Walter Winchell from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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Walter Winchell From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was an American Walter Winchell newspaper and radio gossip commentator,[1] famous for attempting to destroy the careers of people both private and public whom he disliked. Contents 1 Professional career 1.1 Underworld connections 1.2 Outspoken views 1.3 Television Winchell in 1960. 1.4 Ethical failings 2 Style Born Walter Winchell 3 Personal life April 7, 1897 4 Later years New York City, New York, U.S. 5 Death Died February 20, 1972 (aged 74) 6 Legacy Los Angeles, California, U.S. 7 Winchellism and Winchellese 8 In popular culture Cause of Prostate cancer 9 References death 10 Further reading Resting Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary 11 External links place & Cemetery Spouse(s) Rita Greene (m. 1919; div. 1928) Professional career Partner(s) June Magee Children 3 Winchell was born in New York City, the son of Jennie and Jacob Winchell, a salesman, they were Russian Jewish immigrants.[2] He left school in the sixth grade and started performing in Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe known as "Newsboys Sextet". He began his career in journalism by posting notes about his acting troupe on backstage bulletin boards. He joined the Vaudeville News in 1920, then left the paper for the Evening Graphic in 1924, where his column was named Mainly About Mainstreeters. He was hired on June 10, 1929 by the New York Daily Mirror where he finally became the author of the first syndicated gossip column,[3] entitled OnBroadway. The column was syndicated by King Features Syndicate.[4] He used connections in the entertainment, social, and governmental realms to expose exciting or embarrassing information about celebrities in those industries. This caused him to become very feared as a journalist, because he would routinely affect the lives of famous or powerful people, exposing alleged information and rumors about them, using this as ammunition to attack his enemies and to blackmail influential people.[5] He used this power, trading positive mention in his column (and later, his radio show) for more rumors and secrets. He made his radio debut over WABC in New York, a CBS affiliate, on May 12, 1930.[6] The show entitled Saks on Broadway was a 15minute feature that provided business news about Broadway. He switched to WJZ (later renamed WABC) and the NBC Blue (later ABC Radio) in 1932 for the Jergens Journal.[7] Underworld connections By the 1930s, Winchell was "an intimate friend of Owney Madden, New York's No. 1 gang leader of the prohibition era",[8] but "in 1932 Winchell's intimacy with criminals caused him to fear he would be 'rubbed out' for 'knowing too much.'" He fled to California and "returned weeks later with a new enthusiasm for law, Gmen, Uncle Sam, [and] Old Glory".[8] His coverage of the Lindbergh kidnapping and subsequent trial received national attention. Within two years, he befriended J. Edgar Hoover, the No. 2 Gman of the repeal era. He was responsible for turning Louis "Lepke" Buchalter of Murder, Inc. over to Hoover. His newspaper column was syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers worldwide, and he was read by 50 million people a day from the 1920s until the early 1960s. His Sunday night radio broadcast was heard by another 20 million people from 1930 to the late 1950s. In 1948, Winchell had the toprated radio show when he surpassed Fred Allen and Jack Benny.[9] One example of his profile at his professional peak was being mentioned in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 1937 song "The Lady Is a Tramp": "She follows Winchell, and she reads every line." Outspoken views Winchell was Jewish and was one of the first commentators in America to attack Adolf Hitler and American profascist and proNazi organizations such as the GermanAmerican Bund. He was a staunch supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal throughout the Depression era, and frequently served as the Roosevelt Administration's mouthpiece in favor of interventionism as the European war crisis loomed in the late 1930s. Early on, he denounced American isolationists as favoring appeasement of Hitler, and was explicit in his attacks on such prominent isolationists as Charles Lindbergh, whom he dubbed "The Lone Ostrich", and Gerald L. K. Smith, whom he denounced as "Gerald Lucifer KKKodfish Smith". Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Winchell was also an outspoken supporter of civil rights for African Americans, and frequently attacked the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups as supporting unAmerican, proGerman goals. After World War II, Winchell began to denounce Communism as the main threat facing America. During World War II, he attacked the National Maritime Union, the labor organization for the civilian United States Merchant Marine which he said was run by Communists.[10] In 1948 and 1949, he and influential leftist columnist Drew Pearson "inaccurately and maliciously assaulted Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in columns and radio broadcasts."[11] Television During the 1950s, Winchell supported Senator Joseph McCarthy's quest to identify Communists in the entertainment industry, but his popularity and influence began to decline as the public turned against McCarthy. His weekly radio broadcast was simulcast on ABC television until he ended that association because of a dispute with ABC executives in 1955. He starred in The Walter Winchell File, a television crime drama series that initially aired from 1957 to 1958, dramatizing cases from the New York City Police Department that were covered in the New York Daily Mirror. ABC rehired him in 1959 to narrate The Untouchables for four seasons. In 1960, he signed with NBC to host a variety program called The Walter Winchell Show, which was canceled after only thirteen weeks—a particularly bitter failure in view of the success of his longtime rival Ed Sullivan in a similar format.[12] In the early 1960s, a public dispute with Jack Paar effectively ended Winchell's career— already in steep decline due to his association with McCarthy—signaling a shift in power from print to television.[13] Winchell had angered Paar several years earlier when he refused to retract an item alleging that Paar was having marital difficulties. Biographer Neal Gabler described the exchange on Paar's show in 1961: Hostess Elsa Maxwell appeared on the program and began gibing at Walter, accusing him of hypocrisy for waving the flag while never having voted [which, incidentally, wasn't true; the show later issued a retraction]. Paar joined in. He said Walter's column was "written by a fly" and that his voice was so high because he wears "tootight underwear" … [H]e also told the story of the mistaken item about his marriage, and cracked that Walter had a "hole in his soul".[14] On subsequent programs, Paar called Winchell a "silly old man" and cited other examples of his underhanded tactics.[15] No one had previously dared criticize Winchell publicly, but by then his influence had eroded to the point that he could not effectively respond. The New York Daily Mirror, his flagship newspaper for 34 years, closed in 1963; his readership dropped steadily, and he faded from the public eye.[16] Ethical failings Winchell became notorious for his attempts to destroy the careers of his political and personal enemies as his own career progressed, especially after World War II. Favorite tactics were allegations of having ties to Communist organizations and accusations of sexual impropriety.[17] He was not above childish namecalling; for example, he described New York radio host Barry Gray as "Borey Pink" and a "disk jerk".[18] Winchell heard that Marlen Edwin Pew of the trade journal Editor & Publisher had criticized him as a bad influence on the American press, and he began calling him "Marlen Peeyou".[8] For most of his career, his contracts with newspaper and radio employers required them to hold him harmless from any damages resulting from lawsuits for slander or libel.[19] He would unapologetically publish material told to him in confidence by friends; when confronted over such betrayals, he typically responded, "I know — I'm just a son of a bitch."[8] By the mid1950s, he was widely seen as arrogant, cruel, and ruthless.[20] While on an American tour in 1951, Josephine Baker, who would never perform before segregated audiences, criticized the Stork Club's unwritten policy of discouraging black patrons, then scolded Winchell, an old ally, for not rising to her defense. Winchell responded swiftly with a series of harsh public rebukes, including accusations of Communist sympathies (a serious charge at the time). He spurned any attempts by friends to mitigate the heated rhetoric. The ensuing publicity resulted in the termination of Baker's work visa, forcing her to cancel all her engagements and return to France. It was almost a decade before US officials allowed her back into the country. The adverse publicity, combined with Winchell's warm relationship with Joe McCarthy, further undercut his credibility and power. [21] Style Many other columnists began to write gossip soon after Winchell's initial success, such as Ed Sullivan in New York and Louella Parsons in Los Angeles. He wrote in a style filled with slang and incomplete sentences. Winchell's casual writing style famously earned him the ire of mobster Dutch Schultz, who confronted him at New York's Cotton Club and publicly lambasted him for using the phrase "pushover" to describe Schultz's penchant for blonde women.[22] Some notable Winchell quotations are: "Nothing recedes like success", and "I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret".