Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator whose syndicated column and Sunday-night broadcasts made him, for roughly three decades, one of the most widely read and most feared voices in the United States. He invented the modern celebrity gossip column, helped create the breathless cadence of tabloid radio, and counted presidents, mobsters, and movie stars among his sources and targets.

He was born Walter Winschel on April 7, 1897, in New York City, the elder son of Jacob Winschel, a salesman, and Janet Bakst Winschel, Russian-Jewish immigrants. Raised in Harlem in difficult circumstances, he left school in the sixth grade to perform with the Gus Edwards vaudeville troupe alongside young George Jessel and Eddie Cantor. After serving in the United States Navy at the close of the First World War, he returned to vaudeville and began posting backstage notices that evolved into his first newspaper gossip items.

In 1924 he joined The New York Evening Graphic, and in 1929 he moved to William Randolph Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, where his column On Broadway was syndicated to more than 2,000 newspapers. Beginning in 1932 his Sunday-evening radio program, opening with the famous greeting to Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea, drew tens of millions of listeners.

He narrated the television series The Untouchables from 1959 to 1963, but his influence faded as television news matured and his support of Joseph McCarthy alienated readers. He died of cancer on February 20, 1972, in Los Angeles. His autobiography appeared posthumously in 1975.

The masculine name Walter comes from the Old Germanic Waltheri, combining walt meaning rule with heri meaning army, traditionally meaning ruler of the army. He wielded his column like a commander.