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About People A Profile of Walter Winchell, Americas Best Known Journalist and Scoopster By Alexander Woollcott I SHOULD like, in sketching this profile of Walter Winchcll, to point out the two aspects of his work which interest me most. He has been much touted by the more exhausting essayists for the new-minted words with which he has en riched the American language; the “making whoopee,” which is now part of every man’s vo cabulary; the “Reno-vatcd,” which he substituted for “divorced”; the “Is my face red?” and the “You dope!” which he added to the list of con venient locutions. Broadway became “The Main Stem,” and champagne became “giggle-water.” If you ever speak about So-and-So being “that way” about Thingumabob, you are using a Winchellism. These achievements do not greatly impress me, and often he seems straining himself almost to the bursting point in his effort to keep up the pace. But I am deeply interested in all the enterprise that lies back of that title, “Blessed Event” in all his work, that is, as flagrant gossip. This is his great contribution. When in retrospect, the historians of journalism come to consider the decade through which we are now floundering, they will, I suppose, refer to it as the Age of the Two Walters, Lippmann and Winchell. Neither, as was usual in the old days of Dana, (ireeley or Pulitzer, is the owner or even the editor of a newspaper. Each is, rather, the untrammeled author of a column distributed to many newspapers, and controlled therefore by none. Lippmann, like Wells and Shaw, is preemi nently the patient pedagogue, attempting the Sisy phean task of teaching the American citizen how to think. Winchell seeks merely to interest his readers. He is the little brother to the sidewalk clowns who hopefully sing and dance for your amusement at the boulevard cafes in Paris. Recently a New Y'orker cartoon pictured a formidable matron as saying that all she needed for breakfast was orange juice and Walter Lipp mann. I know a good many lighter creatures who can get along on just Winchell—with, per haps, a dash of gin. It was his contribution to go on strike against the vast impersonality which, at the time of his advent, was deadening the American newspaper into a kind of daily Congressional Record. Be ginning with the war, these mighty journals be came such conscientious purveyors of international events, blessed or otherwise, that only episodes like war, famine, flood, bank failures, or legisla tive investigation seemed fit to print. If a story involved fewer than fifty thousand people, it could not make the front page. Only when some dis contented cow would make so striking a gesture as doing in her husband with a sash weight, let us say, or when some nameless avenger would stretch a parson and his choir singer dead beneath a crabapple tree, was the reader reminded at breakfast that there were, after all individuals as well as groups astir on this planet. Soft-shoeing into this dreary phase of Ameri can journalism came Master Winchell, his eyes wide with the childlike interest all newcomers have, his nervous staccato pace as characteristic of his day as are the rhythms of George Gershwin. His success reminded a generation of columnists who w-ere mere jokesmiths that, after all, there is nothing so richly entertaining as a fact, and also reminded a generation of despondent city editors that, after all, people, as such, are interesting, too. Unauthorized news of impending marriages, di vorces, quarrels, babies—these he passed on as soon as he got them, reducing New York to the scale of a neighborhood, beating the whole world with his forecast of the first Lindbergh baby, more often printing not only first, but alone, such personal items as most newspapers were disinclined to print at all, obeying, as they were, from force of habit, a tradition of reticence which had long since passed out of American conversation. I suppose it would be easy to assemble evidence in support of the contention that Winchell is lacking in taste. He has a more valuable asset. For w-ant of a better term, let us call it zest. One popular delusion I must object to. It is the implication of the great keyhole which was the poster of “Blessed Event” that Winchell gath- This is an extract by Alexander Woollcott, on Winchell, which appeared in the May is sue of Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan Magazine. We present it through the cour tesy of the editor of the Cosmopolitan Maga zine. -K ers these tidbits by eavesdropping. Nonsense. In the first place, most of them are telephoned in to him. In the second place, did you ever try to look through the keyhole of a Y ale lock? It is also the implication of his more abusive critics that each time he reports a ruptured ro mance or forecasts some amendment of the vital statistics, the parties concerned drink poison in their despair at this exposure to the public gaze. Nonsense, again. Most of the victims of his in trusion are simply delighted. Another aspect of Winchell’s work which in terests me derives from the fact that he is a quick witted and apprehensive autodidact. I hope he will look the w-ord up before he gets red in the face. 1 myself, when young was inclined to ma triculate in every school I chanced to pass, and now enjoy, as an unearned increment, the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Therefore, I study with a vague misgiving the more glowing work of the self-taught. I am reminded, from time to time, by the careers of such neighbors of mine as Norman Bel Geddes, Irving Berlin, Harpo Marx and Walter Winchell, none of whom ever got through gram mar school, that perhaps I might better have played hooky than labored so earnestly for those good marks. If I had been “left down” when I was twelve years old, I should either have died of mor tification or hanged myself. Winchell was “left down” for three successive years, and never got past Six B. Of course that makes it all the easier today for him to fill up that most popular of his columns “Things I Never Knew Till Now.” To be sure, w-hen compared w-ith Harpo Marx, Winchell is a Phi Beta Kappa man. Harpo spent five years in public school, all of them in one grade. This did WALTER WINCHELL not humiliate him, as he ascribed it to his in- fatuated teacher’s disinclination to part compam with him. Winchcll himself, of course, is hum bly impressed by his collegiate confreres and fairly swells writh satisfaction when so austere a publia tion as The Bookman asks him to contribute. His chief hesitation in accepting his first now paper job was a terror lest it be discovered tha- he never had been able to fathom the difference between "who” and “whom.” His day of great est pride w-as when he learned that an indolent undergraduate in a mid-western university had turned in one of Winchell’s articles as his own and been rewarded with an A by teacher. Winchell went from school to the stage. Even before quitting school, his nostrils had learned, after hours, the fascinating smell of the theater. Across the street from Public School 184 was the Imperial Theater, a measly nickelodeon where, in the afternoons, he and another little boy used to serve as ushers in order to see the show. This cherished privilege was accorded them because the other little boy’s mother, with a shaw-1 over her head, was the ticket seller. The other little boys name w-as George jessel. These tw'o, incandescent w'ith ambition, induced a poor schleimiel from among their contemporaries in the neighborhood to join w ith them in forming a trio of warblers. They billed themselves a> Lawrence, Stanley and McKinley. It is not known why. Winchell w-as Law-rence, Jessel McKinley. Their repertory included “1 Drcair in the Gloaming of Y'ou,” “The Lobster and the Wise Guy,” and “Pony Pony.” They must have been terrible. They w-ere obliged to do theii singing from the orchestra pit to evade the Gerry Society’s prejudice against children going on the stage. Lawren- was only twelve, and McKinley, who sang ba»- vvas eleven. It w-as later, when his voice changed that he sang tenor. If this sounds odd to yot. don’t blame me. That is the w-ay it was. For this concerted effort they w T ere paid five dol lars a week each. When the other tw-o got job* elsew-here, Jessel became, by the process of eli® 1 ' nation, a soloist. In his recently published mem oirs, that gifted minstrel recalled how- the nickelo deon used to advertise that it w-as worth five cefl® admission just to hear Jessel alone. ****** I never have been able to get far enough the North woods not to find some trapper the:- who w-ould quote Winchell’s latest observation- and I remember once witnessing a painful scene ® Hatchard’s bookshop in Piccadilly. The scene ** being made by a noble lord in a temper. 1 he ^ ble lord had left strict orders that Wincheljj Monday column should be rushed to him tl* moment it reached England, and, good God son’' w-retched clerk had failed to arrange it. Copyrifhted 1932 for The Soutbun Imuueute [8] m THE SOUTHERN ISRAtXf**