Walter Winchell

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Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator.

Winchell, a born vain deville performer, began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic, and columnist for New York tabloids.

With Hearst newspaper chain syndication and a popular radio show, he went from national fame in the 1930s to national fame.

He was known for his unique staccato news briefs, parodies, and Jazz Age slang.

He found both bad news and tragic tales about famous people by leveraging his vast network of contacts, first in the entertainment industry and the Prohibition period under capitalism, then in law enforcement and politics.

He was known for trading rumors, sometimes in exchange for his silence.

Both fear and admiration were triggered by his outspoken style.

As early as the play and film Blessed Event in 1932, he based novels and movies on his wisecracking gossip columnist persona.

In the 1930s, he attacked Nazism appeasers in the 1930s, and in the 1950s, he campaigned against communists against Joseph McCarthy.

He damaged Charles Lindbergh and Josephine Baker's reputations, as well as other people who had earned his enmity.

However, McCarthy's time as president made him extremely unpopular, and his style did not align well with television news.

In 1959, he appeared on television as the narrator of the Twenties crime drama The Untouchables.

He appeared in more than two dozen films and television shows as an actor, many of whom were playing himself.

Personal life

Winchell married Rita Greene, one of his onstage co-stars, on August 11, 1919. A few years later, the couple married in Elizabeth June Magee, who had already adopted daughter Gloria and gave birth to her and Winchell's first child Walda in 1927. Winchell eventually divorced Greene in 1928, but Magee never married her, though they lived as a married couple for the remainder of their lives.

Winchell and Magee had three children: Gloria (whom the couple adopted), Walda and a son, Walter Jr. Gloria died of pneumonia at the age of nine, and Walda spent time in psychiatric hospitals. On Christmas night of 1968, Walter Jr. died by suicide in the family garage. Walter Jr. had been working as a dishwasher in Santa Ana, California, but he began writing a column in the Los Angeles Free Press, an alternative newspaper published from 1964 to 1978, but he had not been in jail for a time.

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Professional career

Winchell was born in New York City, the son of Jennie (Bakst) and Jacob Winchell, a cantor and salesman; they were Russian Jewish immigrants. He left school in the sixth grade and began performing in Gus Edwards' "Newsboys Sextet," which also featured Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. Winchell appeared as a tap dancer at this point. Winchell served in the United States Navy during World War I, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander.

He began his career in journalism by handing over reports about his acting troupe on backstage bulletin boards. He joined the Valiant News in 1920 and then moved to the Evening Graphic in 1924, where his column was titled Mainly About Mainstreeters. He was hired on June 10, 1929 by the New York Daily Mirror, where he became the first syndicated gossip column entitled On-Broadway. The column was syndicated by King Features Syndicate.

On May 12, 1930, he made his radio debut over WABC in New York, a CBS affiliate. The program, titled Saks on Broadway, was a 15-minute documentary that provided company news about Broadway. In 1932 for the Jergens Journal, he switched to WJZ (later renamed WABC) and the NBC Blue (later ABC Radio).

Winchell was "an intimate friend of Owney Madden, the New York's No. 1," by the 1930s. Winchell, the prohibition era's leader, but the fear of being murdered in 1932 led him to his fear of being killed. He moved to California and "returned weeks later with a renewed passion for law, G-men, Uncle Sam, [and] Old Glory." His coverage of the Lindbergh kidnapping and subsequent trial attracted national attention. He befriended J. Edgar Hoover, the no. enslaved in two years, within two years. The repeal era's G-man was a member of the United States. He was responsible for transferring Louis "Lepke" Buchalter of Murder, Inc. to Hoover. His newspaper column was syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers around the world, and he was read by 50 million people per day from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Another 20 million people from 1930 to the late 1950s heard his Sunday night radio broadcast. When Winchell defeated Fred Allen and Jack Benny in 1948, he held the top-rated radio show. In Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 1937 album "The Lady Is a Tramp" (I follow Winchell and read every line), an example of his career at his peak was being quoted: "I follow every line."

Winchell was Jewish and was one of the first commentators in America to condemn Adolf Hitler and American pro-fascist and pro-Nazi groups, particularly its chairman Fritz Julius Kuhn. During the European war period, he was a ferocious promoter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and he regularly served as the Roosevelt Administration's mouthpiece in favour of interventionism. He condemned American isolationists as favoring Hitler appeasement, and he was specific in his attacks against British isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh, whom he described as "The Lone Ostrich" and Gerald L.K. Smith, who identifies himself as "Gerald Lucifer KKKodfish Smith," denounced Smith. Winchell was also a vocal promoter of African American civil rights in the 1930s and 1940s, and she often condemned Ku Klux Klan and other ethnic groups as supporters of un-American, pro-German causes.

During World War II, he attacked the National Maritime Union, the civilian United States Merchant Marine's labor union, which he said was run by Communists, instancing West Coast labor leader Harry Bridges. In 1948 and 1949, he and influential leftist columnist Drew Pearson criticised Defense Secretary James Forrestal in columns and radio broadcasts.

Winchell began to denounce Communism as the nation's greatest threat.

Winchell aided Senator Joseph McCarthy's efforts to identify Communists in the entertainment industry in the 1950s, but his fame and authority began to decline as the public voted against McCarthy. On the same day as his radio show, his weekly radio show was shown on ABC television. On October 5, 1952, his show premiered on television. It was produced by Gruen Watch Company from 6:45 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time. His radio and television broadcasting were simulcast until he resigned from the company in 1955 due to a controversy with ABC executives. He appeared in The Walter Winchell File, a television crime drama series that aired from 1957 to 1958, chronicling incidents from the New York City Police Department that were not chronicled in the New York Daily Mirror. In 1956, he signed NBC to direct The Walter Winchell Show, which was cancelled after just 13 weeks, a bitter disappointment considering that his longtime rival Ed Sullivan's appearance in a similar fashion as The Ed Sullivan Show was unsuccessful. In 1959, ABC recalled him to narrate The Untouchables for four seasons. After six weeks, a revival of Winchell's television simulcast was scrapped.

A public debate with Jack Paar in the early 1960s effectively ended Winchell's career, triggering a change in power from print to television. When Winchell refused to retract an article claiming that Paar was experiencing marital problems, he had angered Paar several years ago. Neal Gabler, a British biographer, narrated the conversation over Paar's show in 1961:

Winchell was a "silly old man" on subsequent programs, and he cited other instances of his underhanded tactics. No one had dared to criticize Winchell publicly, but his fame had eroded to the point where he was unable to properly respond, and no one had dared to condemn it. In 1963, the New York Daily Mirror, his flagship newspaper, was closed; his readership fell steadily; and he faded from the public eye.

As his own career progressed, Winchell became well-known for his efforts to damage the careers of his political and personal rivals. Popular tactics include allegations of links to Communist organisations and charges of sexual impropriety. He was not above name-calling; for example, he referred to New York radio host Barry Gray as "Borey Pink" and a "disk jerk." Winchell found out that Marlen Edwin Pew of the trade journal Editor & Publisher had chastised him for being a bad influence on him by referring to him as "Marlen Pee-you."

His newspaper and radio employers' agreements made him harmless from any harm resulting from litigation arising from lawsuits for slander or libel. When confronted with such betrayals, he unashamedly would reveal information shared in confidence by friends; instead, he replied, "I know—I'm just a son of a bitch." He was widely believed to have been premature, cruel, and ruthless by the mid-1950s.

Josephine Baker, an old black patron who would never perform in front of segregated audiences, scolded the Stork Club's unwritten strategy of discouraging black patrons, then chastised Winchell, an old ally for not rising to her defense. Winchell retaliated with a string of brutal public rebukes, including allegations of Communist sympathies. He sparked any attempts by colleagues to reduce the tense speech. Baker's work visa was withdrawn due to the ensuing publicity, prompting her to resign from all her jobs and return to France. It was nearly a decade before US officials allowed her back into the country. This and other events highlighted his authority and authority, which undermined his credibility and power.

Winchell helped to incite public anxiety about the polio vaccine in his radio and television broadcasts on April 4, 1954. "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America," Winchell said, as well as all the ships at sea. Attention, everybody. In a few moments, I will focus on a new polio vaccine that is thought to be a polio cure. It might be a killer." "It killed many monkeys," Winchell said in seven of the ten vaccine batches it tested. "The United States Public Health Service will announce this in about ten days." Dr. Jonas Salk, the product's developer, confirmed that the vaccine, which had been tested on 7,500 schoolchildren at the University of Pittsburgh, had been triple tested for the absence of live virus by the manufacturer's National Institutes of Health, and in his own research lab, and that similar testing would continue to screen out future batches containing live virus.

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