Dick Cavett is such a name-dropper, I'm always loathe to give him a link, but damn, he does have some good stories in him; his recent piece in the Times, The Ghost Ship 'W.W.', about an evening he spent with Walter Winchell, is one.
Today it's hard to appreciate the impact of, or understand the importance of Winchell. Think of Walter Cronkite, Matt Drudge, Simon Cowell, Page Six and Rush Limbaugh all combined, and that's probably 1/2 of it. He was without doubt one of the most powerful and influential media figures in 20th century America.
The character played by Burt Lancaster (pictured below), in the movie The Sweet Smell of Success, J.J. Hunsecker, is a thinly-veiled Winchell.
Cavett relates spending an evening on the town with a then-old Winchell; his power ebbed by age, mis-steps, but probably most importantly, with the burgeoning of television and the increasing diversity of voices that made his less relevant - something he almost physically couldn't bear. When he died n 1972, his funeral was attended by only two people, one of which was his daughter.
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