‘American Masters’ recalls Winchell
“American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-PG, check local listings) profiles Walter Winchell, a media innovator whose story is simply too big to condense into a one-hour documentary.
Largely forgotten now, Winchell pretty much invented many aspects of modern media. Yet his story transcends news and entertainment. He’s a cautionary tale of a striver turned success and of power and hubris, a man consumed by his power over other people and events, who was all but destroyed when a changing scene rendered him irrelevant if not ridiculous.
A minor vaudeville performer, Winchell found his calling when he created a small gossip sheet for fellow entertainers. This led to a column in the notorious New York tabloid the Evening Graphic. He entertained his readership of immigrants and working people with juicy tales that tattled on the rich and powerful, which celebrated them while also cutting them down to size.
He invented his own lingo that he called “slanguage”: describing out-of-wedlock childbirths as “blessed events” and divorcing couples as getting “Reno-vated.”
His self-referential coverage of the Lindbergh kidnapping case would mark his departure from mere gossip to making and breaking “real” news. This blending of serious journalism and entertainment, with a decidedly personal and political bent, is imitated to this day on talk radio and cable news.
President Roosevelt courted him to popularize his New Deal at home and to warn his readers of the dangers of Hitler abroad. With millions of daily readers and millions more listening on the radio, Winchell was considered one of the most influential men alive.
A crusading liberal during the Roosevelt years, Winchell became an ardent anti-Communist after the war and taught Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his aide Roy Cohn many tricks about using the media to expose, smear and destroy enemies.
Winchell’s power declined with the arrival of television. A man whose voice inspired affection, attention and fear on the radio simply looked silly and literally old hat on TV.
Winchell’s story was large enough for him to appear as a hero and martyr in Philip Roth’s alternative history “The Plot Against America” (recently dramatized on HBO) and as an inspiration for Burt Lancaster’s creepy heel in the deliriously quotable 1957 drama “The Sweet Smell of Success.” Curiously, neither is mentioned here.
There’s another glaring omission. This “Masters” makes much of Winchell’s television failures, but overlooks one illuminating success. The creators of the 1959 series “The Untouchables” needed a narrator for their tale of Prohibition-era hero Eliot Ness (Robert Stack), so they hired Walter Winchell. He was, after all, a voice from the past.
This “Masters” includes observations from Neal Gabler, author of the 1994 biography “Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity.” Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, it features Stanley Tucci as the voice of Winchell. Tucci portrayed Winchell in the 1998 biopic “Winchell,” directed by the late Paul Mazursky.
Winchell’s column came to an end when the Hearst tabloid the New York Daily Mirror was shuttered. To him, this was all but fatal. “I died on October 16, 1963,” he mourned.