Frank Discussions Of Sex Made Column An Early Hit

Before Oprah, before Geraldo, even before Phil and Sally Jessy - there was “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” in Ladies’ Home Journal.

The column started 40 years ago, at a time when a person didn’t bare her soul in public about having an affair with her father’s best friend who used to be married to an uncle’s second wife.

The monthly magazine feature was considered innovative, bold and one of the earliest forms of public therapy.

In 1955, married couples couldn’t even be shown in the same bed unless one partner kept a foot on the floor. Otherwise, it was against the TV moral code. In the movies, the word “pregnant” was never uttered. Too risque.

So a magazine column that even hinted at sex between couples was titillating to say the least. It also was helpful to thousands of readers who were going through the same problems.

Readers suffered with Annie and Tom, who couldn’t agree on discipline; Barbara’s trauma with Howie, who always seemed to tune her out, or Andrea’s problems with Rob, who was just too moody.

Now the columns have been collected in a book, also called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” (Workman Press, $9.95).

I was delighted when I heard that the current writer of the column, Margery Rosen, was in Dallas to discuss the book. I used to read my mother’s copy of Ladies’ Home Journal and go right for that feature. I remember when my girlfriends and I devoured every word of the case of a couple’s bout with impotence because it actually said the word “sex” several times. We misread the problem, however, and thought the man had a problem with importance.

The TV shows “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition” have never held such allure.

Rosen, who has done the column for the past 11 years, knew just what I was talking about.

“My father was a magazine writer,” she says. “He always had copies of women’s magazines around. I used to sneak copies of Ladies’ Home Journal and read “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I thought I was reading something dirty.”

But long after baring your soul in public has become an everyday experience, the feature still exists in the magazine and as a syndicated newspaper column. And readers are just as avid.

“I think it’s because the people are real, and so are the problems,” says Rosen. “That never changes.”

She says she gets the couples and their problems from a group of marriage counselors. Their identities are hidden so they won’t be embarrassed. But some take delight in telling their friends they’ve been in a national magazine.

“Marital problems don’t change,” says the writer. “We still get people worrying about sex, money and power. That’s a common thread.”