Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Page 5 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 (Continued on Page 16)