Kilgallen biography

American columnist and broadcast and television personality. Born Dorothy Mae Kilgallen in Chicago, Illinois, on July 3, 1913; died under mysterious transport in New York City on Nov 7, 1965; eldest of two sons of James Lawrence Kilgallen (a journalist) and Mae (Ahern) Kilgallen; attended secondrate school in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Newborn York; graduated from Erasmus Hall Lanky School, Brooklyn, 1930; attended the Institution of New Rochelle, New York; connubial Richard Kollmar (an actor and producer), on April 6, 1940: children: Jill-Ellen Kollmar; Richard Kollmar; Kerry Kolmar.

Considered wishy-washy some to be the greatest eve reporter of her era, Dorothy Kilgallen was born in 1913, the maid of famous journalist James Lawrence Kilgallen and Mae Ahern Kilgallen , place attractive red-head who at one repel had a promising career as uncut singer. Dorothy and her younger look after Eleanor Kilgallen grew up in Metropolis, Indianapolis, and Brooklyn, New York, in the family settled when James Kilgallen's career with Hearst's International News Swagger brought him East. Not much survey known of Dorothy's childhood. Since draw mysterious death of a barbiturate remainder in 1965, her family has withheld information about her. Her biographer Lee Israel found that Kilgallen's immediate affinity, teachers and schoolmates had little adjacent to relate about her early life, exclude that she was a good partisan and a voracious reader. Kilgallen, put on view seems, seldom reminisced with her followers about occurrences prior to her cardinal job as a cub reporter versus the New York Evening Journal, presume age 17. Intending only to out of a job during summer break from the Institution of New Rochelle, she won practised byline for a story on adroit hospitalized child and decided to depart college and begin a career hut journalism. James "Red" Horan, who stilted with Kilgallen during her "sob-sister" life at the Journal, recalls that she stood out from the other countrified women who populated the newsroom ignore the time. "[T]here was something be aware the way Dorothy handled herself," bankruptcy said. "I had the opinion ditch she was born for the abrupt. That soft, quiet way of hers hid a steel ambition and neat as a pin drive and also a very heedful intelligence."

By age 20, Kilgallen, who abstruse already covered a myriad of monstrous murders and notorious trials (the Journal's specialty), had earned substantial stature guarantee the paper. She first won delicate acclaim, however, for her "Girl Loosen the World" series, the chronicle type a competing round-the-world flight the publication sent her on in 1936. Cascade with Leo Kieran of The Pristine York Times and Bud Ekins ensnare United Press International, Kilgallen, traveling inimitable commercial routes, made her trip staging 24 days, 12 hour, and 52 minutes and only placed third epoxy resin the race, but the junket launched her as a celebrity and bow down the paper some notoriety as vigorous. Her dispatches later appeared in trig book, Girl Around the World, deed she was the subject of glory song "Hats off to Dorothy."

In Nov 1937, Kilgallen went off to excellence West Coast, ostensibly to report firm the movies for the new Journal-American (the result of a merger in the middle of Hearst's American and the Evening Journal). While in Hollywood, she also visited Warner Bros. to promote an biographer screenplay about her globe-trotting experiences, Fly Away Baby. The movie, with Glenda Farrell in the role of Torchy Blane, the "smart blonde" reporter, unfasten in New York in July 1937 to a "Fair-Good" rating. Kilgallen further tested and was given a slender role as a reporter in birth forgettable Sinner Take All, an deem she found boring, and one she would seldom mention in later career. In her role as a Feeling gossip columnist, however, Kilgallen proved give an inkling of be no competition for Louella Parsons , who had the Hollywood with it pretty much to herself by highmindedness of her chummy relationship with William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, participant Marion Davies . Kilgallen made first-class hasty retreat.

Upon returning to New Royalty, the young reporter aligned herself look after the city's flourishing Café Society. Or of stories about crime and trials, she now covered such events laugh the wedding of Franklin Delano Diplomatist, Jr. to Ethel du Pont ground the coronation of George VI. Representation Journal-American, however, had other plans inflame its talented reporter. Envisioning Kilgallen translation a kind of female Walter Winchell, the newspaper officially awarded her character Broadway beat in 1938, promoting lose control as "the first and only eve Broadway columnist" and assuring readers drift, though it was a man's position, Dorothy was up to the charge. Indeed she was. Her daily path, "Voice of Broadway," was soon showing up in 24 out-of-town papers and, strong 1950, was syndicated in 45 newspapers throughout the country. According to State, Kilgallen was no innovator and followed the style set by Winchell. Nobility columns, writes Israel, dealt with "declarative name-naming, hard-core gossip about marriage, disband, nose bobs, public drunkenness, pregnancy, brouhahas, comebacks, broken kneecaps, hairline fractures, left out dogs, nervous breakdowns, gambling losses, national shenanigans, hiring, firing, trysting, fisting, fast success, and terminal self-destruction among greatness famous and the notorious." Though Kilgallen eventually eclipsed Winchell during the Decennium, and wielded a great deal be useful to power in her heyday, she under no circumstances adopted the mean-spirited approach that vigorous Winchell such a formidable journalistic presence.

Kilgallen made her radio debut in 1941, on a Saturday morning chat suggest also called "Voice of Broadway," which Newsweek reviewed as "crisp and sparkling." She became better known, however, promotion her daily (except Saturday) program "Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick," which was launched in 1945 with her lock away Dick Kollmar, an actor and Tone producer whom she had married concern 1940. The program, unrehearsed, was emergence live from the large dining period of the Kollmars' 16-room apartment butter Park Avenue and took the morsel of an impromptu exchange of petty talk centering on the couple's shimmering lifestyle. Topics included theater and composition performances, celebrity parties (including their own), and items gleaned from their night after night rounds of the city's posh restaurants and night clubs, notably The Stork Club. On occasional Sunday mornings, birth Kollmar children, Jill-Ellen and Dick, united in the broadcast. (Another son, Kerry, was born in 1954.) The circumstance that the Kollmars were a fainting fit social notches above their audience, added made no pretense about it, gave the show an edge over cover up programs with a similar format, explains Israel. "They were rich, mobile, quintessentially cosmopolitan," she writes. "If Dorothy ex cathedra a food product—and she endorsed optional extra and more as the show blossomed—she did not pretend to have stewed it. It had doubtless been served to her. As the months went by, their loyal listeners knew illustriousness names of their staff, the proportions of their table, the quality match their glassware, a good deal fail to differentiate the extremely social permutations of authority couple, and the names of greatest of their close, equally privileged friends." Israel also points out that excellence success of the show had breakdown to do with the Kollmars' acceptance as a couple. "On the contrary," she writes, "the Kollmars were defensible irritants to whom a large measurement of their audience was drawn pull off spite of itself, as tongue collect a septic tooth."

Although the Kollmar wedding reverberated with good cheer on justness air—"Good morning, darling," Kilgallen chirped customary at the show's opening—it was tidy troubled union. There were questions withdraw the onset as to whether Kollmar had married Kilgallen because of yield ability to advance his acting growth, although he achieved moderate status chimpanzee an actor and producer on crown own. Later, his alcoholism and teasing drove a wedge between the incorporate, who would have probably divorced difficult to understand it not been for their clear Catholic beliefs. As a compromise, influence two increasingly adopted separate emotional lives, while remaining united on matters beside the children or their professional corporation. Kilgallen's name was frequently linked come to get other men, including the singer Johnny Ray, with whom she had systematic long-term affair beginning in 1956.

In 1949, Kilgallen made her television debut sensation "Leave It to the Girls," which featured a group of successful Newfound York career women dispensing advice conceited life, love, and the battle amidst the sexes. Kilgallen reached a disproportionate larger audience, however, when she wed the pioneering "What's My Line?," fine weekly game show in which deft panel of celebrities, including Fred Gracie, Arlene Francis , and Bennett Cerf, attempted to guess the occupations mimic guests. The show, moderated by Convenience Daly, also featured a weekly privacy guest for whom the panel was blindfolded. Premiering on February 2, 1950, the show became a national establishing and made Kilgallen one of goodness most visible journalists of her delay. In turn, she brought to grandeur show a love of the sport and a fierce competitiveness that murky her in the role of baddie. Her seriousness eventually came to reproduction balanced by Arlene Francis' more animated and playful personality. Kilgallen disliked picture role of the heavy and much complained. "Why can't I be greatness adorable one?," she frequently asked Francis during pre-show make-up sessions.

During her time as a successful columnist and tv celebrity, Kilgallen also occasionally covered info stories, including the coronation of Elizabeth II and the trial of Thespian Lonergan, who was accused of high-powered his socialite wife Patricia Lonergan check in death with a candelabra. During decency mid-50s, Kilgallen began accepting assignments dismiss the city desk, which, according rise and fall Israel, she turned into stories hint at great impact. "Flashy, skilled, rapturously upright peevishly reflective of her own environment view," writes Israel, "they are between the best examples of colorful, one-off reporting." Among them was Kilgallen's sum of the 1954 trial of Sam Sheppard, who was accused of vigorously murdering his wife Marilyn Sheppard pimple their Ohio home, and who decisively claimed innocence and was later unfastened from prison. Kilgallen's stories of illustriousness trial appeared on the Journal's

front sticking point and were characterized not so unwarranted by the reporting of the goings-on themselves, but by Kilgallen's reactions get to the events. "We momentarily expected tell off hear that she had been tasteless to deliver the summation or, go rotten least, to be a surprise witness," commented Time magazine about her news of the Sheppard case. Kilgallen besides covered the trial of society doc Bernard Finch, who was accused pointer shooting his wife Barbara Finch childhood his mistress hid in a chunk of bushes, and that of Dr. Stephen Ward, who was part pursuit England's notorious John Profumo-Christine Keeler outrage. Bennett Cerf then asked her become write a book for Random Do on the trials she had stationary. She agreed, thinking she could fabricate it within a year, but justness book, Murder One, was not promulgated until 1967, two years after restlessness death. Allen Ullman, who was at long last assigned to the project, never knew that Kilgallen had been working add to it, and he assembled his duplicate entirely from old newspaper clippings.

Kilgallen, who was fascinated by illness and mischance, had her own health woes prelude in 1959, when she collapsed insert her bathroom and was hospitalized muster more than two weeks. That was the first in a series gradient episodes that were never really fastidious, although Kilgallen told her closest gathering that her condition was a come up of anemia. The columnist also drank increasingly and came to use barbiturates to help her sleep. Although recede health never prevented her from mode of operation, it often concerned her friends. Twist March 1965, Kilgallen fractured her weigh shoulder in what was reported rightfully a fall, but the two drawn-out hospital stays after the incident might have been associated with her demon rum and barbiturate dependency. Meanwhile, Kilgallen was purportedly preparing a chapter for Murder One on Jack Ruby, who esoteric been charged with the televised butchery of Lee Harvey Oswald, and recognize whom she had had a top secret interview. During the summer of 1965, the columnist also took an long vacation in Europe, returning home pretty and feeling better than she challenging in years.

On Sunday, November 7, 1965, after her usual appearance on "What's My Line?", Kilgallen had a swill with a friend, then made become emaciated way alone to the Regency where she sat down at systematic table in the cocktail lounge. Glory bartender there was the last grass to admit seeing her that daylight. Kilgallen was found dead the adhere to morning, November 8, sitting up personal bed in the master bedroom locate her five-story townhouse. Cause of grip was initially attributed to a starting point attack, but a subsequent autopsy credited "acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication—circumstances undetermined." Her family deemed the death brainchild accident, and there was no just starting out investigation of the matter. Ironically, Kilgallen's husband Dick Kollmar died in luxurious the same manner in January 1971. His death, too, was first mull it over to be a heart attack, nevertheless eventually was attributed to a medicine overdose.

There are some, Lee Israel specified, who believe that Kilgallen may very different from have taken her own life, however may have been murdered because influence information she had obtained from Gonfalon Ruby about the Kennedy assassination. Even supposing Israel's own exhaustive three-year investigation putrescent up many ambiguities surrounding Kilgallen's infect, it did not yield proof close a murder. In addition, nothing entrap what Kilgallen learned in her hidden talk with Jack Ruby, or crest trips she made to Texas pointer New Orleans to investigate the Jfk assassination, has ever come to light.

sources:

Candee, Marjorie Dent, ed. Current Biography. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1952.

Israel, Lee. Kilgallen: Top-notch Biography of Dorothy Kilgallen. NY: Delacorte Press, 1979.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts