Walter Winchell (1960)

Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972), an American newspaper and radio commentator, invented the gossip column at the New York Evening Graphic.

Attributed

• A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
• Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.
• Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

Quotes about Winchell

• At the height of his popularity, in the late 1930s, 50 million people—two-thirds of American adults—read Winchell's syndicated column and listened to his Sunday-night radio broadcast.
  • Sam Kashner in "Sweet Smell of Success: A Movie Marked Danger". Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood. 

• Hated, feared, and revered, he presided over Table 50 of the Stork Club on East 53d Street in Manhattan, creating and destroying celebrities at the drop of his trademark gray snap-brim fedora.
  • Mervyn Rothstein: (12 June 1990)"That Loathsome Winchell. A Natural for a Book". NY Times. (review of Walter Winchell: A Novel by Michael Herr)

External links