Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator.

Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and columnist for New York tabloids.

[1] He uncovered both hard news and embarrassing stories about famous people by exploiting his exceptionally wide circle of contacts, first in the entertainment world and the Prohibition era underworld, then in law enforcement and politics.

Novels and movies were based on his wisecracking gossip columnist persona, as early as the play and film Blessed Event in 1932.

[3] He left school in the sixth grade and started performing in Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe the Newsboys Sextet, which also featured Eddie Cantor and George Jessel.

[8][9] Walter Winchell's radio-acting career included an episode of Lux Radio Theatre, when on June 28, 1937 he played the role of newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson in a one-hour adaptation of The Front Page.

[12] One indicator of his popularity was being mentioned in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 1937 song "The Lady Is a Tramp": "I follow Winchell and read every line.

"[13] Winchell was one of the first commentators in America to attack Adolf Hitler and American pro-fascist and pro-Nazi organizations such as the German-American Bund, especially its leader Fritz Julius Kuhn.

In the early 1960s, a public dispute with Jack Paar effectively ended Winchell's career—already in decline due to a shift in power from print to television.

The New York Daily Mirror, his flagship newspaper for 34 years, closed in 1963; his readership dropped steadily, and he faded from the public eye.

[23] He was not above name-calling; for example, he called New York radio host Barry Gray "Borey Pink" and a "disk jerk".

[11] For most of his career, his contracts with newspaper and radio employers required them to hold him harmless from any damages resulting from lawsuits for slander or libel.

[25] He unapologetically published material told to him in confidence by friends; when confronted over such betrayals, he typically responded, "I know—I'm just a son of a bitch.

[26] While on an American tour in 1951, Josephine Baker, who never performed before segregated audiences, criticized the Stork Club's unwritten policy of discouraging black patrons, then scolded Winchell, an old ally, for not rising to her defense.

[28] Many other columnists began to write gossip soon after Winchell's initial success, such as Ed Sullivan, who succeeded him at the New York Evening Graphic, and Louella Parsons in Los Angeles.

The couple separated a few years later, and he moved in with Elizabeth June Magee, who had already adopted daughter Gloria and given birth to her and Winchell's first child Walda in 1927.

[34] Having spent the previous two years on welfare, Walter Jr. had last been employed as a dishwasher in Santa Ana, California; for a time, he wrote a column in the Los Angeles Free Press, an underground newspaper published from 1964 to 1978.

[36] He announced his retirement on February 5, 1969, citing his son's suicide as a major reason as well as the delicate health of his companion, June Magee.

In 1940, St. Clair McKelway, who had earlier written a series of articles about him in The New Yorker, wrote in Time: the effect of Winchellism on the standards of the press...

When Winchell began gossiping in 1924 for the late scatological tabloid Evening Graphic, no U.S. paper hawked rumors about the marital relations of public figures until they turned up in divorce courts.

For 16 years, gossip columns spread until even the staid New York Times whispered that it heard from friends of a son of the President that he was going to be divorced.

In its first year, The Graphic would have considered this news not fit to print... Gossip-writing is at present like a spirochete in the body of journalism... Newspapers... have never been held in less esteem by their readers or exercised less influence on the political and ethical thought of the times.

In 1946, after the death from cancer of his close friend and fellow writer Damon Runyon, Winchell appealed to his radio audience for contributions to fight the disease.

He led the charity with the support of celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe DiMaggio, until his death from cancer in 1972.

In 1950, Ernest Lehman, a former publicity writer for Irving Hoffman of The Hollywood Reporter, wrote a story for Cosmopolitan titled "Tell Me About It Tomorrow".

The piece is about a ruthless journalist, J.J. Hunsecker, and is generally thought to be a thinly veiled commentary on the power Winchell wielded at the height of his influence.

[46] "Paar's feud with newspaper columnist Walter Winchell marked a major turning point in American media power.