The Reporter Who Knew Too Much

by Mark Shaw

  A glance at the picture above will show how far from the facts such an impression can be. For Dorothy Kilgallen is only 20-years-old… She is a modern up-to-the-minute woman reporter. With her versatile, sparkling writing and her far-beyond-her-years perception and power of observation, she can cover everything from a baby shower to a sensational police court trial.

  1 There appears to be no specific reason Kilgallen chose this pen name. Perhaps she did not want to use “Kilgallen” for fear the editor might connect her with her father.

  2 Malamud recalled Kilgallen at the time as a “unique, tall, animated, immaculately dressed woman without a chin, very careful about her physical appearance. Though visibly adorned with rouge and lipstick, it was well-applied. She had a sense of her own importance.”

  3 Eleanor Kilgallen became a casting director at NBC radio in the 1940s before launching a highly successful talent agency in New York City. Among her clients were Warren Beatty, Jack Klugman, Robert Redford, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Harrison Ford. Eleanor was 95 when she died in December 2014.

  CHAPTER 2

  At age 21 in 1934, Dorothy Kilgallen covered the infamous Anna Antonio murder-for-hire trial. Prosecutors said the slight Italian woman paid drug dealers $800 to kill her husband, Salvatore. Motive: a $5,300 life insurance policy.

  Kilgallen’s front-page story announced the guilty verdict. She included quotes from those upset when the jury pronounced a death sentence for “Little Anna.” Last-minute appeals to save her proved fruitless. Kilgallen reported the gory details of the Sing Sing prison electrocution.

  Despite her youth and inexperience, Evening Journal editors praised Kilgallen’s articles. Kilgallen was not only a gifted wordsmith, but more importantly, had a knack for understanding the legal system like a seasoned lawyer. Her storytelling acumen and talent for focusing on critical aspects of trials set her apart from other reporters. It caused those in the newsroom to realize Jim Kilgallen’s daughter had a bright future.

  Kilgallen and her sister Eleanor relax at the swanky Beverly Hills, California, Copa Club (circa 1935).

  As 1935 dawned with a frigid winter storm, Kilgallen got her big break when she was assigned to cover a murder case dubbed by the media, “The Trial of the Century.” Prosecutors charged German-born Bruno Hauptmann with kidnapping and killing famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son. Kilgallen sat directly behind Hauptman during one court session. After prosecutors entered into evidence the ladder used during the kidnapping, the baby-faced Kilgallen tapped Hauptman on the shoulder. She asked him about the ladder. Despite being impressed with her gumption, he told her his lawyers forbid him to talk to the press.

  Although pleased with Kilgallen’s trial coverage, Evening Journal editors decided to head her in an alternative direction. Despite no experience, she began writing a newspaper column, Hollywood Scene. It mixed entertainment with serious issues.

  While Kilgallen explored a new writing style for the column, she campaigned for a special challenge. After hours of urging, Kilgallen convinced her boss to enter her in the heralded “Race Around the World.” Competitors were required to employ methods of transportation only available to the public during the globetrotting excursion.

  Kilgallen’s competitors for the trip were two New York newspaper reporters: Bud Ekins of the World Telegram and Leo Kieran of the New York Times. Displaying her resourcefulness, Kilgallen managed to obtain 16 visas and a passport in two days. Her only baggage was a converted hatbox and battered typewriter.

  Dorothy Kilgallen, Bud Ekins, and Leo Kieran entering the “The Race Around the World.”

  During the race, Kilgallen, who finished second to Ekins, was referred to as a “modern day Nellie Bly.” Aware of the historical aspects of her adventure, Kilgallen wrote, “Nellie Bly, watch over me. You may be astonished at what you see—but, watch anyway.”4

  Flights on the German dirigible Hindenburg,5 Nazi Swastikas visible on its sides, Pan America’s China Clipper, and several other airlines permitted Kilgallen to make the trip in 24 days, 13 hours, and 51 minutes. Among the countries she visited were England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Iraq, India, the Philippines, and China. When the Hindenburg landed in Berlin, “250 Nazis were drawn up in military arrays to jockey it into her huge gray hanger.”

  Ever the pioneer, the young daredevil had become the first woman to travel around the world on commercial airlines. She was also the first female to fly across the Pacific Ocean. At one point the fearless Kilgallen6 set a record for the fastest 5,000-mile span ever flown, Hawaii to New York City.

  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt7 congratulated Kilgallen on her achievement. Women across America including famed aviator Amelia Earhart cheered the young reporter’s feat. She was famous at last, just as promised early on with several newspapers lauding her willingness to carry the banner for women’s rights by challenging the two men.

  Soon after, Kilgallen wrote Girl Around the World, chronicling the amazing adventure. It was her first published book. She was only 23 years old.

  In the Foreword called “A Tribute from Dorothy’s Father,” Jim wrote:

  I am proud of you. Not because you were a good newspaperwoman at 18. Not because you have become famous at 23 by flying around the world. I am proud of you because, now that your greatest journalistic achievement is over and the plaudits have died down, you are the same unspoiled girl you have always been. Today your future looms bright. I believe your success is assured…[You have given me] the thrill of a lifetime…[and] you proved you had what Damon Runyon termed ‘moxie’—COURAGE….

  In the book, Kilgallen trumpeted her willingness to take chances. She wrote, “I’m a reporter who likes danger and excitement.”

  Enjoying her new celebrity, Kilgallen visited Hollywood to collect gossip about film and television for her Evening Journal column. In a prelude to her ever-widening media exposure, she appeared in the movie, Sinner Take All. It starred Bruce Cabot and featured him as a former newspaper reporter turned lawyer representing a family whose members kept “getting bumped off.” Apparently, Kilgallen’s acting ability was impressive enough that she screen-tested for a film role in The Reporter. When no offer came her way, she sulked over the rejection.

  At Warner Bros., Kilgallen presented producers with a screenplay based on her around-the-world adventures as chronicled in Girl Around the World. It was produced as Fly Away Baby in 1937 starring Glenda Farrell as Kilgallen. She did not have a role in the comedy/adventure. The film credits included “Based on an idea by Dorothy Kilgallen.”

  Not yet 24, Kilgallen’s résumé was ever blossoming. She not only was a respected reporter and a columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper but also an author with acting and film credits. To say that she had burst on the scene from virtually nowhere was an understatement. Louis Sobol, a fellow reporter at the Journal-American, wrote of Kilgallen’s world at the time: “This slender, wide-eyed, deceivingly naïve in attitude and soft-spoken mannerisms female reporter was to herself mingling with a new set of characters—racket guys, grafters, phonies, creep janes, society fops, chorus girls, pimps, overdressed jezebels and their rent payers.”

  Sobel, commenting on Kilgallen’s appearance at a theater opening, wrote, “Out of a streamlined, shiny chariot stepped a fragile, raven-haired honey…A thinnish youth with bat-ears and pop-eyes and a Tenth Avenue subdeb fought each other to be at her side. ‘Willya sign this, Miss Kilgallen?’ pleaded the boy thrusting out his soiled autograph album…” Sobel added, “She still goes to church on Sundays, blushes when profanity is set loose within her hearing, and walks away from obscene stories.”

  Meanwhile, the column titled “Hollywood Scene as Seen by Dorothy Kilgallen,” (later changed to “As Seen in Hollywood by Dorothy Kilgallen”) appeared in the Evening Journal. In 1937, that newspaper and the New York American merged into the New York Journal-American, an afternoon edition. Dip
ping into the entertainment world, a prize assignment permitted Kilgallen to cover the wedding of FDR Jr. to Ethel Du Pont. She then traveled to England and attended the coronation of George VI. She also made her debut in London Society at various high-profile events.

  During the Christmas holidays, a surprise announcement appeared in Hearst newspapers across the country:

  The first and only Woman Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen’s Voice of Broadway Column Starts Monday. A Man’s Job. Beginning Monday in the New York Journal-American, Dorothy Kilgallen will Report Daily on the Deeds and Misdeeds of Broadway. A Man’s Job. But Dorothy has been doing a Man’s Job and Doing It Better.

  The new Journal-American column, “The Voice of Broadway,” dealt with the news and gossip of the day, theater, politics, and crime. Kilgallen’s main competition were all men—Walter Winchell, Ed Sullivan, Lucius Beebe, and Leonard Lyons.8

  At the height of its popularity, the column appeared in 200 newspapers nationwide. Kilgallen’s prominence as a woman reporter with spunk caused the audience for the column to increase weekly. At twenty-five, she was the only prominent female Broadway columnist. One magazine called her an “authentic celebrity.”

  The lofty status continued as her “Voice of Broadway” column became even more popular. Of significance was a column item she wrote in late summer 1939: “Richard Kollmar, Knickerbocker Holiday [Broadway show] baritone, gave a combination New Year’s Eve and birthday party Saturday night, to which guests were asked to come in kiddie costumes.”

  Who was this man with such a strange sense of humor, Kilgallen wondered? She soon found out.

  4 Nellie Bly, the pen name for Elizabeth Cochrane, was a revered writer who invented a new type of investigative journalism and who at one point faked insanity to report on a mental institution from inside its walls. She was famous for an 1889 record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days.

  5 Ekins recalled the scene when Kilgallen arrived to board the Hindenburg: “She was in a big black limousine with detectives on both sides of her, and behind her were two or three newspaper trucks filled with bruisers from the circulation department. They made damn sure she got on the ship.”

  6 Marguerite Mooers Marshall, a noted writer at the time, described Kilgallen in an article she wrote: “She is the most daisy-fresh globe-girdler I ever hope to see—and so much prettier than even the best pictures of her printed in the Evening Journal. Her little features are cut with cameo delicacy, her skin has the lucent pallor of white lilac, her Irish eyes are not only smiling, but sea-blue and black-lashed, her dark hair, parted in the middle, is arranged in a most artful series of curls and purrs—not a hair out of place.”

  7 Mrs. Roosevelt wrote on White House stationery (October 26, 1936), “I have been so interested in your flight around the world with the men and even though I am sure you are disappointed in not being the first to arrive, I wanted to tell you that I was rather pleased to have a woman go! It took a good deal of pluck and it must have held a good many thrills. With congratulations and good wishes, I am. Very sincerely yours, Eleanor Roosevelt” with the signature in her own hand.

  8 Later, Kilgallen’s friend, CBS producer Marlon Swing, said of her, “Dorothy developed her own style and forcefully went into the man’s world. Her main focus was crime and heavy duty investigation.”

  CHAPTER 3

  During the days that followed, Dorothy Kilgallen’s “Voice of Broadway” columns favorably mentioned Richard Kollmar.

  Then Kilgallen met the man who played “Boston Blackie” in the radio crime drama. It happened on a sunlit but chilly November 14, 1939 at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel. Kilgallen later recalled that Richard, Broadway handsome, remarked about an unusual hat she was wearing. Conversation led to them realizing they both loved jazz bandleader Artie Shaw and his music. On their first date, that night, they went to hear Shaw and his band. Kilgallen swore, “It wasn’t love at first sight” but after six dates the engagement was announced.

  On April 5, 1940, the twenty-seven-year-old Kilgallen married the thirty-year-old graduate of the Yale Dramatic School turned singer and Broadway producer. After Richard appeared in the musical Too Many Girls, Variety called him “an exuberant comedian unspoiled by cleverness.”

  Richard Kollmar

  Among the 800 wedding guests were Tyrone Power, Ethel Merman, Walter Huston, and Milton Berle. Thomas Dewey, the 1944 Republican presidential candidate who lost to FDR, also attended. Kilgallen did not become Mrs. Richard Kollmar to the outside world. Instead, she kept her maiden name.

  Meanwhile, Kilgallen’s “Voice of Broadway” column continued to mix Broadway and Hollywood gossip with politics and crime news. Ed Sullivan, whose CBS variety program had become a big hit, was a constant target of Kilgallen’s. Sullivan said she was jealous because he became a television star and she had not done so. Finally, the two rivals made peace.

  Like Sullivan, Kilgallen, who scribbled notes for her column on matchbook covers, had become a true New York City celebrity. She even had a sandwich named after her at Reuben’s, a noted delicatessen on East 58th Street. The cost was $1.10. It was 25 cents more than the “Ed Sullivan Sandwich.” Nearly two decades later, the sandwich, described as “Tongue, Turkey, Broiled French Roll” cost $2.50. It was listed along with sandwiches named after Ginger Rogers, Jack Benny, Orson Wells, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. Frank’s cost $2.15.

  While Kilgallen continued to expand her reach, she and Richard lived on Park Avenue. The news-making couple welcomed the arrival of their first child, Richard Tomkins Kollmar II (“Dickie”). The announcement appeared in Maury Paul’s “Cholly Knickerbocker” Journal-American column on July 11, 1941.

  Meanwhile, Kilgallen added to her budding media empire. She hosted a Voice of Broadway radio program broadcast nationally. Her distinctive voice and easy manner made her a natural for delivering the entertainment news of the day.

  Exposing her patriotic nature during the month when Winston Churchill launched his “V for Victory” campaign, Kilgallen sent FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover subversive material forwarded to her at the Journal-American. One note alleged that she played favors to the “Soviet Marxist Jews” through her “daily hate of Hitler.” In her FBI file secured by this author through the Freedom of Information Act, Kilgallen was labeled, “flighty and irresponsible.” Later, Hoover and the Bureau would learn a valuable lesson. She was neither.

  In 1943, amidst the juggling of her various professions, Kilgallen delivered her second child, Jill Ellen Elizabeth Kollmar. Kilgallen’s “Voice of Broadway” column was ever popular especially with the addition of a section called “Tops in Town.” It recommended theatrical and club performances to readers. Ever-expanding her media presence, she penned an article for Photoplay Magazine titled, “The Ten Most Attractive Men in Hollywood.” Humphrey Bogart, of whom Kilgallen wrote, “He represents love in bloom in a furnished room with fire escapes,” finished first. Ronald Reagan was #3, while Cary Grant and Clark Gable were numbers 5 and 10, respectively.

  Since Kilgallen’s column appeared during the era without extensive television coverage or internet, people mostly relied on newspapers for their news and opinion. Kilgallen’s visibility had made her a powerhouse.9 From her lofty perch as a giant of the industry, she suddenly had the ability to influence a career in a positive or negative way with her words. All the while Kilgallen continued to be enamored with crime stories.

  The 1944 trial of Wayne Lonergan fascinated Kilgallen, now 31. Prosecutors said he murdered his high society wife Patricia, heir to a beer fortune. A pair of silver candelabra was the alleged murder weapon.

  Focusing on the wealth of the couple, Kilgallen became a daily visitor to the trial. As a preview to a knack for receiving inside information before or during trial, Kilgallen revealed a secretive defense strategy. It focused on the sordid past of Patricia’s father, Bill Burt
on. This exclusive was one of many Kilgallen achieved. Sources knew they could trust her. They chose her instead of more seasoned reporters.

  When the trial ended, Kilgallen reported the 35 years-to-life sentence for Lonergan. She wrote that his confession became the main reason for the conviction. Kilgallen added that it was a case “involving love, hate, jealousy, the scandalous behavior of the young ‘cafe society’10 set of New York, and a $7 million fortune.”

  Within months, Kilgallen was yet again increasing her media exposure. The opportunity arrived on the New York City scene in early April 1945.

  To the delight of New Yorkers, “Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick” premiered on WOR radio. Airing Monday through Saturday starting at 8:15 a.m., the show was exactly what a Variety ad called it, “Homey as a Front Porch Rocker, Smart as a New Spring Bonnet.” Showcased were Dorothy, husband Richard, the Kollmar children, butler Julius and the family’s singing canary, Yasha (some reports called the canary Robin). The radio program remained on the air for 18 years, from 1945 until 1963.

  Each program, one was hosted from the famous Plaza Hotel, began with the salutations, “Good morning, Darling,” from Dorothy, with Richard responding, “Good Morning, Sweetie. Here we are at home in old New York ready to visit with our radio friends.” At one point, the show was so popular those mailing the couple merely used the address “Dorothy and Dick, New York.” They received the letters.

  During the show, the family sat around the dining room table oftentimes in their pajamas. They chatted about the theater scene, celebrity parties, gossip du jour, and trendy Manhattan nightspots. During commercials, they pitched sponsor products. Kilgallen’s friend, press agent Jean Bach called the twosome, “The original Mr. and Mrs. Radio.”