Art Buchwald

Journalist, writer, and humorist

• Born: October 20, 1925
• Birthplace: Mount Vernon, New York
• Died: January 17, 2007
• Place of death: Washington, D.C

Buchwald went from writing his “Paris After Dark” nightlife column for the Herald Tribune in Paris to writing award-winning political satire during his years in Washington, D.C. At its peak, his column appeared in more than 550 newspapers. He published more than thirty books, two novels, and a stage play.

Early Life

Art Buchwald (BUHK-wahld) was born in 1925 in Mount Vernon, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Joseph Buchwald, was from Austria, and his mother, Helen Klineberger Buchwald, was from Hungary. Following Art Buchwald’s birth (he was the last of four children), his thirty-year-old mother became delusional, and she was committed to a private sanatorium and later to a state mental hospital. Diagnosed with manic depression, she spent the remaining thirty-five years of her life institutionalized. Unable to support his four children during the Great Depression, his father sent Buchwald to stay in a foster home. Later, Buchwald lived briefly at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City and in a string of foster homes.

When he was fifteen, the family reunited, occupying a cramped apartment in Hollis, New York, where Buchwald attended Forest Hills High School. Disappointing his father, Buchwald refused to be bar mitzvahed. In the summer of 1942, Buchwald worked as a hotel bellboy and dated a waitress named Flossie Starling. At summer’s end, they parted. He returned to high school, and she to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Wanting to escape his humdrum life in Hollis, the adolescent Buchwald devised a romantic plan. He would run away, hitchhike to Greensboro, woo Flossie, and enlist in the Marines. How could she resist a man going off to war? His reunion with Flossie did not go well, but Buchwald decided to go ahead and enlist. Bribing a drunk to provide parental consent, Buchwald joined the Marines at age seventeen. He was assigned to Marine Corps Aviation and served in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific theater during World War II as part of an ordnance unit.

Honorably discharged from the Marines on November 12, 1945, he then moved to Los Angeles and attended classes at the University of Southern California under the G.I. Bill. He took writing and literature courses and wrote columns for the campus humor magazine and the campus newspaper. At the end of his third year, Buchwald learned that the G.I. Bill would also pay for schooling in Paris.

Life’s Work

The twenty-two-year-old Buchwald booked one-way passage to France, arriving in Paris in June, 1948. Like Ernest Hemingway before him, the expatriate Buchwald planned to hone his writing among the city’s sidewalk cafés. He first worked as a stringer for Variety and then talked his way into a job with the prestigious international edition of the New York Herald Tribune, where he began his famous column, “Paris After Dark.” At first a restaurant critic, he went on to write about the famous people who frequented the restaurants and nightclubs of Paris. He wrote for the Herald Tribune until he returned to the United States in 1961. His popular column became syndicated internationally in 1952. When American celebrities visited Paris, they would touch base with Buchwald as a tour guide or for an interview. In this manner, he became acquainted with many such individuals, including Jack Benny, Ingrid Bergman, George Burns, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Elvis Presley, and Audrey Hepburn.

In Paris, he met and married his wife, Ann McGarry. She was Catholic, and they were married in London by a priest. She was unable to conceive, so they adopted children from different countries: Joel (from Ireland), Connie (from Spain), and Jennifer (from France). They were married for forty years. His wife died July 3, 1994.

He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1961, and his new column dealt increasingly with political commentary and satire. He became a celebrity himself, as he hobnobbed with the famous and politically powerful. At its peak, his column appeared in more than 550 newspapers. For his efforts, Buchwald received a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary (1982) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986). As Buchwald’s fortunes grew, he bought a home on Martha’s Vineyard and spent his summers there with friends such as television reporter Mike Wallace, television news anchor Walter Cronkite, and writer William Styron. In 1963, Buchwald suffered his first bout with severe depression. He was hospitalized for a week, and it took him several weeks to recover. In 1987, he suffered a second depression. In both instances he was suicidal. A decade later, both he and Wallace made a joint appearance on Larry King Live to talk about the debilitating effects of depression.

In the 1980’s, he was the plaintiff in an eight-year lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. Buchwald had originally submitted a script to the studio that was rejected. The plot of his script was quite similar to that of a subsequent film produced by Paramount, Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (1988). The court eventually ruled in his favor.

In 2005, a blood clot required the amputation of his right leg below the knee. Just prior to that, his kidneys failed, so he was forced to undergo dialysis treatment so the amputation could be done. He decided to discontinue dialysis and moved into a hospice to die. To everyone’s surprise, a kidney began working and he did not die. Buchwald moved back to live with his son and his family on Martha’s Vineyard. On January 17, 2007, at the age of eighty-one, Buchwald died of kidney failure.

Significance

Born of Jewish Eastern European immigrant parents, Buchwald rose from humble beginnings in New York foster homes to high literary and social circles in both Paris and Washington, D.C. He wrote widely syndicated, award-winning newspaper columns for more than fifty years and wrote more than thirty books, including the autobiographical best sellers Leaving Home: A Memoir (1993) and Too Soon to Say Goodbye (2006) and many anthologies of his biting political commentary, such as Beating Around the Bush (2005). The mischievous, cigar-smoking Buchwald was also a much sought-after speaker on the lucrative lecture circuit. His political commentary set the bar for other columnists of the times. Columnist Erma Bombeck once called him “the reigning genius of American satire.”

Bibliography

Brokaw, Tom. The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, 1998. Brokaw, a news anchor on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and longtime friend of Buchwald, devotes a section of his book to Buchwald’s service in the Marine Corps during World War II.

Buchwald, Art. Beating Around the Bush. New York, N.Y.: Seven Stories Press, 2005. Collection of Buchwald’s satirical newspaper columns.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. I’ll Always Have Paris: A Memoir. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Buchwald’s description of his years in Paris, where he wrote his “Paris After Dark” column for the International Herald Tribune.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Leaving Home: A Memoir. New York: Putnam, 1993. Buchwald’s account of his early years, which ends with his employment at the International Herald Tribune in Paris.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Too Soon to Say Goodbye. New York: Random House, 2006. Buchwald’s last book was written in a hospice after his decision not to undergo kidney dialysis did not immediately result in his demise.