Winchell Exclusive – Walter Winchell, 1975 ★½

The Airing of Grievances

Once he ruled the world, or a significant portion of it he helped to create. Near the end, he had fallen so far that even those who followed his path remembered him but faintly, and with a shrug.

Another person might take stock. Walter Winchell took umbrage. In this posthumous memoir, the proudly pugnacious pundit has some bones to pick, and spends a lot more time venting than explaining:

Before I go to hell – which can’t be too far off – I want them all to know that I’ve wearied of the mutual deception. I have forgiven, but I don’t have to forget. I’m not a fighter, I’m a “waiter.” I wait until I catch an ingrate with his fly open, and then I take a picture of it.

The Secret Life Of Walter Winchell – Lyle Stuart, 1953 ★½

Takes One to Know One

What is it like to witness one of history’s most lurid practitioners of below-the-belt gossip-mongering getting served with the same treatment?

Like Walter Winchell, the target of our book, this 1953 hit job is brassy, bitchy, and hard to put down. Once you do, alas, it’s easy to forget.

Winchell – Bob Thomas, 1971 ★★½

The Power of the Fedora

The power of the written word is an amazing thing. It transforms losers into lovers, dreamers into rock stars. Wielded a certain way, it can even morph otherwise ordinary folk into fearsome giants. Such was the case with a failed singer-dancer named Walter Winchell.

While his hoofing croaked onstage in two-a-day vaudeville houses, Winchell honed another act backstage, listening in on the gossip and goings-on of fellow players and posting his observations on the theater bulletin board to be read by all. In the 1920s, he took his gossip-hawking act to newspapers. In short order he became the most-read columnist in America: Feared, loved, hated, enjoyed, but always read.

Walter Winchell – Michael Herr, 1990 ★½

Unfinished Novel about an Incomplete Man

There is a scene in Walter Winchell where the title character is about to get the old heave-ho from show biz. “Pep you got, but pep ain’t talent,” his agent tells the song-and-dance man. But pep will change everything for Winchell; mass media will never be the same.