July 3: “I hope I can beat the men.”

Do you know who this is?
-She was known as ‘the modern Nellie Bly’.
-She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
-Her death is shrouded in mystery.

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was born on July 3, 1913 to Hearst newspaperman James Lawrence Kilgallen and Mae Ahern Kilgallen. The family moved often during her childhood years – moving from Chicago to Wyoming, then to Indiana, then back to Chicago. They finally settled in New York City, where Kilgallen would spend one semester at the College of New Rochelle. After that semester she would leave college to follow in her father’s footsteps by accepting a job as a reporter for the New York Journal-American.

Twenty-three year old Kilgallen would skyrocket in notoriety and readers in 1936 when she would compete with to other (male) New York reporters in a race around the world. The trip was to be completed by using means of transportation what was available to the general public – no special charters or use of government transportation. The reasons for the race were threefold: to break existing around-the-world travel records; to become some of the first travelers to use the China Clipper to cross the Pacific Ocean; and to increase the circulation of their respective newspapers at home. Kilgallen attracted quite a bit of attention, as she was the only woman in the ‘race’.

Before leaving she said, “I'm off to race around the world - a race against time and two men. I know I can beat time. I hope I can beat the men.”

The New York Evening Journal printed her reports on her journey daily and, through the headlines, became known as the ‘modern day Nellie Bly’. She traveled via the Hindenburg from New York to Germany, and then used different airlines to fly to Rome, Hong Kong, and Manila. At Manila she booked a flight on the Pan Am China Clipper to Hawaii, then San Francisco, finally catching a commercial flight back to New York. She completed the trip in twenty-four days, placing second to Bud Elkins of the New York World Telegram (who took twenty-one days) and beating Leo Keiran of the New York Times. She became the first woman to fly around the world. Later that year she published an autobiographical book titled Girl Around the World chronicling the event, moved to Hollywood, and the following year wrote a screenplay for the movie Fly Away Baby. The movie would star Glenda Farrell as a character which was inspired by Kilgallen’s travels called Torchy Blane.

Kilgallen gave up her film-writing career in 1937 returned to New York to work for the New York Journal-American where she was given her own column, the Hollywood Scene. The next year She would start a new column titled The Voice of Broadway, and would write it for the next twenty-seven years, until her death in 1965. The Voice of Broadway focused on the news and gossip of the New York show business industry, but it also included articles on politics and organized crime. The column appeared in 24 other newspapers by 1941, and eventually the column was syndicated to 146 newspapers through the King Features Syndicate. She had an estimated twenty-million readers by 1950, and was being recognized as one of the most important columnists in America. Her columns were an unusual mixture. As Midwest Today article by Sara Jordan stated:

“The Kilgallen approach was a mixture of catty gossip ("A world-famous movie idol, plastered, commanded a pretty girl to get into his limousine, take off all her clothes"), odd tidbits of inconsequential information ("The Duke of Windsor eats caviar with a spoon"), and dark warnings ("Anti-American factions are planning to blow up the Panama Canal").”

Kilgallen was married in 1940 to actor Dick Kollmar – who played Boston Blackie in a popular radio crime show. The couple would have three children – two of which can be seen in this snippet from an episode of What’s My Line.

In 1945 the couple started Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick, a morning live radio show broadcast that would be on the air until 1963. The program discussed plays, books, films – the various social activities that were available to New Yorkers.

Kilgallen was invited to become a panelist on a television game show originating in New York called What’s My Line?, airing from 1950 – 1967. She would remain on the show from 1950 until her death in 1965. While the show was designed for entertainment – with a priority on getting a laugh and providing entertainment for the audience – Kilgallen’s main interest was very competitive: guessing the right answers, and the name of the mystery guest - even if it was her own father. While she was popular on-air, she often was in conflict with her co-panelists because of her competitive nature, her using information overheard in the dressing rooms in her gossip column, and her being a ‘Hearst girl’. Arlene Francis was soon brought on the show as a regular panelist to counter-balance Kilgallen.

During the 1950’s Kilgallen continued to publish her columns and perform in her radio and television shows. She extended the scope of her articles by attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, as well as covering criminal trials. It was her investigative reporting that got Sam Shepard a new trial. Shepard’s case was later the basis for “The Fugitive”, a popular television series and movie. Her articles during this time were the basis of her nomination for a Pulitzer Prize.

She was also the only reporter to privately interview Jack Ruby, who was in jail accused of murdering the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald. Kilgallen had been impressed with President Kennedy, and used her investigative talents to start to raise some hard questions, especially about the thoroughness of the Warren Report. She interviewed witnesses to the shooting that the Warren Commission – headed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren – had neglected to interview. Much of what she discovered remained unpublished – her claim was that she was gathering the information for a book.

After she had obtained a copy of Ruby’s testimony to the Warren Commission and shocked the public with her revelations of the inept questioning of Ruby by Warren, Kilgallen found the FBI on her doorstep. An FBI memo reported that when asked to reveal the name of the individual who leaked the 102 page transcript of Ruby’s testimony to her, "she stated that she was the only person who knew the identity of the source and that she 'would die' rather than reveal his identity."

America loves conspiracy theories, and Kilgallen’s death – connected to her investigation of Kennedy’s assassination – provided a wonderful one. Kilgallen was found dead in her apartment on November 8, 1965. While the official verdict was suicide, many believed that it was murder – the fact that her notes on the Ruby interview were never found and other inconsistencies in her death keeping the conspiracy theory alive over forty years later.

Kilgallen died as she lived – making the news.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

Our local library has no biographies available on Dorothy Kilgallen.

WEB RESOURCES:

Bambooweb
Find A Grave
Midwest Today
Smithsonian
Spartacus
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Portrait, FanPix
02. China Clipper: Flying Clippers
03. American Airlines
04. Masked Dorothy
05. Typewriter
06. Gravestone: Find A Grave, picture by Elliot

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May 5: “…I am running a race with Time.”

Do you know who this is?

-Her nickname was 'Pink" because it was her favorite color when she was a child.
-Her professional name was from a Stephen Foster song.

-She was one of the leading female industrialists of the early 20th Century.

"Down in the bottom of my hand-bag was a special passport, number 247, signed by James G. Blaine, Secretary of State. Someone suggested that a revolver would be a good companion piece for the passport, but I had such a strong belief in the world's greeting me as I greeted it, that I refused to arm myself. I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me, let them be Americans, English, French, German or anything else." - Around the World in 72 Days

Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born on May 5, 1864, at Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania. She was the last of three children born to Michael and Mary Jane Cochran. Both of her parents had been married previously, with Mary Jane a widow with no children, and Michael an industrialist and associate judge who had seven children from an earlier marriage. As a youngster, Elizabeth would try to prove herself the equal of any of her older brothers, including racing with them and climbing trees.

Her early education was conducted at home by her father, but he died in 1870 when she was only six years old. Three years later her mother would remarry, but would divorce her alcoholic and abusive husband when Elizabeth was fourteen. After her father's death, Elizabeth would be sent to a school near their home to prepare for a teaching career. At school she excelled in being a creative and talented writer. When she was sixteen, the family funds were gone and the family moved to stay with relatives in Pittsburgh.

It was in Pittsburgh that Elizabeth would be set on a course that would establish her role for a significant portion of her life. The Pittsburgh Dispatch had printed a column which Elizabeth responded to with a fiery rebuttal to the editor. The editor was so impressed with her that he asked her to join the Dispatch, where her first article was on divorce - a rare topic in 19th Century society.

Women newspaper writers in the late 19th Century customarily used pen names, and the editor chose the name "Nellie Bly" for Elizabeth. The name was a misspelling of the title character of a popular Stephen Foster song. Elizabeth earned five dollars a week for her work.

Elizabeth had to fight the prejudices of the day in her job on the newspaper. She wanted to be an investigative reporter, and wrote on the plight of the working women in a series of articles that dealt with the working conditions of female factory workers. She went under cover to make sure her information was accurate, working as a factory girl - then reporting on the low pay, long hours, and firetrap conditions of the building.

However, the newspaper wanter her to write on more traditional topics, such as women's fashion, society, and gardening. Unhappy with the assignments, Elizabeth - at the age of twenty-one - travelled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent. She would spend almost six months reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. She would protest the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican government, which prompted the Mexican government to threaten her with arrest. She would leave the country, and later these dispatches would be published in book form under the title Six Months in Mexico.

Elizabeth moved to New York City soon after her return from Mexico in the hopes of securing a job as a serious journalist and investigative reporter, but soon discovered that the New York papers did not want to hire a female journalist. She turned that fact itself into an "expose'" story, selling it to her former employers in Pittsburg. Eventually she was able to arrange an interview with the managing editor of the New York World, John Cockerill, and the owner, Joseph Pulitzer.

After being hired by the World, she quickly conceived of an idea to have herself admitted to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, which was New York's insane asylum for the poor, by feigning mental illness. Her purpose was to discover the truth behind reports of abuses by the institution - which included physical and mental abuse by the staff, vermin-infested food, and admittance of individuals who were physically ill, but not mentally ill. She said:

"Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell's Island? I said I could and I would. And I did."

Her experience became more horrifying after she dropped her insanity act. The doctors and nurses refused to believe her. After ten days in the asylum, Elizabeth was removed - through prior arrangement with the World - by a lawyer from the newspaper. The resulting stories led to reforms at the asylum, and a permanent position on the World, as well as a book: Ten Days in a Mad-House.

Elizabeth's greatest fame, however, came from a well-publicized effort to beat the record of Jules Verne's fictional character, Phineas Fogg, in Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days.

In a trip financed by the New York World, she would leave New York on November 14, 1889, beginning a 24,899-mile journey that would take her around the world. She cabled her observations to the World almost every day, and travelled by a variety of methods, including steamer, train, horseback, and rickshaw. While in France she paused in her trip long enough to interview Jules Verne. Near the Suez Canal, she would share her experience with her readers:

"Before the boat anchored the men armed themselves with canes, to keep off the beggars they said; and the women carried parasols for the same purpose. I had neither stick nor umbrella with me, and refused all offers to accept one for this occasion, having an idea, probably a wrong one, that a stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out."

The last leg of her trip - across the continental United States - was on a special Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway train, the Miss Nelie Bly Special, which made the San Francisco to Chicago leg of the journey with a new speed record: 2,577 miles in only 69 hours, average 37 miles per hour.

New York was waiting on January 25, 1890, as - seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and fourteen seconds after her departure - Elizabeth arrived home, three days ahead of her planned schedule of a 75-day trip around the world.

"I was told when we were almost home to jump to the platorm the moment the train stopped at Jersey City, for that made my time around the world. The station was packed with thousands of people, and the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them, and the cannons at the Battery and Fort Greene boomed out the news of my arrival. I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again."

She was greeted with fireworks, parades, and bands, and had been responsible for a huge increase in sales of the World. She was catapulted - for a time - into the world's spotlight. A book she published about her adventures, Around the World in 72 Days, was successful. But, while she felt she was due a bonus from the World for her accomplishments, none was forth coming and she would become disillusioned with her employers.

In 1894, Elizabeth would marry millionaire industrialist Robert Seaman, who was 72 years old - and 42 years her senior. She would retire from journalism, and become the president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company. By the time her husband died in 1904, she had become one of the leading female industrialists of the early twentieth century. Embezzlement by her employees would eventually cause her company to fail, and she would have to go back to journalism, where she reported on the suffragette convention in 1913 and was sent overseas to do stories on the Eastern Front in World War I.

She would die from pneumonia at the age of 57 on January 27, 1922, at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City, and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.

Elizabeth "Nellie Bly" Cochran Seaman would leave behind a legacy of determination, creativity, and inspiration for women in the 19th Century. As she once said:

"If you want to do it you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?"

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

Ann Donegan Johnson: The Value of Fairness: The Story of Nellie Bly (Juvenile Section)

Bonnie Christensen: The Daring Nellie Bly: America's Star Reporter (Juvenile Section)

WEB RESOURCES:

A Celebration of Women Authors

Answers Biography

National Women's Hall of Fame

New York Women's Biography Club

Pennsylvania Biography

Pioneer Woman Investigative Journalist

Victorian Trade Cards

Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Portrait: Library of Congress

02. American Journal of Psychiatry: Nelly Practices Insanity

03. Ten Days in an Asylum: Library of Congress

04. Nellie Bly in Travelling Outfit

05. Victorian Trading Card: Nelly Bly Waving Goodbye

Feb. 3rd: “Only one thing endures and that is character”

Do you know who this is?
-He was a candidate for President in 1872.
-He backed a utopian colony in Colorado.
-Harpers Weekly called him “the most perfect Yankee the country has ever produced”.

Horace Greeley was born of February 3, 1811, to Zaccheus and Mary Greeley, poor farmers in Amherst, New Hampshire. Because of their economic difficulties, Horace received irregular schooling, which ended when he was fourteen. He apprenticed as a printer in Poultney, Vermont, at The Northern Spectator. He decided to try to improve his prospects, so he gathered his possessions and a small amount of money, moving to New York City in 1831 when he was twenty. In New York he was employed as a printer.

In 1834 he founded the weekly literary and news journal, the New Yorker, which consisted mostly of clippings from other magazines. Horace read widely, and began writing and contributing to the New Yorker, increasing its audience, and giving him a reputation as a writer. But, the New Yorker failed to make money. Horace was forced to supplement his income by writing for the Whig party which led to his being asked by Whig politicians in 1838 to edit a major national campaign newspaper, the Jeffersonian, which reached 15,000 circulation. His efforts at this led in 1840 to his editorship of the William Henry Harrison campaign weekly, the Log Cabin. The circulation of this paper rose to about 90,000, and contributed to both Harrison’s victory and Horace’s influence. This began a lifelong relationship with politics and writing. While he was elected as a Whig to the Thirtieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the unseating of David S. Jackson and served from December 4, 1848, to March 3, 1849, Horace was never successful at being elected to a full term of public office.

In 1841 Horace launched the New York Tribune, a newspaper which devoted space to politics, social reform, literacy, intellectual endeavors, and news. It was used as a personal vehicle by Horace for a variety of causes that he backed. He advocated all sorts of agrarian reforms including granting free land to farmers who lived on it for a set period of time; rejected land grants to railroads; denounced monopolies; flirted with utopianism(he supported utopian communities in New Jersey and Colorado); attacked the exploitation of workers; abhorred slavery; and opposed capital punishment. Many of the Tribune staff were partnered with the Transcendentalist movement, extending the influence of that philosophy. The newspaper, which merged with the Log Cabin and the New Yorker, had a weekly circulation of over a quarter million by 1860 – a number which should be larger as each newspaper usually was read by several people. The weekly Tribune was the dominant newspaper in the North. Yet, while Horace prided himself on taking then-radical positions on all sorts of issues, there were few readers who followed all of his suggestions.

His sentiments on slavery and the free-soil movement led him to the newly formed Republican Party’s camp, and he attended the national organization meeting of the Party in Pittsburgh in February 1856. The Tribune became the unofficial national newspaper support for the Republican Party, explaining and promoting the Republican platform. He supported John Fremont for President in 1856 and in 1860 was a supporter originally of Edward Bates, then Lincoln.

Once the civil war started, Horace joined the radical antislavery faction of the Republican Party, demanding an early end of slavery. He would criticize Lincoln for being cautious in his efforts to end slavery – as evidenced through an 1862 famous editorial titled The Prayer of Twenty Millions - though he applauded Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Because of Lincoln’s perceived moderation, the Tribune did not support Lincoln’s 1864 reelection, and Horace lost some popular support because of this.

The quote most frequently attributed to Horace was used to express his desires for a liberal agrarian policy, and was published in 1865. “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country” was probably enhanced from a phrase written by John Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851.

After the war he joined the Radical Republicans in supporting equality for the freedmen, advocated the impeachment of Andrew Johnson; desired reconciliation with the South; and recommended Jefferson Davis’s release from prison. He would later become disaffected with the Grant administration because of its corruption and continued support of the enforcement of reconstruction in the South. In 1872 the anti-Grant Liberal Republicans and Democrats – a party he had denounced for decades - would nominate Greeley for President. He had once said of the Democrats: “I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.” Horace would suffer a huge defeat, carrying only six border and southern states.

The election, the death of his wife, and the reduction of his influence in his beloved Tribune, all contributed to a physical and mental breakdown, followed by his death on November 28, 1872. He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, New York.

Horace Greeley was an excellent judge of determining what was newsworthy and emphasized a quality of reporting not seen before. His was an age of personal influence over the press. He was a Horatio Alger story unto himself, rising from abject poverty to national success and influence. He once said: “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.” He certainly was a character.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
Robert C. Williams; Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom

WEB RESOURCES:
1911 Encyclopedia
Horace Greeley Facts
Tulane biography

Wikipedia

Jan. 13: The Flat, Calm, Twangy Midwestern Voice

Do you know who this is?
-He was an author and radio newscaster.
-He was the head of the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II
-He portrayed himself as a journalist in the 1951 science fiction classic, The Day The Earth Stood Still

Elmer Davis is a name that many may not have heard of. He was not a general or admiral, great politician or explorer. He was an Indiana newsman who moved into radio, and won the hearts of America during the tension filled years of WW II with honest news reporting.

Elmer was born in Aurora, Indiana on January 13, 1890, the son of Elam Davis - a cashier for the First National Bank of Aurora – and Louise Severin Davis – a school principal. He would grow up in Aurora, and would start working for the Aurora Bulletin as a printer’s devil after his freshman year in high school. Elmer was small in build, and athletics were not his strong point. However, he did have a sharp mind and an intense interest in writing – a combination that would move him into a career in which he would excel.

Elmer started his professional writing career as a reporter with the Indianapolis Star, where he was paid $25 a week, and worked for them during his years at Franklin College

In 1910 Elmer was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. His time at Oxford was cut short when Elmer’s father became very ill, and eventually died. While his stay in England was short, Elmer was able to make frequent trips to the Continent during that time, and during one of these trips met his future wife, Florence.

When Elmer returned to America he began working as editor of Adventure magazine. He left this job after a year (in 1913) to go back to his true love – the news – and work for the New York Times, a job he held for the next decade, interviewing people from boxer Jack Dempsey to evangelist Billy Sunday. Here he was very successful. Reporters were paid for the printed space of their article – the longer the article, the more the pay. Samuel T. Williamson, a fellow Times reporter said of Davis: he "benefited from his facility with the English language," which "made it possible for him to write a long story so phrased that a copy-reader couldn't cut it much."

In 1923, Elmer left the Times to become a successful freelance writer, writing both fiction and nonfiction articles for a number of publications, as well as books. His big break would come in 1939.

Columbia Broadcasting called Elmer in August 1939, asking him to fill in as a news analyst for H. V. Kaltenborn. Kaltenborn was in Europe reporting on the various crisis occurring there that would eventually lead to World War II. Elmer later wrote: "I had done some broadcasting at odd times over the past dozen years, had sometimes even pinch-hit for Kaltenborn during his absences; but to fill in for him in such a crisis as this was a little like trying to play center-field in place of Joe DiMaggio." He became an instant success, and was welcomed into the homes of millions of Americans every evening. His news analaysis was a brief five minutes long, but it summed up the events shaping the world in a concise, clear manner. Edward R. Murrow, one of the great newscasters of the day, felt that Elmer’s success was due in part to his Indiana accent: it reminded folks of home. Murrow wrote to Elmer: "I have hopes that broadcasting is to become an adult means of communication at last. I've spent a lot of time listening to broadcasts from many countries . . . and yours stand out as the best example of fair, tough-minded, interesting talking I've heard."

Listen to one of his broadcasts here.

In one of his broadcasts, Elmer recommended the government organize news information under one organization. This would lead Franklin Roosevelt to establish the Office of War Information (OWI), and to ask Elmer Davis to be the head of it. Davis eventually accepted, and created a powerful organization with the goal: "This is a people's war, and the people are entitled to know as much as possible about it." The OWI was charged with coordinating government information about the events and progress of the war effort to the home front. Elmer was in continual confrontation with the military over what the public had the right to know.

When the war ended, so did the OWI, and Elmer went back to radio broadcasting, this time with ABC. He took a stand against the abuses of McCarthyism in the early 1950’s – risky business at the time, though typical for Elmer, as his statement “The first and great commandment is, don't let them scare you” shows. In 1958 he would suffer a stroke, dying on May 18th of that year.

While his work in radio is largely unrecognized today – reflecting, perhaps, the huge influence of television during the last half-century - Elmer Davis brought critical analysis and commentary to the events of the day, was willing to stand up for his basic principles, and lived his life wanting to honestly inform the American public of news both good and bad. He crusaded against the enemies of freedom of expression, and used a common sense in his approach that is often missing in other commentators. The New York Times stated that he was "the Mount Everest of commentators, towering in serenity and grandeur over the foothill Cassandras of his time." He’s a man we need to remember.

Web Resources:

American Journalism Review
Elmer Davis Biography
OTR Davis Biography
Life Article 1943
OWI
Time Article 1940
Time Magazine Article 1942
Time Article 1943

Local Library Resources:
No local library resources are available.