Walter Winchell

• Born: April 7, 1897
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: February 20, 1972
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Journalist

Winchell was a pioneer of the gossip column and a brand of sensationalist journalism that helped to establish the culture of celebrity in the United States. On radio, his staccato delivery and clever sound effects gave immediacy to his celebrity tidbits.

Areas of achievement: Journalism; entertainment

Early Life

Walter Winchell (WIHN-chehl) was born in New York City in 1897. His grandfather, a devout Jew who was a cantor at a temple and an aspiring poet, had emigrated from Russia to the United States, seeking greater economic opportunity for his family. Sadly, Winchell’s father was a particular disappointment, failing to support his wife and his children. By age ten, Winchell was working to help the family make financial ends meet. He talked his way into a vaudeville act, and for several years he performed in New York and other cities across the country in what can best be described as small-time venues.

In 1914, Winchell met Rita Greene, another vaudevillian. The two toured together with some success, and they married in 1919. Winchell was not a devoted husband, however, often abandoning his wife for weeks and eventually leaving her for Elizabeth June Magee, whom he married in 1923. Magee already had a daughter, whom Winchell adored and who died tragically at age nine. The Winchells eventually had two children of their own.

Life’s Work

In 1919, Winchell began contributing bits of show-business gossip to newspapers such as Billboard and Vaudeville News. He landed a paid position at Vaudeville News in 1920 and worked there until 1924, when he moved to the newly established New York Graphic, a sensationalist tabloid that launched his career as a gossip columnist. In 1929, Winchell left New York Graphic for the New York Mirror, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst; though the New York Mirror was a local paper, syndication assured Winchell a national audience. A year later he signed on to do a radio show, the first of several that would make his voice familiar to millions across the country.

Both in print and on radio, Winchell provided snippets of information, much of it based on rumors and tips sent to him by friends or anonymous contributors, and he used them to skewer celebrities and political figures alike. In both media, he transformed journalism into a form of entertainment. He invented a unique form of slang filled with neologisms and euphemisms that allowed him to be suggestive without violating censorship laws. His staccato delivery and clever sound effects gave immediacy to his radio broadcasts, and his shows achieved ratings that rivaled those of such entertainers as Bob Hope and Jack Benny.

Winchell parlayed his notoriety into work in films, and he starred in several successful comedies alongside established Hollywood stars. By the 1940’s, he was a fixture on the New York nightlife scene, holding court at the Stork Club, where people sought his attention and his favors. Although based in New York, he spent time in Florida and in California, using these sojourns to gather information about people on whom he could report and to ingratiate himself with entertainers. In 1952, he made his first appearance as the host of a television show, and for a decade he could be seen periodically delivering his brand of the news or introducing variety acts in different venues.

Winchell never let his work in other media deter him from his commitment to turning out newspaper columns. At the height of his popularity, he was writing a column a day. His small staff assisted him by collecting and by often composing items for inclusion in his columns. Occasionally Winchell convinced his editors to let him cover hard news stories. He was one of a handful of journalists to report directly from the courtroom on the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, who kidnapped and murdered aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son. Winchell landed interviews with several underworld figures, notably Chicago mob boss Al Capone in 1931. Twenty years later, he reprised that scoop with an article based on conversations with New York Mafia chief Frank Costello.

As his career progressed, Winchell moved gradually to expand the focus of his interests into political matters. He was an early supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt, and Winchell used both his newspaper columns and his radio shows to promote New Deal initiatives. Winchell also developed a relationship with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover; the two fed each other information about people they considered dangerous or unsavory.

Shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Winchell began a campaign against him. Although not an observant Jew, Winchell was appalled by the Nazis’ anti-Semitism. He was equally disturbed by the more insidious anti-Semitism he saw around him in the United States, and he used his popularity to speak out against it whenever he could. He was one of the first to call for the United States to become involved militarily in World War II, and he even served briefly on active duty with the Navy. His attacks on those who opposed Roosevelt pitted him against several Republican congressmen who had the temerity to question his motives; in a vicious give-and-take on the radio, Winchell managed to demolish their credibility and foil their attacks against his character.

After the war, Winchell turned his gaze toward what he believed was a Communist threat to American democracy. Unfortunately, his support for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s high-handed campaign of insinuation and bullying to ferret out supposed Communists in government and in the entertainment industry led to Winchell’s being discredited in some circles and started a long downward spiral in his popularity and influence. An incident involving African American singer Josephine Baker led to his being branded a racist. Several journalists attacked him in print and on the air, and Winchell replied in kind. A series of exposés about him further eroded his image as a populist, replacing it with a portrait of a venal, self-centered man who would stop at nothing to further his own career or tear down those he perceived as his enemies. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, his readership declined, audiences for his radio programs shrank, and contracts for television shows were routinely canceled. By 1967, Winchell had lost all his major contracts. Five years later, he died of cancer in Los Angeles, where he had moved to try to resurrect his career.

Significance

It is often said that Winchell was the person most responsible for creating the phenomenon of celebrity culture in America. Under the guise of populism, Winchell used his work in newspapers, on the radio, and on television to expose the private lives of the rich and famous; readers, listeners, and viewers became avid consumers of this brand of journalism. From 1930 until the 1950’s, an approving comment from Winchell could make a career, and his disapprobation could ruin one. His reliance on rumor and innuendo to attract and hold his audience violated what were then accepted standards of journalism, but the American public responded positively to his new style of reporting. Winchell was a highly controversial figure, known as an opportunist who would not allow friendships to stand in the way of a good story. Unlike most journalists, he did not mind being part of the story himself, or becoming the story, if it furthered his career and increased his audience.

Bibliography

Gabler, Neal. Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Detailed, scholarly biography providing information about Winchell’s career and examining his role in shaping American popular culture.

Harrison, S. L. Twentieth Century Journalists: America’s Opinionmakers. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002. Includes a sketch of Winchell’s career, emphasizing his role in creating the kind of sensational reporting that became a staple of journalism later in the twentieth century.

Klurfeld, Herman. Winchell: His Life and Times. New York: Praeger, 1976. Memoir written by Winchell’s longtime assistant and ghostwriter; provides insight into Winchell’s personality, interests, and writing habits.

Newfield, Jack, and Mark Jacobson, eds. American Monsters: Forty-Four Rats, Black Hats, and Plutocrats. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004. A sketch of Winchell’s career is included in a collection describing some of the more notorious figures in American history.