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The Southern I
SPAEUTE
Broadway's Greatest Scribe
A Self-Portrait
By WALTER WINCHELL
A» Told to Meyer F. SteingUus
I nt rod net ion
,, w York’s newspaperman of
and his Monday column in
Mirror, containing news
•lured by an underground in-
n system of his own design.
Moving to the other dailies
amazing to his enthusiasts,
nlly perhaps but surely jus-
does his paper advertise:
ssip of today—the headlines
morrow.” All this fearless
astintf of scoops involving im
personalities he sets up,
rtow r, in a slanguage invariably
pictlire - -«|tie and very often ingen-
and brilliant, To illustrate: to
in Winchell’s argot is to
middle-aisle it,” “ankle up the al-
"get welded.” When young
linns are in love they are merely
wa\ about each other.” Di-
. ,n ine i- now widely referred to as
"having it Reno-vated,” while “to
r.trrv a mess of torch,” Mr. Win-
In 1! will have us know r , is simply
his way of saying that one has a
passion for somebody or something.
Throughout his lingo is predomi
nantly euphemistic. His columns
are run by more than a hundred
papers all over the country.
The evening we marched into his
cage" Walter Winchell was ner
vously pecking away at a type-
Monday, and he was to speak
• wer the radio within the next hour
irnl a half. Wouldn’t we please ex-
him? The copy finished, he
into the coat of his white linen
d we were on our way to the
barber shop. “I have to meet
arroll at the station very soon,
e to get a shave.”
- triangular face bearded with
e reminisced of his past as a
c hoofer. But there were the
tions of the rattling, clatter-
tliat passed intermittently
while the barber’s razor
rce his mouth shut suddenly,
concern for the continuity of
He continued in the taxi to
udeasting station. His hands
the air in the gestures gener-
ned Yiddish. His bluish gray
med with an intense expres-
The core of him seemed to
bis angular, jagged, jazzy per-
It must surely have been the
-and-dance man in him.
radio studio the interview was
: P where it had been broken
•ing up and down to ask for
rroll or her husband, helloing
>n and that, he would occa-
resume his tale in a tenor of
ncation. At times it was un-
• clear that he was seeking
K of approval, a paternal pat-
—M. F. S.
tine
chine gun, and when the smoke cleared
away I was a newspaper man celeb
with an income of about 75,000 shekels
a year.
No rag went into an extra edition
CIO
l/Lp
re knows Broadway
better than any other man alive.
And he gets $75,000 a year to
let America in on the know.
Enemies call him "Vulgar Vin-
chell ; friends know him as the
straightest shooter on America's
crookedest street. He writes for
a hundred leading American
papers and for a score of maga
zines. What he dosen’t know
about celebrities isn’t worth tell
ing. Here we have Walter Win
chell in a new mood—that of
gossip about himself. From
hoofer to America’s foremost
columnist—that is his path.
But let him tell you the story
himself.—THE EDITOR.
-Valter Winchell’. Story
»a$t
cess
ne breaks. Things happened
happened in rapid-fire suc-
1,ke the rat-tat-tat of a ma
the day I was born. I)o I have to say
that there are many persons who arc
plenty sorry it had to happen? And
that’s not the laff of it. Only a few
days ago a Chicago mug tried to bull
doze me into eternity or some spot
near it. He called up on the telephone
—said something about being flat
broke. He needed money, and wouldn’t
I be the sweet philanthropist and meet
him at a corner—any corner wouldn't
do; he supplied his own—and give him
the price of several thousand cups of
Java. To give his invitation the come-
hither flavor he explained politely that
he had something on me, something
that wouldn’t help me a great deal if
it was front-paged. I promised I’d keep
the appointment, although I don't gen
erally like to make appointments, and
of course I would not forget the gelt.
Well, I was too busy to meet the
stranger from the West. But some
body else did. Two sissies met him,
and since then I don’t know what be
came of the yegg.
That’s one of the rewards of the
kind of reporting I practice. They call
me a “notorious gossip". They accuse
me of violating everybody’s confidence
and making strictly private affairs pub
lic. The big idea is to get the news
before the other guy as often as pos
sible. News always leaks. I can’t prom
ise people I won’t print it. "His gossip
of today—the headlines of tomorrow!”
Yeah? Then I make no promises.
Under no conditions will I disgrace
myself with a defense of my racket.
The phrase, “disgrace by defense,”
incidentally, has a history. About ten
years ago, while I was touring in
vaudeville, someone back-stage made
a smart-Alecky reference to Jews.
There are many persons, it seems, who
resent a Jewish name except in philan
thropists. I’m a Hebe myself, you
know-, and the remark had a sting. I
flared up and got into a scrap which
cooked up a big rumpus.
Several days later I received a letter
from a notable Jew: ‘T’ve heard about
the quarrel in which you tried to de
fend your race, but you were bested
chiefly because you didn’t know what
you were talking about. It is not good
for Jews like you to disgrace us with
a defense. It would be more to the
honor of Jews if you didn’t make oth
ers look ridiculous; you arc not what
is known as a Jew.”
I was painfully ashamed. Beyond
the smattering of Jewish history re
quired for the Bar Mitzvah my Jewish
ness was no more than intuitive, for
after confirmation I had never again
crossed the threshold of a synagogue.
Much as the note hurt me, it was
fully justified.
But the next time I knew better.
Have you ever had lunch with Ku
Klux Klati officials? You should.
You’d get some inside dope on the
Jews. It’s great excitement—if you live
through it. Willy-nilly I found myself
sitting at the same table with four
Kluxers from Oklahoma—because the
president of the home-town white
sheet organization, who was too de
cent a fellow to take the whole busi
ness any more seriously than a young
Walter Winched
sters’ cops ’n’ robbers game, did not
hesitate to invite me, although he
knew my religion.
That point evidently never occurred
to his Southern colleagues, who, tak
ing it for granted that I was a good
Methodist or a lukewarm Episcopalian
(I can pass for a Gentile—my nose
has no tell-tale bump, and I don’t speak
with an accent), opened up in "mama-
loshcn" on the Jewish peril. Torrid
slanguage, and talcs of how they had
shown the foreigners their low place.
Instinctively I wanted to show them
up, but there was the “disgrace by de
fense” stigma. So I assumed a pose
of disinterested and even sympathetic
calm, and turned to my host. He was
flushed—his neck was pink with em
barrassment. All his efforts to inform
the Klansmen that I was “treif” were
in vain. Finally, when I excused my
self to answer a telephone call, he
jumped up to buzz to his ga-ga-eyed
guests that I was not even a Catholic.
"You know how things are,” they
said, mawkishly, after I returned to
the dining room. "There are good Jews
and bad Jews, as there are good Amer
icans and bad Americans.” I merely
smiled.
I started my roundabout road to
Broadway at 13. I was stage-struck
and left school when I was in 6B to
join the Imperial Trio. The highfa-
lootin tag didn’t mean that much. The
three of us—Eddie Cantor, Georgie
Jessel, and myself—were singing ush
ers in a moom pitcher house in Har
lem. We had to keep the crowd out
of the aisles, collect late checks, and,
during intermission, sing popular chuncs
to illustrated slides. Cantor was the
lead; Jessel even then already sang
basso, and I, Walter Winchel—my
name was originally spelled with
one "1”—was the tenor. Out in the
box office Jesscl’s mother sold the
tickets.
In 1910 Gus Edwards, America’s
champion prodigy manufacturer, put
his first song revue into production.
It called for about thirty or forty
femmes and a newsboy sextette. We
were the first three members of the
sextette.
When the show opened, the bill
had me down as Walter Winchell.
What the “1”? It was the result of
an accident. As a kid I made it a
habit every Saturday to visit my
uncle, who was a big man in Wall
Street. He used to give me money
for candy and things.
One Shabbos I noticed that there
was an extra "1” on the "Winchel”
on the glass door. “Uncle, how
come the double T?” I asked. He
explained that the sign-painter had
made the mistake, but that it
wouldn’t be fatal. That gave me an
idea. Wherefore now the name
Winchell.
For two years we trekked from
State to State with the song act. Then
Edwards revived his "sweetheart” re
vue, and at 15 I was made manager of
a company of eight artists older than
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