Profile of Walter Winchell on Famous Like Me

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.

Professional Career

Born Walter Winchel (with only one l) in New York City, 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 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. He 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. Following the war, he perceived communism as the main threat facing American and in a few short years he became allied with the right-wing of American politics. He frequently attacked politicians he didn't like by implying in his commentaries that they were communist sympathizers.

In the 1950s he supported Senator Joseph McCarthy, and as McCarthy's "Red Scare" tactics became more extreme and unbelievable, Winchell lost credibility along with McCarthy. His readership gradually dropped, and when his home paper, the New York Daily Mirror, for which he worked for 34 years, closed in the 1960s, 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.

Style

Winchell's success wasn't 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 flowerly 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." 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. North 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 197 words per minute.

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

A less endearing aspect of his style were his attempts, especially after World War II, to ruin the careers of personal or political enemies. 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. 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 and mentally ill. The character also has an unhealthy fondness for his sister. This is an allusion to an incident in which Winchell broke up his daughter Walda's impending marriage.

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 non-marriage their whole lives. Their adopted daugher Gloria died of pneumonia at age nine. Their son Walter, Jr., committed suicide in 1968. Walda spent time in mental institutions.

Although his obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times, he died of cancer at the age of 74, forgotten and disgraced in Hollywood, with only his daughter, Walda, present as a mourner at his funeral.

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. Had it not been for Winchell, we would probably not know today about the affairs of John F. Kennedy and other presidents. There very well may not have been an impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Persons Targeted by Winchell

Tokyo Rose

Portrayals in the Media

Not surprisingly, given his importance to the era, shows set in the American entertainment world of the 30s, 40s, or 50s often feature Walter Winchell. He has been played by 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.

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. Winchell is also an important character in the bestselling novel The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.

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