hear Abby tell it, she was the one who provided the wit and precision that had made Anne Landers so popular. It was her talent that had made Anne Landers a hit. She provided indispensable help during Anne's trial period at the paper. Years later, Abby told a journalist, quote,

I provided the sharp answers. I'd say, you're writing too long. She still does. Oof. See, this is why you don't separate from your twin. There's too many misunderstandings. Things get lost in translation. You got to stick together.

Norm, this quote is the meanest thing. That is mean, yeah. You're writing too long. She still does. Oof. Oh. And you know what? Okay, I'm going to offer a little criticism.

I would say the meanest part about this is it was kind of true. Ooh. So, Abby was angry, angry to have been kicked out of a job, a job that had never been hers to begin with, but don't worry about that. And meanwhile, Anne was just doing her thing. She was bebopping along, being Anne Landers. Anne Landers was in full swing. Much like the gangsters. We all know it.

Right. And my goodness, oh, it must have been so cool to have finally found something that was finally all her own. It was just hers. finally after all those years of enmeshment and codependence she was free or so it seemed what anne didn't know was that abbey was over in california with what i'm calling a spite goal oh a spite goal to become an advice columnist oh shit okay i'm a big fan of spite so let's hear you are you are you weirdo what's funny is i think of you as a very healthy individual a very kind individual but you do enjoy spite.

You like to get even with someone who's done you dirty. I really do. I think it's justified. Any stories you'd like to tell, Norm? Or would they all land you in a federal prison? No, all I will say is in my YouTube days, I got some pretty hateful comments. Yeah.

And I basically use those comments as fuel. And I think it made my videos even better. No, I think that's what I like about your spite is you never, you never take it out on anyone. Like, it's never like, aha, I'm going to throw dog poo at you. It's like, okay, I'm going to work even harder. Yeah, that's kind of how it went down. Yeah. Abby didn't waste time.

She went to her local newspaper, the San Mateo Times. She spoke to the features editor. She offered to become their new advice columnist. When he told her that they couldn't afford a columnist, she said, that's fine. it for free. There you go. That is the move right there. Wait, you're on Abbey's side?

Yeah. Why? Well, okay, okay, I'm not, I'm not on Abby's side. But as far as spite moves, yeah, you do whatever it takes, no matter the cost. So, yeah, you do that shit for free because it's all about the spite. Oh, my God. Well, get a load of this. She offered to do it for free, and the guy said, sorry, I'm not interested.

What the fuck? It's free. It could increase your readership. That doesn't mean, I mean, he didn't know she was going to be amazing. He just saw, I mean, this is shitty. I think he just saw some, you know, in his eyes, bored housewife, how could she possibly be talented? Get out of here.

Yeah, but she gave them examples, right? What do you mean? I hear some of my work. She had no work. She'd never had a paying job in her life. What are you talking about? No, but she had the peep, the peep column in college. That was from 20 years ago.

What about some of the answers she did for Anne Lange? Be like, hey, I helped write this. That's my sister who does this column. Why didn't she name drop the sister? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I'm going to bypass it for the moment. And at this point, I'm going to break in with two facts. First fact. Factsa. I did.

Two factatissa. Facta. Everyone's been pronouncing that word incorrectly except for me. It's all factus to say. Get that T. You really emphasize the T. Also, a lot of E.S. is at the end. Facta says number one.

Abby was kind of mean. Facta says number two. She was delightfully mean. Because years later, when she retold that story in her book, she said, I've forgotten that man's name. But I bet he hasn't forgotten mine. Yes. Yeah, I'm kind of into this.

I know you are. I know you can't help yourself. It's too good. Okay. So she got rejected. But following the rejection from the nameless man, she found herself just sitting at home, reading the San Francisco Chronicle when she came across the paper's advice column.

It was a syndicated column by Molly Mayfield. Ugh. Exactly. Abby read it. And frankly, she thought it sucked. By the way, she later said as much on Larry King Live. It was wild. So Abby called up the San Francisco Chronicle,

and she said she thought she could do a better job than their shitty columnist. Now, that's bold. And the editor basically told her, well, yeah, a lot of people tell me that. And she was like, uh, maybe it's time to listen then. Finally, the dude was like, look,

hey, if you're ever in the neighborhood, come in and see me. All right, all right. He was clearly trying to just get her off the phone. But the very next day, Abby put on a Dior dress, a leopard skin coat. She got into her chauffeur'd Cadillac and headed over to the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle. The editor was a little surprised to see her, but the truth was that he was actually in charge of finding a new advice columnist.

So literally the same situation as the Chicago Tribune. Well, the Chicago Tribune, someone had died. This is actually a more interesting situation because the... The paper had recently lost a very popular advice column, the Anne Landers column. Oh, they lost it. And they were running that shitty Molly Mayfield column in the interim. Now, how do you lose an advice column? Maybe you decide the paper can't afford to pay what the syndication fee is, you know, stuff like that.

We're getting insider info here, folks, from a former newspaper reporter. I know nothing about syndication. Oh, shit. I wrote for a small paper and it was not syndicated. Well, no, sometimes my stuff got picked up by the Associated Press. So, suck on that, everyone. There you go. AP reporter, Kristen Caruso.

So the guy needed to find a new advice columnist. And he wanted someone who could capture that same wit and freshness as Anne Landhurst. How about my twin? Sorry, it wouldn't be. How about my twin? How about her twin? That's me. That's me, Abby.

Hmm, you think she said that? Probably. The editor gave Abby a shot. He was like, okay, here's a bunch of questions, write down your answers, bring them back in a week. Well, Abby went straight to her husband's office, which was like two blocks away. She wrote down her answers. And yada, yada, yada, two hours later, she was back at the San Francisco Chronicle, handing over her submission.

Done. Yep. Hey, don't give them time to think about another option. Yeah, it was pretty impressive. Abby wasn't just fast. She was good. Her answers were snappy. They were engaging, just like Anne Landers.

Wow. So she got the job. But did Abby use the fact that she was the twin sister of the Anne Landers to get that job? According to Abby, no. According to her editor. No. According to people close to Anne, Yes, bitch, are you stupid?

But details, shm-me-tales, Norm, the point is she got the job. And I bet she called up the San Mateo Times and said, hey, do you like apples? Yeah. How do you like them apples? Well, I'm a syndicated columnist out. How do you like them fucking apples? You make the spite list. Uh-huh.

So, you know, she's been wronged by her twin sister, soon as by her. Now the San Mateo Times has spied her. That takes precedent. over. Norm, here's what I want from you. A spite series. I don't want stories of like, oh, I murdered someone out of spite. I want just a series on spite moves that turned out great.

Can you do this? Do we have the technology? You are spoiling a future bonus episode that I have been working on. Oh, my. Spite. Oh, okay. My favorite type of spite. Say no more.

Say no more. We're getting the hose all excited. So she got the job. But unlike her twin sister, Abby wasn't taking over an existing advice column. She was creating one, which had a lot of implications down the road. But for now it meant that she got to choose her pen name. Would she choose something like Anne Landers? Ew, who farted?

No. She chose something cool. She chose? Uh... Fanny Flanders. Norm, you know her name. Abigail Van Buren. Ooh.

Van Buren is, you know, Martin Van Buren was not a great president. But that name, damn good name. Norm, that's basically her logic too. Okay, her logic was Abigail from the Old Testament. She's the woman who gives advice to King David. And Van Buren, because she always liked the kind of aristocratic ring of President Martin Van Buren's last name. So woohoo!

Abby had a column! Abby had a column! Abby had a column. Now she got to tell her sister. Now she got to tell her sister. Oh man, now she's going to call her. She's just say, hey, do you like apples? Abby called Anne. By that point, Anne had only had her column

for three months. Damn, she moves fast. This spite is incredible with this woman. You are. I'm so impressed. Taking notes. You're like, ah, spite at lightning speed. I love to see it.

It's like a new world record right here. I got to clock it. Abby broke the news. We're both columnists now. See? See? This thing you thought was yours? It's mine now, too.

You thought you could be an individual, but you ever will. Demon spawn comes out. Was Anne happy to see that Abby had followed in her footstom? You know, the healthy individual deep inside me would say, hey, that's something that's not in your control. Sure. And you should be happy for your sibling that, you know, got her own advice column. You know, doesn't affect you in any way. So, hey, good job.

Congrats. Doesn't affect you in any way? Well, no, because you've got your own advice column. Hmm. And, you know, Rising Tide lifts all boats, yada, yada, yada. Sure. But also, hey, what the fuck, man? I think, yeah, I'm with you.

I think this would be really hard. Again, you want to just be able to say congratulations, which Ann did, and said congratulations, but this did kind of suck. Of all the ways to spend your time, you had to find the exact thing that I found. Right, this hits close to home because of the whole twin thing. This is coming from it. Inside the home, Norm. We're not even, we're not close.

We're inside the home. We're inside. We're in the same room in the same bed. In the same bed. Again. By law. But we're 37 now. So.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What? What the minute. Yeah. What the fuck. Oh, you're going to want to have that one ready.

Okay. Let me get it queued up. Go ahead. So, Ann did say congratulations. But she also said, I mean, I guess it's all right as long as you don't get syndicated. Oops. And I'll tell you, folks, if I were better at pacing this story,

the episode would end right here, and I'd say, on next week's episode, Abby gets syndicated. But the episode is young. So instead, I'll say this. Just three weeks after they had that conversation, Abby got syndicated. Fuck. And she had the biggest shit-eating grin of all time. I will say, you know, again, I feel bad for Anne here. I think good grief.

You'd have to be a really healthy, evolved person to take this one on the chin. I'm so unhappy. Yeah, good for you. But I will say, you can't say to someone it's okay as long as you don't get syndicated. As long as you're below me, I'm okay. Yeah, yeah, as long as you, you can have this, but don't try to be too good at it or else I'll be pissed off. Right. Even though, again, I cannot begin to tell you how pissed off I would be. No, I get it. I get it. So, let's talk about syndication. Because syndication is the dream for any columnist. It means that your writing goes to all

sorts of publications. Your readership swells. Your public profile raises. Who, in their right mind, would turn down syndication. Not Abby. And to pour salt in the wound, Abby got into the New York mirror, which at the time had one of the nation's largest circulations of any daily newspaper. In other words, Abby hadn't just gotten syndicated. She'd gotten super syndicated. Ooh. And wow, she was making waves! Anne's column was definitely fresh. It was great.

But Abby's? Oh, it was spicy. It was so spicy that some newspapers refused to print it. And, you know, I hate to tell you, when that happens, usually people go out of their way to find it and read it. Right, right. So, it is at this point that I'm going to have to ask the listeners to slip into something a little more comfortable as I read them,

few columns that some folks thought were too hot to print. All right, folks, pull out that 16-year-old robe from the closet, go ahead and slip into it. Uh-huh. It was from Marshalls. T.J. Max, thank you very much. T.J. Max. 2014, right? Uh-huh. Very good year for robes.

Little ready, but still works, very comfortable. You ready for this one? Yep. Dear Abby, my wife sleeps in the raw. In the raw? Then she showers, brushes her teeth, and fixes our breakfast. Still in the buff. We're newlyweds, and they're just the two of us, so I suppose there's really nothing wrong with it.

What do you think? Signed, Ed. You're a lucky man, Ed. Dear Ed, it's okay with me, but tell her to put an apron on when she's frying bacon. Oh. Safety measure, sure. Ready for another spicy one? Yeah.

Dear Abby, my boyfriend is going to be 20 years old next month. I'd like to give him something nice for his birthday. What do you think he'd like? Signed Carol. Dear Carol, never mind what he'd like. Give him a tie. Huh. Norm, is this a thinker for you?

Not impressed by that one. Why not? Give him a tie? never mind what he'd like, give him a tie. Do you understand what's being said, Norm? It's the 1950s. They can't come out. Oh, wait, give him a tie.

Okay. So go to work and earn some money. Is that what that means? No. What does it mean? Give him a tie, like a necktie? Don't you dare edit out any of this to save yourself, okay? I'm going to read this to you one more time.

Okay. It's so good. Dear Abby, This is a thinker, folks. Dear Abby, my boyfriend is going to be 20 years old next month. Okay. I'd like to give him something nice for his birthday. What do you think he'd like from Carol?

Okay. What do you think he'd like? Okay. What do you think a 20-year-old boy would like from his girlfriend is the question. Okay. And Abby says, dear Carol, never mind what he'd like, give him a tie. Give him a tie, like a necktie. As in, as in,

Oh my God. Go get a professional job, right? No, it's not. What does it mean? Abby is saying, what this young man wants is probably sex. What? But never mind that.

Get him a tie instead. It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek, kind of. Oh. Well, but why a thing? tie. No, it's not about the tie. I thought the focus was on the tie.

No. As in like, it doesn't matter what you want. You're the man in this relationship, so go get a professional job and you're going to need a necktie for that professional job. But Norm, I told you this was like hot, too hot to friends. That's spicy, though.

Okay, I'm going to read you another one. This is amazing. History hosts, reach out. If you two struggled with this joke. Yeah, I need some support from the other norm troopers. No one in the norm troopers understood that one, okay? You truly are a non-threatening boy, the fact that you didn't pick up any innuendo on that.

No. I was thinking at 20, what would I want? And I was like, well, there's some video games coming out when I was 20 that would be really good, you know? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Anyway. You ready for another? Yeah. Dear Abby.

Dear Happy, I've been going with this girl for a year. How can I get her to say yes? Signed on. Dear Dawn, what's the question? How can I get her to say yes? Oh, what's the question? Will you marry me? Is that what she was saying?

This is too sophisticated for me. Okay, so, wait, do you not get? hit that one either. Okay. So he has been with this girl for a year and he wants to marry her. Well, he just says, how can I get her to say yes? How can I get her to say yes? Mm-hmm. And Abby is saying, what's the question? It's how can I get her to say yes? It's the question. but she's also implying, hey, just ask the question, will you marry me?

No, she's not. What is it then? Okay, everyone, I have to... I need a decoder ring. I have to pause because I had this idea that if people liked this series enough, maybe we'd, you know, wrap it up with... And I don't know how many episodes this is,

but like maybe we'd wrap it up with kind of a good, bad and the ugly of Anne Landers and Dear Abbey and read some of the columns. And now I'm like, well, we can't do it. that, I'd have to explain every single one of these. Kristen, look, I'm 38 years old, okay? Time has passed me. She's implying, like, well, what's the question?

Are you asking her for sex? What? Are you asking her for marriage? Yeah, that's kind of the... Norm, I'm going to read you one more. Okay. Okay, this is a very famous one. Are you ready?

Dear Abby, my boyfriend took me out on my 21st birthday and wanted to show me a special time. I usually don't go in much for drinking, but I had three martinis. During dinner, we split a bottle of wine. After dinner, we had two brandies. Did I do wrong? Damn.

That's a lot of drinking. Yeah. Dear Blondie. Probably. Ooh, I get that one. Okay, explain. She said probably because, yes, she did drink too much. Oh, wait, wait, wait, she's saying probably because she's like, you drank too much and I'm assuming you had sex outside of marriage.

So yes, you did do wrong. Yes, yes. Did I get it? You did. Okay. Thank you. Audience, thank you. The audience is happy for me.

We're all very pleased. Boy, that took quite a bit of time. There was no denying it. Abby was making waves, waves that went way over Norm's head. Anne tried to be mature about the whole thing, but it just plain sucked. The truth was that Anne did have the bigger column, but that was kind of because she'd started as a syndicated columnist. Abby hadn't, and Abby was gaining on her so quickly. Well, with answers like that, you know. Yeah, we all understood them.

It's a real thinker. And people appreciate that. Yeah. It bothered Anne to be competing with her twin again. And it also bothered her that, oh, damn it, in creating Abigail Van Buren, Abby had done something that Anne hadn't even had the option to do. Anne had just been happy to win the Anne Landers contest and take over an existing column. But Abby had created a column.

An OC. Original creation? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Well done. That went over my head, sir. Now, Abby always credited her husband Mort with having the foresight to trademark her name. She's always said, oh, he knew right from the beginning to do that. And that's what we did. Isn't he brilliant? But the actual story is so much better. The real story is that Abby began writing her column and it took off. It was an instant hit. And one day, an editor at the paper mentioned to her that the paper was going to register for a trademark for her column. And Abby, cool as a freaking cucumber, said, oh, I've already done that. Ooh. She said it so confidently and so casually that it wasn't until much later that the higher-ups looked into it and discovered that when they had that conversation with her, she hadn't

trademarked her name at all. She applied for the trademark after that conversation. That night. Yes. I mean, this is big spite, right? Yeah. This was big. It meant that although Abby had initially accepted a much smaller salary than Anne had,

she'd make way more money in the long run. Abby owned, dear Abby. But Anne rented Anne Landers. And that made Anne's blood boil. It didn't help that. that Abby was such an asshole about it, she loved reminding Anne that she owned, dear Abby. Ooh, yeah.

To make matters worse, for the first six months that Anne worked as Anne Landers, the paper wouldn't let her publicly announce that she was Anne Landers. So while Abby ran around free as a bird, Anne was sort of hidden away. Even though she'd been the first, damn it.

She'd been there, first. She was first, but yeah, Abby's got that advantage of like, well, I created my column, and it's my own creation, and I own it, and I can do whatever I want with it. Yeah, I'm the public face. That's tough. Things were tense. But hey, they were adults. In fact, they were middle-aged women. Surely they could work this out. Yeah, yeah. And guess what, Norm, they did. Like freaking champions, okay? Oh, and a series. End of series. Together, Anne and Abby agreed that, yes, syndication was cool, and of course they both wanted

to become big, famous, syndicated columnists, but they wouldn't compete directly for syndication. Okay. Now, it's a little unclear if they agreed not to compete for syndication in the same city or for the same newspaper, but either way, you know, the truth was working out well. They didn't need to compete with each other. It was all peace and love. And oh, what the hell is this?

Just when things seemed okay-ish and got invited to go on the TV show, What's My Line? Norm, it was the coolest TV show ever. It was such a big deal. And you're looking at me with a blank face, but it was a really big deal. No, that was a huge show back in the day. A lot of celebrities were on What's My Line.

Yes, including Anne Landers. Very cool, right? I mean, that's interesting because I thought, like, she wasn't really allowed to show who she was. This was her debut. Yeah. And it was a hell of a debut. Don't you agree?

I agree. And oh, Abby, oh, oh, Abby, oh, Abby was so happy for her. Just really happy. Oh, my God, you got to go on TV on a really big show. I'm so happy for you. I can't believe how great that is for you. So as revenge, I'm going to get a voice roll on the Flintstones. What do you think she did for her?

revenge, Norm. I'm guessing she tried to get on another talk show. Well, sure. Or not talk show, sorry, game show. Uh, she's going to do one better, but, um, true history hoes will remember that Anne and Abby grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. Okay, keep that in mind. Well, when Anne was on What's My Line, all of a sudden, everyone back home in Sioux City was like, oh my gosh, it's amazing. We remember when you were Epi Friedman. Yay, congratulations. Look at your 16. Yeah. Hometown Hero. And Abby couldn't take it.

She needed the people back home to know that she was a big deal too, damn it. Wait a minute. What? Here's my idea. Okay. She has her own TV show. Oh. Is that too big?

I dreaming too big for Abby. I wouldn't say you're dreaming too big. But no. That's not what happens. Okay. Okay. So she wanted the people in Sioux City to know she'd made it big. And what better way to do it than by making sure that she, dear Abby, would always appear in every issue of the Sioux City Journal. Oh, get syndicated in your hometown. So, fresh off of Anne's appearance on What's My Line, Abby offered her Dear Abby column to the Sioux City Journal at a discount, a discount that she was only offering on the condition. that they not run, Anne Landers.

Yep. When word got out about that, Anne was enraged. And the sisters didn't speak to one another for the next 10 years. Well, you know, they had that verbal agreement to not compete. Well, in my opinion, Abby did more than just break that. Oh, yeah. That's nuts. Oh, yeah.

That's, I almost said diabolical. these are advice columns. This is not real, you know, this is not warfare. But that sucks. And that's not in the spirit of spite. I'm sorry, Abby. We're not going to count it. We're not going to count that. That's pettiness. So they weren't speaking. But wow, in the midst of that stony silence, they became ruthless competitors in their quest to become the queen of advice columns. Both of the sisters loved what their newfound fame brought them. They loved being around VIPs, being part of the in-crowd for And that meant becoming friends with big-time politicians. For Abby, it meant becoming friends with movie stars.

The sisters wrote and wrote, they read and read, they were undeniably competitive, and they were also undeniably good. But they didn't just sit back and write columns. Where was the competition in that? No, both of them went on tons of speaking engagements. They went on TV shows. In the late 1950s, Edward R. Murrow did a segment on Dear Abby for his TV show, person to person, which sounds boring as hell, but it was a big deal.

Early days of TV, okay? Oh, God, it sounded awful. They did radio shows. They spoke to women's groups. They sold themselves. People loved them. They were so beautiful, so well-dressed, so well-spoken. They wrote books.

They networked and networked and networked and charmed and charmed all for more, more, more, more, more, syndication, more than what the other sister had. people tend to pit women against each other and oftentimes that's just bullshit but in this case it was so real these were the days when every small town had a newspaper if the town was big enough it had multiple newspapers and that's how newspapers got into the feud between dear abbey and anne landers oh man so like a town with two newspapers would run each other's columns right yeah one would have dear abbey the other would sign anne landers But I ask you, which sister was bigger? Who had more readers?

Who had more influence? That was an issue that really bothered Anne and Abby. And I submit that it was an area where Abby liked to bullshit. For example, at one point, Anne said that she received 2,000 letters a week, which is widely agreed to be true. Abby claimed she received 7,000 letters a week, which is... Why not just say 3,000? Uh-huh. You gotta go way up there.

Holy crap. I'm not just better than my sister. I'm way better. That's like I can throw this football over those mountains. Yes, yes, it is. That's Uncle Rico tap right there. At one point in the late 1950s, the Chicago Sun Times created a brochure which listed all of the 195 newspapers that carried the Anne Landers column.

They did it to establish that Anne Landers was the more popular column. But when asked for comment, Abby claimed that her column was in more than 200 newspapers. And when the reporter asked for a list of all the newspapers that ran the dear Abby column, Abby was like, uh, um, talk to my spokesperson. And the spokesperson gave the reporter a list, and that list contained 172 newspapers. Oh, liar. Clearly, the sisters had a rivalry. It became a national conversation.

Who do you prefer, Dear Abby or Anne Landers? Now I have a question. Yeah. Was it public knowledge that they were twins? Oh, yeah. Okay. At this point, it wasn't super well known that they were feuding yet. Okay.

But still, there was this rivalry. Who was better? They were both really good. I can't emphasize that enough. They were both trailblazers and they were kind of similar. But when people compared the two, they usually put Abby on top. The Times once said that Dear Abby was, quote, slicker, quicker and flipper than Ann Landers. And that's arguably true.

I do want to admit something. I grew up on Dear Abby. Yep. So I am biased. I also, I don't mean to freaking brag, but here I go. When I worked for the newspaper, I started as a designer. and oh my God, my favorite part of the job, every Sunday night,

we'd get a batch of that week's dear abbeys. And I just knew I was the coolest person on earth because I got to read a whole week of Dear Abby before the rest of you suckers got your hands on them. Before the plebs. Yeah, I was going to say, because that's the town I grew up in where you got your newspaper job.

They had Dear Abby. and like I was not familiar with Anne Landers until I was a full grown ass man. I will say, and again, don't mean to brag, I am now the proud owner of the book The Best of Anne Landers and the book The Best of Dear Abby. I think when people say Abby's better, I get what they're saying about her being quicker and more concise.

I don't know that I would necessarily say she is better, but I will say that if you're doing an article or you're doing any kind of comparison on the two, I think whoever is more concise is going to win the contest. Right. Because you're looking for that snappy thing when you're just kind of picking out a few columns.

Yeah. Anyway, that's my thing. You'll be people like the snappiness and the wittiness and, you know, clearly I was not picking up on a lot of it. I really had to think. It was too subtle, Norm. Yeah, yeah. But no, I can see, I always thought Dear Abby was like number one.

But, you know, maybe that was just my bias of... We'll find out. Won't we? Yeah. All this competition. And, yeah, all the animosity was really good for business. Both of their syndicates loved the rivalry. Anne and Abby often tried to deny their feud.

They tried to pretend like, oh, no, we are talking. they absolutely weren't. It was super obvious that they hated each other. And people in the industry noticed. And they talked about it. And they talked about it. And they talked about it. And then in 1958, Life magazine wrote a story that blew the whole thing wide open.

In next week's episode, the blowup goes public. My sister got a nose job. My sister got a nose job She has got a problem My husband loves me I married rich That's the Life magazine article Just a little taste of it

Free liquor for everybody And here's a pressure cooker too Woo We're getting into it now Kristen We are The feud is here Great job That was super interesting

Did you really think so? Yeah I have so much fun with this Yeah This is a topic I never would have thought about So This is all a variety you get on an old timey podcast. It's true. It's true. You get the sports stories from me, obviously, and the

Anne Landers stories. And then Norm comes in with his weird tales about testicles and what else have you covered? My good. Pet Rock. Okay. Yeah, yeah. We got to have that. We got to have that. Yeah. So Norm, I mentioned earlier this thing of who's better, dear Abby or Anne Landers. And I said that I feel like Abby always wins the contest because she's so concise. If we're trying to compare the two, the person who's more concise will always win. But I got to say, and they were both very progressive for their time. We're going to get into that more in next week's episode. They were shockingly progressive on a lot of topics.

I do admit I did read the thing about Ann Landers telling a child she would be garbage if she got felt up too much. but I do want to give credit where credit is due. I want to read one of her columns from back in the day. Okay. Dear Anne Landers, I am absolutely heartbroken. My 16-year-old daughter has just been diagnosed with a very severe case of herpes. I am beside myself and totally shocked. Melissa has had plenty of sex education,

and we have had many talks about safe sex and condoms. When I asked her how this happened, she said she had no idea. Of course, Melissa would not tell me who she got it from. I did insist, however, that she informed the boy at once that he has a contagious disease. I hope and pray she knows who he is, and that he wasn't one of several. Please give me some advice as to how to deal with this nightmare. Melissa does not want to share this information with a therapist, and I don't dare tell my husband. He would hit the roof.

I am sick inside, not only for my daughter, but because of the ramifications of this affliction, which she will have for the rest of her life. I am also upset with myself because there must have been something I failed to get across to her. Signed, worried, sick, and feeling guilty in Pasadena. Okay.

Here's how Anne Landers answered. Dear Pasadena, cancel the guilt trip, mother. This is not your fault. Herpes is not a death sentence. Thousands of people who have it live normal lives. There are now highly effective drugs that can keep this infection

well under control. Melissa needs to be educated. I recently printed out the address of an organization that your daughter should know about. Here it is again, for free confidential information about herpes, call the American Social Health Association, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Non-judgmental offering solid help. I, you know, it's funny, I just flipped to that earlier today, and I was so touched by it. Number one, because you hear the judgment in the mom's letter. You hear a lot of assumptions in the mom's letter. And yet Anne's response doesn't feed into that at all.

Right. And I wonder, you know, reading that, how many people were helped by that? Yeah. She did that a lot. There was another woman who wrote in about, oh, my husband dresses like a woman. And, you know, what do I do? And I'm going to say Ann's response was not perfect, but it was pretty good for the time. Okay.

And we'll get into that stuff more later on. You know, not always perfect, but damn, for the time, pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. Hats off to Ann Landers. And hats off to the spite of Dear Abby. We do love it.

Well, I love it anyway. Well, Kristen, should we wrap up this episode? Let's do it. Kristen, you know what they say about history hoes? We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from articles in Life magazine, Ladies Home Journal, CNN, the Washington Post,

The New York Times, and the book, Dear Anne, Dear Abby, the unauthorized biography of Anne Landers and Abigail Van Buren by Jan Potker and Bob Special. And the book, The Best of Anne Landers, by Anne Landers. And not to be out to be out. Done. The Best of Dear Abby by Abigail Van Buren.

Plus more. Check the show notes for a full list of our sources. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to an old-timey podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, subscribe. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Join the Reddit community, R-slash-old-timey podcast. Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram at Old-Timey Podcast. You can also follow us individually on Instagram.

I'm at Kristen Pitts-Keruso and he's at Gaming Historian. And until next time, Tudaloo, Tata, and Cheerio. Goodbye. Bye. See ya. See you.