Walter Winchell Rhumba

A little musical treat for the first Friday of this new venture.  Where else can you find Xavier Cugat's rendition of the Walter Winchell Rhumba?  The bog spews up many an odd item, and perhaps few odder or more delightful than this?  Who's Xavier Cugat, you ask?  Don't ask.  But who's Walter Winchell, you persist?  The knowledgeable among you already know, but for those who don't, here's a fitting anecdote from the end of Winchell's tumultuous life, when he rode uptown to Columbia University during the student demonstrations in 1968 to observe the action firsthand.  Unfortunately an especially nasty cop rudely shoved Winchell (some say he did even worse), and said something to the effect of, "What the hell are you doing here, old timer?"  Winchell's response was characteristic.  "I'm Walter Winchell," he declared stoutly.  The cop was not only unimpressed, but his blank expression indicated he hadn't a clue who Winchell was.  Walter left the scene forlorn, later telling a friend, "What kind of a world is it where someone hasn't heard of Walter Winchell"?

This kind of world, apparently, for even more people now haven't heard of Walter Winchell.  And yet in his heyday -- the 1930s, 40s, and into the 50s -- Winchell was one of the most famous men in America.  Ostensibly he was a gossip columnist, but he was much more than that:  He was the gossip columnist, the man everyone read, the man PR flack went to with a juicy tidbit about some star or would-be star, hoping that Winchell would put it in his column.  Winchell appeared in movies (usually as himself), was the narrator of the 1958 TV series The Untouchables, had a phenomenally successful radio show (anyone of a certain age, and that doesn't include me, will remember his celebrated opening, "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea!  Flash!")  And he had a phenomenally unsuccessful TV show later on, when the famous voice was accompanied by an awkward man who "seemed to be screaming at the camera for no good reason," as one observer noted.  Winchell had thought he was King of All Media before Howard Stern claimed the title for himself, but Marshall McLuhan could have told Winchell (if he'd bothered to listen) that the medium is the message and TV just wasn't Winchell's medium.  ("It's called a medium," quipped Fred Allen, another radio man who was immensely famous in his day and nearly forgotten now, "because it's rarely well-done.)  Never mind.  For a longer time than mere mortals deserve, Winchell was read and listened to by virtually every sentient American, and even a few comatose ones as well.  Winchell had a voice that could easily raise the dead.

He'd been a stalwart supporter of FDR during the Depression and World War II, and America loved his take-no-prisoners approach to hitting the Nazis and fascists with everything he had, which was mainly his voice and his column, with its distinctive, breathless ellipses....between his...startling revelations!  But after the war Winchell turned to the new enemy, the Communist threat, and when he loudly supported Senator Joseph McCarthy (and loudly was the only tone Walter knew), he made some new enemies himself among his former fans.  Winchell red-baited with the best of them, going after reds, pinks, fellow travellers, commie dupes, and people he just didn't like.  Winchell must have known his power was fading when the brilliant 1957 film The Sweet Smell of Success was released with a blistering portrayal of a Walter Winchell-ish columnist and radio commentator named "J. J. Hunsecker," chillingly played to perfection by Burt Lancaster, backed up by one of Tony Curtis as an ambitious small-time press agent ready to lick Lancaster's hand and much worse if it would get one of his clients a mention in J. J.'s column.  Here's an exchange between Curtis's Sidney Falco and Lancaster's Hunsecker:

Sidney Falco: Sure, the columnists can't do without us, except our good and great friend J.J. forgets to mention that. You see, we furnish him with items.

J.J. Hunsecker: What, some cheap, gruesome gags?

Sidney Falco: You print 'em, don't ya?

J.J. Hunsecker: Yes, with your clients' names attached. That's the only reason the poor slobs pay you - to see their names in my column all over the world. Now, I make it out, you're doing me a favor?... The day I can't get along without a press agents' handouts, I'll close up shop and move to Alaska, lock, stock, and barrel.

The two actors were in top form, and the fact that neither they nor screenwriter Ernest (North by Northwest) Lehman from his novella, with an assist from Clifford Odets, felt the slightest fear of reprisal from the real Winchell suggests that Walter's days were numbered.  But newspapers themselves were dying out even back then -- New York City used to have at least nine dailies -- and even Winchell's own flagship paper went under in 1963.  Soon gossip columnists like Liz Smith were learning to make nice about celebrities and not be so darn mean.  The whole story is told in full detail in Neal Gabler's definitive biography, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity, and in fictional form by Michael (Dispatches) Herr in his small but searing book, Winchell.  And you can even see the great Stanley Tucci portray Winchell in the 1998 TV movie directed by the late Paul Mazursky, titled (what else?), Winchell.  That's enough to keep you busy this weekend.

For a time, Walter Winchell was indeed King....of something.  Remember him kindly, for he fought the good fight as well as the bad one(s).  As for Xavier Cugat, that's another story.  Let's rumba.