Anonymous In Her Own Name

Abstract

The photograph, taken in August 1925, shows well-dressed man and woman standing on deck of an ocean liner. They look seriously into camera while he holds piece of paper in both hands. She is Doris E. Fleischman; husband, Edward L. Bernays, is clasping new U.S. passport-the first ever issued to married woman in birth name.1 Doris Fleischman's fight for, as she put it, the right to own name under own face on passport was popular newspaper story.2 Yet three years earlier she had received even more media attention first time she asserted right to sign own On September 16, 1922, after she and Edward Bernays were married, they checked into Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan for their honeymoon weekend, signing register Miss Doris E. and Mr. Edward L. Bernays. The hotel had never before permitted this kind of registration for married man and woman and at first refused to let Fleischman birth name. But when it reversed its decision, more than 250 newspapers carried news stories or commentaries on event.3 The papers did not note, though, that something far more important had happened when Fleischman and Bernays married: The two became equal partners in firm of Edward L. Bernays, Counsel on Public Relations.4 Remaining partners until Fleischman's death in 1980, they were among handful of people who invented field of public relations. They operated one of country's premier public relations agencies from 1920s through 1950s, and Bernays and his work have received tremendous attention. A 1978 bibliography lists more than 3,400 published references to him.5 But fact that Bernays had an equal partner in his work has been ignored or barely acknowledged by most who have written about him, and partnership itself has never been examined.6 Similarly, very little has been written about women's considerable involvement in American public relations history.7 This article examines Doris Fleischman's pioneering work as public relations consultant and many reasons work has received scant recognition. Focusing on personal and professional partnership with highly visible man, it argues that this relationship was typified by 1925 photograph in which Bernays, rather than Fleischman, held passport, and that Bernays both advanced and restrained achievements in her own Fleischman was born into most traditional of American families on July 18, 1892. Her father, Samuel E. Fleischman, was prominent New York City lawyer whom Edward Bernays characterized as a highly conservative character and a humorless, stern man with an Old Testament prophet's viewpoints.8 Rigid, authoritarian, and unemotional, Samuel Fleischman exerted strict control over his four children and his quiet, compliant wife, Harriet Rosenthal Fleischman.9 In own middle age, Doris Fleischman described how parents' marriage had affected her: Independence was something I yearned for, but hopelessly. My Mother's attitude showed futility of any struggle. She was completely docile, never argued with Pop, always followed his wishes.10 Despite his conservatism, Samuel Fleischman believed women should be educated and lead useful lives. He encouraged Doris to learn and, especially, to read, making sure she had good education; she was graduated from New York's Horace Mann School in 1909 and received bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1913. Still, she did not consider herself well-prepared for career or knowledgeable about world when she left Barnard. She was interested in psychology and had studied music with thought of becoming an opera singer, but she instead joined New York Tribune as women's page writer in 1914. Her friend Edward Bernays helped make contacts that led to Tribune job offer, but she did not immediately accept it, explaining that she first would have to ask father for his approval. …