Walter Winchell

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Walter Winchell
Born April 7, 1897
New York City, New York, USA
Died February 20, 1972
Hibbing, Minnesota, USA

Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972), an American newspaper and radio commentator, invented the gossip column at the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the journalistic taboo against exposing the private lives of public figures, permanently altering the shape of journalism and celebrity.

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[edit] Professional career

Born Walter Winschel (with only one l) in Minneapolis, where he spent his formative years, Winchell started performing in vaudeville troupes while still in his teens. His career as a journalist began when he started posting gossipy notes about his acting troup on backstage bulletin boards. He became a professional journalist in the 1920s.

Winchell was extremely popular and influential for decades in shaping public opinion, notoriously aiding and ruining the careers of many entertainers. Although he concentrated on gossiping about entertainment figures, Winchell frequently expressed opinions about public affairs, too.

By the 1930s he was "'an intimate friend of Owney Madden. New York's No. 1 gang leader of the prohibition era'" [1], but '"In 1932 Winchell's intimacy with gangland led to fear he would be rubbed out for knowing too much. In terror he fled to California, [and] returned weeks later with a new enthusiasm for law, G-men, Uncle Sam, [and] Old Glory."'[1] Then "'he became in the short space of two years, the public pal of J. Edgar Hoover, the No. 2 G-man of the repeal era.'"[1]

Winchell was Jewish and was one of the first public commentators in America to attack Adolf Hitler and American pro-fascist and pro-Nazi organizations such as the German-American Bund. He generally had a left-of-center political view through the 1930s and World War II, when he was stridently pro-Roosevelt, pro-labor, and pro–Democratic Party. During the war Winchell began to perceive Communism as the main threat facing America. A signal of Winchell's changed perspectgive were his wartime attacks on the National Maritime Union, the labor organization for the civilian United States Merchant Marine which he believed were run by communist.[2]) This evolution in Winchell's perspective continued after the war. During the late 1940s, he became allied with the right wing of American politics. In this new role, Winchell frequently attacked politicians he did not like by implying in his commentaries that they were Communist sympathizers.

January 20, 1953: Gossip columnist Walter Winchell broadcasts from Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's inaugural parade.
January 20, 1953: Gossip columnist Walter Winchell broadcasts from Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's inaugural parade.

In the 1950s, Winchell supported Senator Joseph McCarthy, and as McCarthy's "Red Scare" tactics became more extreme and unbelievable, Winchell lost credibility along with McCarthy. He also had a weekly radio broadcast which was simulcast on ABC television until he left in a dispute with ABC executives in 1955. An attempt to revive his commentary program five years later proved to be a fiasco; Winchell was cancelled after only six broadcasts. In between, NBC had given him the opportunity to host a variety show, which lasted only 13 weeks. His readership gradually dropped, and when his home paper, the New York Daily Mirror, for which he worked for 34 years, closed in 1963, he faded from the public eye. He did, however, receive $25,000 an episode to narrate The Untouchables on the ABC television network for five seasons beginning in 1959. Winchell's highly recognizable voice lent credibility to the series, and his work as narrator is often better remembered today than his long-out-of-print newspaper columns.

[edit] Style

Winchell's success was not due entirely to the salaciousness of the celebrity secrets he revealed. After all, many other columnists, such as Ed Sullivan in New York and Louella Parsons in Los Angeles, began to write gossip soon after Winchell's initial success. But Winchell had a style that others found impossible to mimic. He disdained the flowery language that had characterized newspaper columns in the past. Instead, he wrote in a kind of telegraph style filled with slang and incomplete sentences. Creating his own shorthand language, Winchell was responsible for introducing into the American vernacular such now-familiar words and phrases as "scram," "pushover," and "belly laughs." (Winchell's casual manner of writing famously earned him the ire of mobster Dutch Schultz, who confronted Winchell at New York's Cotton Club and publicly lambasted him for using the phrase "pushover" to describe Schultz's penchant for blonde women).[3] He wrote many quips such as "Nothing recedes like success," and "I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret."

Winchell began his radio broadcasts by pressing randomly on a telegraph key, a sound which created a sense of urgency and importance. He then opened with the catch phrase "Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." He would then read each of his stories in a staccato delivery at an average rate 197 words per minute, noticeably faster than the typical pace of American speech.

Winchell became a celebrity himself, often appearing as himself in movies. He frequented Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club during the 1940s, and always sat at table 50 in the Cub Room. There was a Winchellburger on the menu.

A less endearing aspect of his style were Winchell's attempts, especially after World War II, to destroy the careers of personal or political enemies; an example is the heated feud he carried on with New York radio host Barry Gray, whom he described as "Borey Pink" and a "disk jerk" [1]. When Winchell heard that Marlen Edwin Pew of the trade journal Editor & Publisher had criticized him as a bad influence on the American press, he thereafter referred to him as "Marlen Pee-you."[1]

Winchell often had no credible sources for his accusations. He had no real incentive to be accurate, because for most of his career his contract with his newspaper and radio employers required them to reimburse him for any damages he had to pay, should he be sued for slander or libel. When ever friends reproached him for breaking confidences, he responded, "'"I know—I'm just a son of a bitch."'"[1] By the mid-1950s he was widely seen as arrogant, cruel, and ruthless. The changes in Winchell's public image over time can be seen by comparing the two fictional movie gossip columnists who were based on Winchell. In Okay, America (1932) the columnist, played by Lew Ayres, is a hero. In Sweet Smell of Success (1957), the columnist, played by Burt Lancaster, is obnoxious, mentally ill, and possessed of an unhealthy fondness for his sister. This is, in part, an allusion to an incident in which Winchell broke up his daughter Walda's impending marriage.

[edit] Personal life

Winchell married Rita Greene, one of his onstage partners, on August 11, 1919. They separated a few years later and he moved in with June Magee, who had already given birth to their first child, daughter Walda, by the time he actually divorced Greene in 1928. He and Magee had been pretending to be married for some years by then. They never did marry because he was always afraid that the marriage license would be discovered and reveal to the world that Walda was illegitimate.

Winchell and Magee successfully kept the secret of their nonmarriage their whole lives, but were struck by tragedy with all three of their children. Their adopted daughter Gloria died of pneumonia at age nine and Walda spent time in mental institutions. However, Walter, Jr.'s story was perhaps the most tragic. The only son of the journalist committed suicide in his family's garage on Christmas night, 1968. Having spent the previous two years on welfare, Winchell, Jr. had last been employed as a dishwasher in Santa Ana, California, but listed himself as a freelance writer.

Winchell announced his retirement on February 5, 1969, citing the tragedy as a major reason, while also noting the delicate health of his wife. Exactly one year later, she died at a Phoenix hospital while undergoing treatment for a heart condition.

Winchell's final two years were spent as a recluse at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He died of prostate cancer at the age of 74. Although his obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times, his prominence had long since faded.

[edit] Legacy

It would be difficult to overestimate the effects Walter Winchell continues to have on American politics and popular culture. It has become a commonplace to say that America has a "culture of celebrity." Anyone contemplating a career in either entertainment or politics must assume that their every secret will be revealed and will likely be portrayed in the worst possible light. They can also count on being the subject of false gossip from time to time.

Even during Winchell's lifetime, journalists were critical of his effect on the media. In 1940 Time Magazine said his biographer, St. Clair McKelway, bemoaned "the effect of Winchellism on the standards of the press. When Winchell began gossiping in 1924 for the late scatological tabloid Evening Graphic, no U.S. paper hawked rumors about the marital relations of public figures until they turned up in divorce courts. For 16 years gossip columny spread until even the staid New York Times whispered that it heard from friends of a son of the President that he was going to be divorced. 'The Graphic in its first year would have considered this news not fit to print.' Laments McKelway: 'Gossip-writing is at present like a spirochete in the body of journalism. ...Newspapers ...have never been held in less esteem by their readers or exercised less influence on the political and ethical thought of the times.'"[1] Winchell responded to McKelway saying "'"Oh stop! You talk like a high-school student of journalism."'"[1]

Towards the end of his life, Winchell fell from the public eye. Larry King, who replaced Winchell at the Miami Herald, observed, "He was so sad. You know what Winchell was doing at the end? Typing out mimeographed sheets with his column, handing them out on the corner. That's how sad he got. When he died, only one person came to his funeral."

[edit] Persons targeted by Winchell

[edit] Winchellism and Winchellese

The term "Winchellism" is named after him. Though its use is extremely rare and may be considered archaic, the term has two different usages...

  • One definition is a pejorative judgement that an author's works are specifically designed to imply or invoke scandal and may be libelous.
  • The other definition is "any word or phrase compounded brought to the fore by the columnist Walter Winchell" [4]or his imitators. Looking at his writing's effect on the language, an etymologist of his day said "there are plenty of...expressions which he has fathered and which are now current among his readers and imitators and constitute a flash language which has been called Winchellese. Through a newspaper column which has nation-wide circulation Winchell has achieved the position of dictator of contemporary slang."[5] Winchell invented his own phrases that where viewed as slightly racy at the time Some of the expressions for falling in love used by Winchell are pashing it, sizzle for, That Way, Go for Each Other, garbo-ing it, uh-huh; and in the same category, new Garbo, trouser-crease-eraser, and pash. Some Winchellisms for marriage are middle-aisle it, Altar it, handcuffed, Mendelssohn March, Lohengrin it, and merged.[5].

[edit] In popular culture

  • Robert A. Heinlein coined the term "winchell" as a generic description for a politically active gossip columnist. His 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land features a major character (Ben Caxton) who is a winchell. Heinlein coined as a contrasting term, "lippmann", in reference to journalist Walter Lippmann, a contemporary of Winchell's.
  • In The Producers musical Leo Bloom sings "I want to read my name in Winchell's column" during I Want to Be A Producer.
  • The Cole Porter composition Let's Fly Away includes the lines "Let's fly away/ And find a land that's so provincial/ We'll never hear what Walter Winchell/ Might be forced to say".
  • Winchell is mentioned in Billy Joel's historically themed song "We Didn't Start the Fire" in the verse chronicling 1949.
  • A fictionalized "Walter Winchell" is also an important character in the bestselling novel The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth.
  • P. G. Wodehouse's short story "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom" portrays Winchell, thinly concealing his identity under the name "Waldo Winkler".
  • Damon Runyon's character "Waldo Winchester" in the short story "Romance in the Roaring Forties" is based on Walter Winchell. On the subject of this story, Damon Runyon, Jr. comments in his memoir Father's Footsteps: "I leave it to a realist like Walter Winchell to say whether what happens to the character is true."
  • Author Michael Herr wrote Walter Winchell - A Novel in 1990.
  • Pianist Buddy Greco's version of "The Lady Is A Tramp" features the lyric "why she reads Walter Winchell and understands every line."
  • Shellac quote Winchell's catchphrase, "Mr and Mrs America, and all the ships at sea." in their song "The End of Radio".
  • Harry Warren and Al Dubin mention Winchell in the song "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" from the movie 42nd Street: "Some day, I hope we'll be elected/To buy a lot of baby clothes/We don't know when to expect it/But it's a cinch that Winchell knows."

[edit] In media

Not surprisingly, given his importance to the era, shows set in the American entertainment world of the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s often feature Walter Winchell. He has been played by Joseph Bologna in Citizen Cohn (1992) (TV), by Joey Forman in The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980) (TV), by Craig T. Nelson in The Josephine Baker Story (1991) (TV), by Michael Townsend Wright in The Rat Pack (1998) (TV) and by Mark Zimmerman in Dash and Lilly (1999) (TV). Although the lead characters of Okay, America and Sweet Smell of Success are not named "Walter Winchell" they are clearly based on him. Indeed, Winchell was originally scheduled to play the lead in Okay, America. "Blessed Event" (1932) is a movie based on a Winchell-type columnist, and indeed its title is a Winchell tag line (meaning birth of a baby).

  • Stanley Tucci briefly brought Winchell back into the public consciousness in 1998, playing the titular role in the made-for-cable biopic Winchell on HBO.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Book Review of Gossip: The Life And Times Of Walter Winchell—St. Clair McKelway—Viking", Sep. 23, 1940.Retrieved on Nov. 13, 2006
  2. ^ "Liberty Ships" 1995 Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary
  3. ^ Sann, Paul. "Kill the Dutchman!"
  4. ^ Kuethe, J. Louis (Jun., 1932). "John Hopkins Jargon". American Speech, Vol. 7, No. 5: 327-338. 
  5. ^ a b Beath, Paul Robert (Oct., 1931). "Winchellese". American Speech, Vol. 7, No. 1: 44-46. 

Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows Neal Gabler, Winchell : Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity (Vintage: 1995).

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