The 40s: The Story of a Decade

by The New Yorker Magazine

  Winchell believes, with some justification, that practically everybody reads his column every day. If, in conversation, he wishes to refer to something he has written, he says, for example, “The item on the Brooklyn spy scare. Well, listen. Thursday night I called up Hoover,” etc. A friend of Winchell’s once admitted he had not seen the column on a certain Tuesday. Winchell wanted to know with sincere concern if the friend had been ill. Another time another friend returned to New York after a trip abroad. “Jeez, Walter,” he said, “I sure did miss the column. I didn’t see it for two whole weeks.” “That’s all right,” said Winchell. “You can go over to the Mirror office tomorrow and look at the files.”

  · · ·

  A great many people, meeting Winchell for the first time in some restaurant or night club, have exclaimed afterward, “Say, he isn’t such a bad guy!” This is understandable. Winchell has a peculiarly bewitching personality. He has a lean face, full of alertness, with an expression of questing intelligence like a fox terrier’s. His eyes are blue and hard. He is consistently lively and restless; it is impossible to imagine him in repose. He has an enormous nervous energy, and the experience of watching him burn it up extravagantly is stimulating and sometimes touching. What he says may be uninteresting in itself, but his voice and manner are charged with an inner excitement which is communicable. One of his phrase-making friends calls him “a thrilling bore.” When he is not talking, he sits forward with his head raised unnaturally in an attitude of intense awareness. His heel is apt to beat quick time on the floor like a swing musician’s, his gaze roves ceaselessly over the room, and his hands go on little fruitless expeditions over the tablecloth, up and down the lapels of his coat, in and out of his pockets. In a gathering of ten or twelve at a place like Lindy’s or the Stork Club, he appears to listen to the general conversation with only half an ear, but that is enough. If something is mentioned that will make an item for his column, he will say, “I can use that,” and will take out a pencil and notebook and write it down. Having responsibilities which far exceed those of the ordinary journalist, he usually carries a notebook instead of a sheaf of copy paper. He is left-handed, and this makes him look especially intense and painstaking when he is writing something down. At all times he gives the impression of being hungry, of being incessantly in want. In a man of such vitality this is an appealing quality. It is possible for a person to have an entirely unselfish impulse to give Winchell something.

  Winchell has a certain integrity, as well as a number of codes all his own. He is as magnificently eccentric in thought as he is in action. He is ashamed of nothing he does. He uses his column at times as an instrument of personal revenge, but he does this as straightforwardly as a cave man would swing a club. “I let him have it three days later,” he will say evenly, in recalling what he wrote about some person who had slighted or insulted him. He is naturally aggressive and is always on the offensive. There is nothing apologetic or cringing in his nature. He has a childlike pride in his success and he makes no bones about it. He is fully conscious of the damage a casual item in his column can do to persons he has no wish to hurt. He seems to be mellowing. It is a process like the aging of granite and is perceptible to people who have been acquainted with him for years. Lately he has been known to writhe in honest agony when the painful consequences of one of his own items are pointed out to him. To a small degree he literally suffers with those he wounds. His attitude on this curious state of affairs seems to be based on the belief that the appearance of such items in his column is as inexorable as fate. “What could I do?” he will say passionately. “It was a good item, wasn’t it?” Thus he continues to print gossip about the marital relations of people who have not applied for divorce, he does not hesitate to hint at homosexual tendencies in local male residents, and he reports from time to time attempted suicides which otherwise would not be made public. He believes that if a thing is true, or even half true, it is material for his column, no matter how private or personal it may be. He makes one exception to this rule. He claims that he never knowingly reports on extra-marital relationships if he knows the marriage is a happy one. This is pointed to with pride by Winchell’s greatest admirers as being generous and downright decent.

  It is true that Winchell has seen married men and women dallying with persons of the opposite sex in night clubs and has withheld this information from the public. In such cases he has known, or has been told, that the marriage of the person concerned seems to be a happy one. If he knows, or has been told, that the marriage is pretty much on the rocks anyway, he feels justified in printing an item about the dallying. There are times, too, of course, when he just doesn’t know, or hasn’t been told, that the person concerned is married at all. “I can’t be expected to know everything,” he has said in defending himself when a harmful item of this sort has appeared in his column. Winchell’s reason for suppressing items which he knows might upset a happy marriage seems to be purely personal. “I’m a married man,” he says. “Where would I be if somebody printed something about my taking a dame out?”

  Winchell makes an effort to check some items with certain more or less fortunate people to find out whether the item will do them any particular harm. These people are usually relatively prominent ones whom Winchell has met and has not taken a dislike to. Sometimes they are called to the telephone by Winchell’s secretary, who introduces herself with understandable assurance and says something like “We understand you are sort of crazy about So-and-So. Have you any objection to our printing it?” If the celebrity has what seems to him a legitimate objection, he explains what it is to the secretary and the item is usually not published. This gives the person concerned a feeling of gratitude toward Winchell, coupled with a sensation of general insecurity. Sometimes, even if someone has asked that an item be suppressed, Winchell decides that the request is unreasonable and goes ahead and prints it anyway. Under these circumstances he is apt to accuse the person later of having tried to take advantage of his journalistic ethics. Winchell has been disillusioned many times in thus striving for accuracy and fair play. He cites numerous cases in which both parties to a disintegrating marriage have denied that they were going to separate and have persuaded him to withhold an item saying that they were, and then, without warning, have filed suit for divorce. “You try to play square with people like that,” he complains bitterly, “and they lie to you. It burns me up.”

  Although Winchell prides himself on his accuracy, he fears libel suits and refuses to accept the financial responsibility for libellous items in his column or in his radio program. Some years ago an indignant citizen, a carpenter who, Winchell said in one radio talk, had sat on the end of a tree limb and sawed it off, sued him for libel, claiming injury to his professional reputation. Winchell was asked by his sponsors to share the attorneys’ fees, court costs, and a small settlement granted the carpenter. Winchell refused to do this. He demanded that a clause be inserted in his radio contract providing that the sponsors defend and if necessary settle all libel suits which might result from his broadcasts. The sponsors gave in. Then Winchell asked the Mirror to put a similar clause in its contract with him. The Mirror agreed. Only three or four people since then have worked themselves up to the point of indignation achieved by the carpenter.

  · · ·

  Winchell writes his column and prepares the script for his Sunday-night radio broadcast at home. He employs two secretaries, who work in an office at the Mirror, which he rarely visits. He keeps in touch with his secretaries mostly by telephone. His column goes to press around six in the evening, soon after he wakes up, and at that time he may make last-minute changes by telephone. Then he starts on the column which will go to press the next evening. His mail, which is stupendous in size and variety of subject matter, is sent to him by a messenger around 6 p.m., and he gets a great part of his material from that. He spends several hours going through it and selecting items which he will use in the column he is preparing. He is practically incommunicado du
ring this period and his secretaries call him only on extremely urgent business. He scribbles replies on letters he wishes to answer, then they are sent back to the Mirror office and the secretaries work on them the next day. He does not pay for items.

  Winchell does not often go to night clubs any more, except for the Stork Club. The Stork Club serves as an outside office. He arrives there almost every night around eleven o’clock, having prepared the major part of his column from his mail. He is usually at the Stork Club until four or five in the morning. After that he drives around in his car for a while and then goes home, finishes his column, sends it to the Mirror office, and goes to sleep around 9 or 10 A.M. While he is asleep, the column is set up in type and proofs are sent to King Features Syndicate, the Hearst syndicate organization, where it is edited for out-of-town papers. Most of the changes are made in possibly libellous items. Winchell accepts this editing without protest. A lawyer employed by the Mirror also reads a proof and makes changes or deletions which he thinks may prevent libel suits.

  At the Stork Club, Winchell takes telephone calls from persons he wishes to speak to and receives personally some of the many people who are always wanting to see him, ranging from celebrities and politicians to chorus girls with a complaint about labor conditions. Sometimes he sees them in the Stork Club barbershop and sometimes at a table just inside the entrance. While he is there, the barbershop may be reached only by persons whom Winchell wishes to see. It is in a loft building next door and has two entrances—through the front of the loft building and through a passage from the club. In the club he orders captains of waiters about in a proprietary manner, and although there has been a rumor for years that he has a financial interest in the place, he says he hasn’t. His friend Sherman Billingsley, proprietor of the Stork Club, says the same thing, adding that Winchell’s frequent mentions of the place in his column have had much to do with its success and that he is grateful to Winchell and friendly with him. “That rat!” Mr. Billingsley exclaimed to some table companions recently when Winchell, in spite of their friendship and the fact that Billingsley is still married, linked his name with that of a musical-comedy star. But he managed to conquer his irritation before he saw Winchell later that evening.

  When sitting at his table, surrounded by three or four friends, with perhaps one bodyguard in the offing, Winchell may listen to a reformer from Atlantic City who believes his efforts to clean up the resort will be successful only if he has Winchell’s support, or to a hysterical admirer who tiptoes up and says, as if making a speech, “I want to shake your hand, Walter. I think you are a great man and America’s most valuable citizen.” Winchell shakes the hand. Such tributes are frequent. People sit at the Stork Club bar for hours waiting for Winchell to come in so that they may have the opportunity to compliment him. Many of them are sincere, and have no axes to grind. Occasionally the pleasure Winchell receives from the outbursts of enthusiasm is dulled by an afterthought which the admirer expresses as he bows himself away, such as “I’m a tenor. So-and-So’s the name,” or “I’m at Loew’s State this week. Song and dance. So-and-So’s the name.” Winchell deplores sycophancy of this sort and never rewards such a person with a mention in his column, even a scandalous one. Then there are the bold ones at the Stork Club, such as the débutante who one night slipped over and grabbed Winchell’s bread when he was eating his supper. “A bet,” she said demurely, and skipped off. Late at night, a literary relationship between Winchell and Leonard Lyons, gossip man for the Post, is apt to be revealed. It is comparable to Conrad’s paternal friendship for Stephen Crane. Lyons, who is Winchell’s protégé, not a rival, the Post being an afternoon paper and his “Lyons Den” gossip column being also syndicated by Hearst, appears unobtrusively from somewhere and says, “Walter, may I check a gag?” “O.K.,” says the veteran. Lyons then recites an anecdote which he intends to pass on to his readers the next day. If it is old or sour, in Winchell’s opinion, he advises Lyons to throw it out. If not, he says “O.K.” a second time and Lyons goes happily back to his job of hopping from table to table, looking for gossip and gags.

  · · ·

  Winchell has been described in the New York press as “Broadway’s Greatest Scribe,” “Boyfriend of Broadway,” “Little Boy Peep,” and “The Bard of Broadway.” He prefers the last. His friends sometimes refer to him as The Brain and The King. He is unable to decide which of these is his favorite. He is like a king in many ways but not in others. Edmund Burke once asserted that “kings are naturally lovers of low company.” His general argument was that the status of a king is so much higher than that of the next greatest dignitary that the difference between the highest and the lowest non-kings is slight, from a king’s point of view. A king, according to Burke, is irritated by the more consequential non-kings because they feel a responsibility for his behavior, frown at his vices, and try to make him go straight. He therefore consorts with lowly folk who flatter and amuse him. Although Winchell is sought after by many prominent people, he usually shakes them off an hour or two after midnight and hobnobs with mediocre newspaper reporters and undistinguished theatrical folk. He feels more at ease with them. On the other hand, kings, throughout history, have made a habit of putting aside their public personalities and going around incognito. Presidents have shown a similar weakness. Both Wilson and Coolidge used to slip away from the Secret Service men and take walks by themselves, revelling in anonymity. If Winchell has ever had such impulses, he has suppressed them resolutely. He seems to have no desire to get away from himself. When he goes to Miami Beach in the winter he always stops at the Roney Plaza, where everybody knows him. For years he spent his summer vacations hanging around night clubs and restaurants in town. Two summers ago, his wife having persuaded him to buy a house in Westchester, he discovered and endorsed the country, but in his summer home he sleeps all day in an air-conditioned room kept dark by lightproof blinds and usually comes to town every night whether he has to do so professionally or not. Occasionally, driving around after midnight with friends, he plays a sort of reverse version of the incognito game, the object being to see how soon he will be recognized in a public place off the beaten track. Almost anywhere in town he is recognized by somebody within a few minutes. If he is not, it is his custom to say to a bartender or waiter, “I’m Walter Winchell.” In no time the place is in a hubbub, and Winchell leaves.

  Once, not long ago, Winchell and a friend stopped for some coffee at an unpretentious roadside restaurant in lower Westchester. Nobody was in the place but a slatternly girl working behind the counter. She did not recognize Winchell and looked at him sourly, as if he were just a man buying a cup of coffee. Halfway through his coffee, Winchell winked at his friend and then drew the girl into conversation.

  “Do you read the Mirror?” he asked.

  “Nah,” she said. “I take the News.”

  “Ever listen to the radio?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ever listen to Ben Bernie or Walter Winchell?”

  “Nah,” said the girl. “What I really like is Hawaiian music.”

  Winchell and his friend left the place without further talk. As they got into the car, Winchell said, “Can you imagine that dumb biddy?” Later, as they drove along, Winchell suddenly said “Huh!” The friend asked him what he meant by this. “I was just thinking about that dumb biddy,” Winchell said. “Can you imagine it?”

  FROM

  Janet Flanner

  DECEMBER 13/20, 1941 (ON THOMAS MANN)

  For forty years, Thomas Mann has endured the singular experience of being regularly described, while still alive, in terms usually reserved for the exceptional dead. In a half-dozen languages he has been called a genius, a modern classic, Germany’s noblest novelist, and, occasionally, one of the immortal literary figures of all countries, of all time. In the King’s English of the book critics of London, the only literate capital where he has never caught on, he has also been described, less conventionally, as heavy weather. Before Hitler orde
red Mann’s political books to be burned, German spokesmen, with their special racial passion for altitude, had solemnly lifted Mann’s major fictional works to the rank of Faust, Pilgrim’s Progress, The Divine Comedy, and, as a final tribute, Beethoven’s ninth symphony. A couple of months ago a Nazi radio commentator simply pegged him under the head of “degenerate Western literature.” By his New York publisher, Alfred Knopf, Mann is professionally presented as “the greatest living man of letters,” a carefully composed selling slogan with a fine, chiselled touch applicable to a public statue. By Mann’s few friends, less numerous than the members of his own large family, it has been stated as a natural law that “one speaks of him with the reverence he deserves.” Thus they speak of him reverently, though they also call him Tommy. His children, of whom there are six, cheerfully refer to him, beyond his hearing, as the Master.

  Thomas Mann, now sixty-six years old and on his thirty-first book, began being exactly what he is today when he was twenty-five and had just completed his first novel. Mann’s youth and age, gauged by the interior and the exterior of his impressive head, seem peculiarly interchangeable, because both his work and his physiognomy started by being mature and have remained perfectly preserved. Mann’s first opus, Buddenbrooks, a quarter-million-word, two-volume biographical account of the melancholy decline of three earlier generations of very rich merchant Manns, was written by the young author as a private performance, to read aloud to his less opulent family to amuse them after dinner. However, it was the Buddenbrook family’s sad, sure sense of social insecurity, felt as Europe’s newly industrialized eighteen-hundreds ended, which made the novel, when published, Germany’s first disturbing national classic of the nineteen-hundreds. Its sales eventually reached 1,300,000 copies, making it the biggest best-seller, next to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, of pre-Hitler Europe. “It was fame,” as Mann himself commented a few years ago in his privately printed A Sketch of My Life, employing that lenslike literary manner he invented as a young man in order to view himself with magnified detachment. “I was snatched up into a whirl of success. My mailbag was swollen, money flowed in streams, my picture appeared in the papers, a hundred pens made copy of the product of my secluded hours, the world embraced me amid congratulations and shouts of praise.… Society took me up—in so far as I let it, for in this respect society has never been very successful.”