Walter Winchell was born on April, 7, 1897 in New York City. He started his career as a tabloid columnist and later a broadcaster. By the 1950s, Walter Winchell was a regular figure on Television.
He was great at breaking news. He developed a special niche on celebrity gossip. Walter Winchell breathed his last in 1972 aged 74 years old.
Walter Winchell issued signature columns full of snappy and acerbic banter. At the peak of his career, he had an audience of 50 million.
His broadcasts used slang which was delivered in machine gun pace. Every evening people turned in to hear him sign on, “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, from boarder to boarder and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press!”
“Relentlessly and specifically, day after day doling out bits of patronage or punishment in response to the greedy murmur of little men. Studios would pay a press agent as much as $5,000, the equivalent of $25,000 today, for giving a movie an ‘orchid,’ Winchell’s maximum praise.”
The energy Winchell projected so forcefully on radio looked manic on TV, bordering on crazy.
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