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Creator
Winchell, Walter, 1897-1972
Call number
*T-Mss 1991-019
Physical description
28 lin. ft, 43 boxes
Preferred Citation

Walter Winchell Papers, *T-Mss 1991-019, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Repository
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

The Walter Winchell papers span 1920-1967 and consist of annotated radio scripts, correspondence, miscellaneous scripts for stage and film, scrapbooks, news articles, clippings from his newspaper columns, and other items related to his journalism career. The largest portion of the collection is the radio scripts, usually typewritten and annotated, which date from 1930 to 1959; because of their fragile condition, these scripts are available only on microfilm. Film scripts include two to which Winchell contributed, BROADWAY THROUGH A KEYHOLE (1933) and WAKE UP AND LIVE (1937), the latter of which provided an opportunity for Winchell to play himself. Winchell's correspondents included Fanny Brice, Samuel Goldwyn, and Billy Rose. Clippings cite Winchell's role in public controversies, such as the battle over racism at New York's Stork Club which pitted Winchell against entertainer Josephine Baker, and Winchell's accusations of Communist sympathies made against various public figures during the McCarthyist 1950s.

Biographical/historical information

Walter Winchell was born, on April 7, 1897, into a poor Jewish family on the upper East Side of New York City. Between 1909 and 1920, he worked as a song-plugger and performer in vaudeville - one of his early co-performers was George Jessel. In 1920, Winchell began writing a column forThe Vaudeville News; in 1924, he entered the world of tabloid newspapers as a daily columnist for the New York Evening Graphic. On June 10, 1929, he wrote his first daily column for the New York Daily Mirror - a Hearst publication that was syndicated in approximately 1000 newspapers by King Features.

By the end of the 1920's, Walter Winchell was nationally famous. The inventor of the modern gossip column, Winchell intermingled wordplay, obscure facts, philosophical observations, and tidbits about business, finance and the underworld with his core material of intimate news about celebrities. As a master of the "slanguage" spoken by journalists, Broadway showpeople, bootleggers and gamblers, "W.W." fashioned a brisk, brash, racy vernacular style in which each column item was separated by a three-dot punctuation. His flair for inventing or popularizing catchy new words and phrases was one secret of his great reader appeal: married couples were "Lohengrinned" or "sealed," divorced couples were "Reno-vated" or "telling it to a judge," people in love were "Cupiding" or "making whoopie," and the birth of a baby was a "blessed event."

Winchell's radio career began in 1930. In 1932, he introduced a weekly radio program (sponsored by Jergen's Lotion) in which he successfully translated his dynamic newspaper style into a new medium: he spoke with a machine-gun-burst delivery accompanied by the sound of a telegraph key, and the words which he finally settled on for the opening of each broadcast - "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North America, and all the ships at sea" - became world-famous. In the 1930's and 1940's, in his dual role as "the Voice of America" and the author of "The Column," Walter Winchell was arguably the most popular and most influential newsman in the world - the "king of media," who reigned from Table 50 at the Stork Club.

The peak of his influence was during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired. With Ernest Cuneo as his private pipeline to the FDR administration, Winchell viewed himself as a populist who championed the underdog; he also was one of the earliest revilers of Adolf Hitler, whom he loathed for his anti-Semitism. Concurrently with his liberal-Democratic connections, Winchell had ties to the underworld and was a close confidante of J. Edgar Hoover. He wrote the screenplay, acted in, or did voiceover for several Hollywood movies and shorts, including Broadway Thru a Keyhole,, Wake Up and Live, and Love and Hisses. He was an indefatigable reporter at the Bruno Hauptmann trial in 1935, and he participated in the capture of the elusive arch-criminal Louis Buchalterin 1939.

Winchell was courted constantly by press agents and publicity-hungry celebrities. If he believed they insulted him or gave him false information ("wrongos"), they would wind up on his dreaded DDL (Drop Dead List). Winchell was also capable of vitriolic feuds with editors, publishers, fellow columnists, et al.: James A. Wechsler, Dorothy Schiff, Westbrook Pegler, Drew Pearson, Leonard Lyons, Ed Sullivan, and the Shubert brothers were among his more notable antagonists.

1951 was a watershed year in Winchell's career - the first major year in a gradual but irreversible process of decline in his power and popularity. Winchell's unpopular point of view was a catalyst in his loss of popularity. His interview with the underworld figure Frank Costellowas widely ridiculed. His ardent backing of General MacArthur after MacArthur was fired by Truman alienated Winchell from many of his left-wing admirers. The Josephine Baker affair at the Stork Club made Winchell look like a self-serving hypocrite, if not racist; and his weekly radio show fell out of the top ten for the first time.

Winchell's embrace of the anti-Communist movement - in particular, his close ties to Joseph McCarthyand Roy Cohn - sealed his doom with the left-wing. His attempt to make the transition from radio to television in the mid-fifties was ill-fated: his rapid-fire, staccato way of speaking and his bouncing, fidgety physical presence did not work well on this "cool" medium. His only real success on TV was as the unseen narrator of the series "The Untouchables" from 1959 to 1963. 1963 was also the year in which the New York Daily Mirrorwent bankrupt - a crushing blow to its most famous columnist.

In chronic bad health and strained by many tragedies in his family life (including divorces and suicides), Winchell managed for several years to continue writing for other newspapers, and he did end up reconciling with several of his enemies. On February 20, 1972, Walter Winchell died of cancer at the UCLA Medical Center.

Scope and arrangement

The Walter Winchell papers consist of correspondence, annotated radio scripts, miscellaneous scripts for stage and film, thematic news articles, scrapbooks and clippings. Correspondence is sketchy and consists, with few exceptions, of letters (and telegrams) written to Winchell from Fannie Brice, Samuel Goldwyn, Billy Rose, and Gene Weber. The most numerous letters and clippings in the collection are in the Billy Rose folders, which contain significant information about Rose himself as well as about his relationship with Winchell.

The largest portion of the collection is the radio scripts and includes annotated typewritten copies of his radio broadcasts from 1930 to 1959. Because of their fragile condition, these scripts are available only on microfilm. The radio broadcasts are valuable for their weekly look at the world through Winchell's eyes as he reported the news and world events from his often controversial perspective. Although the latest gossip about celebrities (especially actors) remained a staple of his broadcasts throughout his career, the sequence of Winchell's broadcasts is perhaps most significant as a barometer of his gradual transformation from an amusing gadfly in the early 1930's to a New Deal populist in the later 1930's, a zealous patriot during World War II, and finally a strident anti-Communist in the 1950's. Among his more notable broadcasts are the following:

May 12, 1930: In his first broadcast - filled with ingenious wordplay and tidbits about celebrities - Winchell introduces himself as "New York's most notorious gossip" and "Peck's Blab Boy."

March 19, 1933: Winchell praises FDR as "the nation's new hero," who has pledged to redistribute income in order to eliminate the very poor and very wealthy.

January, 1935: Winchell's broadcasts of this month focus on his personal obser-vations and speculations as a reporter at the Bruno Hauptmann("Lindbergh baby") trial.

February 9, 1936: Winchell extols J. Edgar Hooverand the FBI.

May 9, 1937: Three days after the Hindenburg zeppelin catches fire, Winchell broadcasts three items dealing with possible causes of the disaster.

July 31, 1938: In this famous broadcast, Winchell tests the political waters for FDR when he alleges that "Intimates say . . . the president feels the nation needs him in the White House for another four year term."

June 7, 1942: A long-time advocate of American intervention in the war against Hitler, Winchell asserts that the Pearl Harbor attack proves Americans must rally to defend their liberties around the globe.

October 30, 1949: Winchell discusses his role as treasurer of the Damon RunyonMemorial Cancer Fund (one of Winchell's few lasting legacies, the organization is now known as the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund).

April, 1951: In this month's broadcasts during the Korean War, Winchell ardently defends General MacArthur's "global strategy" that won World War II, and blasts the Truman-Acheson "appeasement" policies towards Red China.

October 21, 1951: This broadcast includes Winchell's controversial defense of his conduct in the Josephine Baker-Stork Club cause célèbre.

November 9, 1952: Winchell calls a certain left-wing political party a "Commie front," describes Paul Robesonas a "Moscow mule," and offers a $7000 reward for the capture of each of "7 fugitive Reds."

April 4, 1954: In a very controversial broadcast that caused great alarm among health officials and the general public, Winchell warns of the dangers of the Salk polio vaccine, asserting that "7 of 10 batches contained live - not dead - polio virus."

Among the stage and film scripts, two are of especial interest. The scenario Winchell wrote for the film Broadway Thru a Keyhole(1933) was based on a love triangle of five years earlier that involved Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and the bootlegger Johnny Costello. In the film Wake Up and Live(1936-1937), Winchell, as an actor playing himself, received good critical notices in his first starring role.

The thematic news articles are primarily of four types: historical sketches of famous men Winchell admired (Washington, Lincoln, Columbus, Jefferson); paeans to seasons or holidays (Autumn, Spring, Summer, Xmas); tendentious essays ("How to Succeed in Show Business," "Communists and Optimists"); and gossip about Great Men ("Things I Never Knew 'Til Now"). The paeans are flowery. The historical sketches are written in a vivid prose filled with colorful facts, striking comparisons, and ringing phrases (e.g., "History is written in blood before it is inscribed in ink").

The scrapbooks from the New York trade paper The Vaudeville News(1920-1923) contain some of Walter Winchell's earliest writing. In its June 11, 1920 issue the 23-year-old Winchell, in a column entitled "The Evening Newssense," already displays many ingredients of the snappy style that later became his trademark. By December of 1923, Winchell's columns have become regular features, with his by-line appearing in bold print.

Winchell's regular newspaper columns for the New York Evening Graphic(1924-1929) and New York Daily Mirror(1929-1963) appear on microfilm reels that represent the years 1928 through 1961. There are also 2 scrapbooks with materials from 1926 to 1935.

The Walter Winchell papers are arranged in four series:

  • Series I: Personal Papers
    1933-1967
    1 box

    This series contains primarily letters written from notables such as Samuel Goldwynand Billy Rose. Though it is probable that Winchell had an extensive correspondence, these are the only letters in the collection. The clippings folder about Billy Rose includes his column "Pitching Horseshoes," and one example of Winchell's column "In New York."

  • Series II: Scripts and Writings
    1930-1959
    41 boxes 10 reels

    This series contains radio scripts, stage and film scripts, and transcripts of other writings of Walter Winchell. Because of the fragility of these materials, reference is available only through microfilm.

  • Series III: Clippings and Columns
    1920-1958
    2 boxes 21 reels

    This series contains copies of Winchell's newspaper columns from 1923 to 1958. These columns were published in The Vaudeville News, the New York Evening Graphic, and the New York Daily Mirror. Reference only through microfilm.

  • Series IV: Scrapbooks
    1926-1935
    2 reels

    This series contains clippings about Walter Winchell, bound in scrapbook form. Reference only through microfilm.

Administrative information

Custodial history

The Walter Winchell Papers were donated to the Billy Rose Theatre Division by Neal Gabler in 1991.

Source of acquisition

Gift, Neal Gabler, 08/26/1991

Processing information

Processed and machine-readable finding aid created by Mary Ellen Rogan and John Burchard.

The collection arrived in poor condition and extensive conservation work needed to be done. This work included microfilming of radio scripts and newspaper columns and deacidification of the radio scripts. Original scripts have been kept for their artifactual value but access to originals is not permitted. Scrapbooks were destroyed after microfilmed since the paper was too brittle to save.

Using the collection

Location

Billy Rose Theatre Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish contact the Curator, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Access restrictions

Access restricted to microfilm except for Series I - Personal Papers.

Alternative form available

Series II. Scripts are available on microfilm; The Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; (*ZC-502)(Reels 1-10)

Series III. Clippings and columns are available on microfilm; The Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; (*ZC-502)(Reels 11-31)

Series IV. Scrapbooks are available on microfilm; The Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; (*ZC-502)(Reels 32-33)