Pep (review of Walter Winchell, by Michael Herr)

PUT PAGE SIX, Liz Smith, and the Style section together, add ellipses, and you have the mix of Walter Winchell—but not the reach. At his height, in the Forties, his sixday-a-week newspaper column was read by fifty million people, while his weekly radio broadcast (number one on the airwaves) was heard by more. Press agents fawned on him; careers and marriages took off or ran on the rocks because of his well or ill-timed words; he thought he was a friend of Franklin Roosevelt, he was a friend of Damon Runyon, and he arranged the surrender of Louis Lepke to J. Edgar Hoover. Today, all that remains of him is the sandpaper voiceover on reruns of The Untouchables. Walter Winchell, by journalist Michael Herr, is a factional look at the rise and fall of a celebrity celebrity-maker.

Walter Winchell, by Michael Herr (Knopf, 158 pp., $18.95)

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

PUT PAGE SIX, Liz Smith, and the Style section together, add ellipses, and you have the mix of Walter Winchell—but not the reach. At his height, in the Forties, his sixday-a-week newspaper column was read by fifty million people, while his weekly radio broadcast (number one on the airwaves) was heard by more. Press agents fawned on him; careers and marriages took off or ran on the rocks because of his well or ill-timed words; he thought he was a friend of Franklin Roosevelt, he was a friend of Damon Runyon, and he arranged the surrender of Louis Lepke to J. Edgar Hoover. Today, all that remains of him is the sandpaper voiceover on reruns of The Untouchables. Walter Winchell, by journalist Michael Herr, is a factional look at the rise and fall of a celebrity celebrity-maker.

Walter Winchell, by Michael Herr (Knopf, 158 pp., $18.95)