Walter J. Kingsley papers

1899-1935

Walter J. Kingsley was an American press agent and journalist. He reported for the New York Telegraph and for the London Daily Express before beginning his career as a press agent in the 1900s. From the 1910s until 1928, Kingsley was the general press representative for United Booking Offices and B.F. Keith theaters in New York. In 1928, he became press representative for Florenz Ziegfeld. The Walter J. Kingsley papers date from 1899 to 1935 and contains clippings, correspondence, and photographs and caricatures of Kingsley. Most of the material is mounted in scrapbooks, but some is loose. The first scrapbook in the collection documents Kingsley's early work as a journalist, notably his reporting on Alberto Santos-Dumont's dirigible flights in 1901. The scrapbook also documents a hoax that Kingsley orchestrated that same year, in which he convinced many American newspapers that a British syndicate had wagered $150,000 against a Pittsburgh syndicate over the outcome of a yacht race. Scrapbooks dating from the 1910s to the 1920s contain Kingsley's articles on the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit and other entertainment topics, as well as his writings on being a publicist and his published poems (often on entertainment topics). Kingsley's name appeared frequently in newspapers, and the scrapbooks contain many articles about his activities, including theater-related anecdotes and his involvement in the Manhattan Cheese Club in the 1920s. Materials dating after Kingsley's death in 1929 include letters to his widow, Francesca Carmen, poems by his daughter Gloria Kathleen Kingsley, and a comedy sketch by his daughter from his first marriage, screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley. The collection includes a manuscript of an unpublished biography of Kingsley by Edward Morley Barrows. The biography spans Kingsley's whole career, including his time covering the Russo-Japanese War for the Daily Mail under the pen name "Stephen England," and his work as a war correspondent during the Boer War. The collection also contains poems signed by Edwin Markham, a letter sent to the Daily Express in 1900 by a representative of Markham's, and a biographical pamphlet about Markham.