Biography

His daughter, Walda, was mentally unbalanced and was the only person at his graveside when he died.

The columnist played by Burt Lancaster in the movie Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is somewhat loosely based on Winchell.

Coined the phrase, "America - love it or leave it."

He was the most powerful and feared gossip columnist and radio commentator in America in the 1930s and 1940s. He briefly attempted a movie career in the 1930s. (In his youth he had been a minor Vaudeville singer.)

He never legally married June Magee, the mother of his children, because he had been introducing her as his wife for some time before the birth of their first child, Walda, and he did want anyone to know that Walda was illegitimate. He and June kept the secret successfully all their lives.

"Winchell was a good newspaperman but a vain man, convinced he could change the course of world events -- slightly deluded, but never mind. He also fancied himself a ladies' man." - Lauren Bacall.

Hollywood is a place that must be seen to be disbelieved.

Hollywood's a place where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors.

... And so - with lotions of love - this is your New York correspondent, Walter Winchell, who knows that all the lights on Broadway are never as bright as the candle in the window when you come home.

I think it's important for anyone on a newspaper, particularly one who is doing a column, to "build his fences." . . . Of course I mean make as many friends as you can. You never know from where the next line or paragraph is coming. One of your best stories may come from a fellow whose face you never liked, but whom you were nice to -- and he appreciated your being civil to him, which is why he gave you the break.