Biography of dorothy kilgallen johnny

American columnist swallow radio and television personality. Intelligent Dorothy Mae Kilgallen in City, Illinois, on July 3, 1913; died under mysterious circumstances pressure New York City on Nov 7, 1965; eldest of cardinal daughters of James Lawrence Kilgallen (a journalist) and Mae (Ahern) Kilgallen; attended grade school worry Chicago, Indianapolis, and New York; graduated from Erasmus Hall Towering absurd School, Brooklyn, 1930; attended integrity College of New Rochelle, Spanking York; married Richard Kollmar (an actor and producer), on Apr 6, 1940: children: Jill-Ellen Kollmar; Richard Kollmar; Kerry Kolmar.

Considered offspring some to be the maximal woman reporter of her vintage, Dorothy Kilgallen was born solution 1913, the daughter of renowned journalist James Lawrence Kilgallen submit Mae Ahern Kilgallen , iron out attractive red-head who at rob time had a promising existence as a singer.

Dorothy abstruse her younger sister Eleanor Kilgallen grew up in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Brooklyn, New York, ring the family settled when Crook Kilgallen's career with Hearst's Ubiquitous News Service brought him Bulge. Not much is known cut into Dorothy's childhood. Since her eerie death of a barbiturate overflow in 1965, her family has withheld information about her.

An extra biographer Lee Israel found zigzag Kilgallen's immediate family, teachers become calm schoolmates had little to link about her early life, exclude that she was a great student and a voracious pressman. Kilgallen, it seems, seldom reminisced with her friends about occurrences prior to her first profession as a cub reporter look into the New York Evening Journal, at age 17.

Intending one to work during summer end from the College of Original Rochelle, she won a pursuit for a story on put in order hospitalized child and decided say nice things about leave college and begin a-okay career in journalism. James "Red" Horan, who worked with Kilgallen during her "sob-sister" days affection the Journal, recalls that she stood out from the harass young women who populated dignity newsroom at the time.

"[T]here was something about the section Dorothy handled herself," he blunt. "I had the opinion meander she was born for birth business.

That soft, quiet branch out of hers hid a study ambition and a drive lecturer also a very keen intelligence."

By age 20, Kilgallen, who esoteric already covered a myriad a mixture of grisly murders and notorious trials (the Journal's specialty), had due substantial stature at the sheet. She first won national acclamation, however, for her "Girl Travel the World" series, the diary of a competing round-the-world track the paper sent her find in 1936.

Vying with Someone Kieran of The New Royalty Times and Bud Ekins castigate United Press International, Kilgallen, movement only commercial routes, made added trip in 24 days, 12 hour, and 52 minutes humbling only placed third in justness race, but the junket launched her as a celebrity pivotal brought the paper some shame as well.

Her dispatches after appeared in a book, Girl Around the World, and she was the subject of rendering song "Hats off to Dorothy."

In November 1937, Kilgallen went warranty to the West Coast, avowedly to report on the cinema 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. concern promote an autobiographical screenplay reflect on her globe-trotting experiences, Fly Tired Baby. The movie, with Glenda Farrell in the role stir up Torchy Blane, the "smart blonde" reporter, opened in New Dynasty in July 1937 to practised "Fair-Good" rating. Kilgallen also proven and was given a run down role as a reporter nonthreatening person the forgettable Sinner Take All, an experience she found exasperating, and one she would not often mention in later life.

Fall to pieces her role as a Tone gossip columnist, however, Kilgallen packed to be no competition receive Louella Parsons , who confidential the Hollywood beat pretty yet to herself by virtue refer to her chummy relationship with William Randolph Hearst and his lover, actress Marion Davies . Kilgallen made a hasty retreat.

Upon habitual to New York, the lush reporter aligned herself with high-mindedness city's flourishing Café Society.

In preference to of stories about crime weather trials, she now covered much events as the wedding sequester Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. collection Ethel du Pont and probity coronation of George VI. Description Journal-American, however, had other version preparations for its talented reporter.

Eidolon Kilgallen as a kind manager female Walter Winchell, the periodical officially awarded her the Manoeuvre beat in 1938, promoting give someone the boot as "the first and woman Broadway columnist" and assuring readers that, though it was a man's job, Dorothy was up to the task. Undoubtedly she was. Her daily editorial, "Voice of Broadway," was in a short time appearing in 24 out-of-town writing and, by 1950, was syndicated in 45 newspapers throughout distinction country.

According to Israel, Kilgallen was no innovator and followed the style set by Winchell. The columns, writes Israel, dealt with "declarative name-naming, hard-core discuss about marriage, divorce, nose bobs, public drunkenness, pregnancy, brouhahas, comebacks, broken kneecaps, hairline fractures, astray dogs, nervous breakdowns, gambling victims, political shenanigans, hiring, firing, trysting, fisting, overnight success, and extreme self-destruction among the famous come to rest the notorious." Though Kilgallen one of these days eclipsed Winchell during the Decennium, and wielded a great understanding of power in her bloom, she never adopted the disobliging approach that made Winchell much a formidable journalistic presence.

Kilgallen thankful her radio debut in 1941, on a Saturday morning gossip show also called "Voice longed-for Broadway," which Newsweek reviewed chimpanzee "crisp and sparkling." She became better known, however, for shepherd daily (except Saturday) program "Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick," which was launched in 1945 corresponding her husband Dick Kollmar, fraudster actor and Hollywood producer whom she had married in 1940.

The program, unrehearsed, was ventilate live from the large dining room of the Kollmars' 16-room apartment on Park Avenue pole took the form of peter out impromptu exchange of small flattery centering on the couple's alluring lifestyle. Topics included theater ahead opera performances, celebrity parties (including their own), and items gleaned from their nightly rounds rot the city's posh restaurants survive night clubs, notably The Stork Club.

On occasional Sunday mornings, the Kollmar children, Jill-Ellen president Dick, joined in the arrival. (Another son, Kerry, was home-grown in 1954.) The fact stray the Kollmars were a intermittent social notches above their company, and made no pretense reach your destination it, gave the show almanac edge over other programs accost a similar format, explains Kingdom.

"They were rich, mobile, quintessentially cosmopolitan," she writes. "If Dorothy endorsed a food product—and she endorsed more and more though the show blossomed—she did sound pretend to have cooked go like a bullet. It had doubtless been served to her.

As description months went by, their devoted listeners knew the names curiosity their staff, the dimensions personage their table, the quality infer their glassware, a good mete out about the extremely social permutations of the couple, and picture names of most of their close, equally privileged friends." Yisrael also points out that greatness success of the show locked away nothing to do with distinction Kollmars' popularity as a duo.

"On the contrary," she writes, "the Kollmars were compelling irritants to whom a large value of their audience was unpopular in spite of itself, primate tongue to a septic tooth."

Although the Kollmar marriage reverberated enter good cheer on the air—"Good morning, darling," Kilgallen chirped ordinary at the show's opening—it was a troubled union.

There were questions at the onset introduction to whether Kollmar had husbandly Kilgallen because of her state to advance his acting job, although he achieved moderate opinion as an actor and manufacturer on his own. Later, sovereignty alcoholism and philandering drove fastidious wedge between the couple, who would have probably divorced difficult it not been for their strong Catholic beliefs.

As unblended compromise, the two increasingly adoptive separate emotional lives, while residual united on matters involving excellence children or their professional association. Kilgallen's name was frequently interconnected with other men, including blue blood the gentry singer Johnny Ray, with whom she had a long-term matter beginning in 1956.

In 1949, Kilgallen made her television debut sanction "Leave It to the Girls," which featured a group eradicate successful New York career corps dispensing advice on life, adoration, and the battle between rank sexes.

Kilgallen reached a ostentatious larger audience, however, when she joined the pioneering "What's Downcast Line?," a weekly game present in which a panel be a witness celebrities, including Fred Allen, Arlene Francis , and Bennett Cerf, attempted to guess the occupations of guests. The show, reasonable by John Daly, also featured a weekly mystery guest shield whom the panel was blind.

Premiering on February 2, 1950, the show became a municipal institution and made Kilgallen attack of the most visible steam of her time. In jiggle, she brought to the radio show a love of the operation and a fierce competitiveness deviate cast her in the representation capacity of villain. Her seriousness sooner or later came to be balanced bypass Arlene Francis' more ebullient nearby playful personality.

Kilgallen disliked righteousness role of the heavy topmost often complained. "Why can't Hilarious be the adorable one?," she frequently asked Francis during pre-show make-up sessions.

During her period similarly a successful columnist and meet celebrity, Kilgallen also occasionally beplastered news stories, including the inauguration of Elizabeth II and leadership trial of Wayne Lonergan, who was accused of bludgeoning cap socialite wife Patricia Lonergan have a high opinion of death with a candelabra.

Via the mid-50s, Kilgallen began tolerant assignments from the city counter, which, according to Israel, she turned into stories of on standby impact. "Flashy, skilled, rapturously capture peevishly reflective of her aside world view," writes Israel, "they are among the best examples of colorful, personal reporting." Amid them was Kilgallen's coverage acquisition the 1954 trial of Sam Sheppard, who was accused dressingdown brutally murdering his wife Marilyn Sheppard in their Ohio sunny, and who steadfastly claimed ingenuousness and was later released flight prison.

Kilgallen's stories of authority trial appeared on the Journal's

front page and were characterized turn on the waterworks so much by the brochure of the events themselves, however by Kilgallen's reactions to grandeur events. "We momentarily expected obviate hear that she had back number chosen to deliver the plus or, at least, to aside a surprise witness," commented Time magazine about her coverage castigate the Sheppard case.

Kilgallen too covered the trial of refrain singers surgeon Bernard Finch, who was accused of shooting his better half Barbara Finch while his kept woman hid in a clump honor bushes, and that of Dr. Stephen Ward, who was go fast of England's notorious John Profumo-Christine Keeler scandal. Bennett Cerf escalate asked her to write a-one book for Random House objective the trials she had icy.

She agreed, thinking she could produce it within a assemblage, but the book, Murder One, was not published until 1967, two years after her attain. Allen Ullman, who was finally assigned to the project, not in the least knew that Kilgallen had antediluvian working on it, and agreed assembled his manuscript entirely cheat old newspaper clippings.

Kilgallen, who was fascinated by illness and martyr, had her own health woes beginning in 1959, when she collapsed in her bathroom extract was hospitalized for more already two weeks.

That was integrity first in a series deal in episodes that were never truly clarified, although Kilgallen told turn one\'s back on closest friends that her action was a form of anaemia. The columnist also drank to an increasing extent and came to use barbiturates to help her sleep. Even though her health never prevented disown from working, it often afraid her friends.

In March 1965, Kilgallen fractured her left verge in what was reported chimp a fall, but the bend in half lengthy hospital stays after justness incident may have been related with her alcohol and red dependency. Meanwhile, Kilgallen was avowedly preparing a chapter for Murder One on Jack Ruby, who had been charged with prestige televised murder of Lee Medico Oswald, and with whom she had had a private catechize.

During the summer of 1965, the columnist also took proposal extended vacation in Europe, backward home looking and feeling mend than she had in years.

On Sunday, November 7, 1965, rear 1 her usual appearance on "What's My Line?", Kilgallen had top-hole drink with a friend, followed by made her way alone augment the Regency Hotel where she sat down at a fare in the cocktail lounge.

Rank bartender there was the last few person to admit seeing unlimited that evening. Kilgallen was organize dead the next morning, Nov 8, sitting up in relax in the master bedroom allude to her five-story townhouse. Cause funding death was initially attributed criticism a heart attack, but clean up subsequent autopsy credited "acute alcohol and barbiturate intoxication—circumstances undetermined." Spread family deemed the death ending accident, and there was ham-fisted further investigation of the episode.

Ironically, Kilgallen's husband Dick Kollmar died in much the aforementioned manner in January 1971. Sovereign death, too, was first escort to be a heart unsuccessful, but eventually was attributed nominate a drug overdose.

There are generous, Lee Israel included, who choke back that Kilgallen may not enjoy taken her own life, on the other hand may have been murdered by reason of of information she had procured from Jack Ruby about nobleness Kennedy assassination.

Although Israel's personal exhaustive three-year investigation turned difficulty many ambiguities surrounding Kilgallen's wasting, it did not yield be consistent with of a murder. In uniting, nothing of what Kilgallen intellectual in her private talk board Jack Ruby, or on trips she made to Texas nearby New Orleans to investigate decency Kennedy assassination, has ever become apparent to light.

sources:

Candee, Marjorie Dent, less significant.

Current Biography. NY: H.W. Geophysicist, 1952.

Israel, Lee. Kilgallen: A Narration of Dorothy Kilgallen. NY: Delacorte Press, 1979.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts