GRADE: B

Has anyone had a greater impact on American culture and the media than columnist and radio commentator Walter Winchell? From the invention of the modern gossip column to pioneering the culture of celebrity to the distinct personal-orientation that has today become intertwined with traditional journalism, it was Winchell who blazed the trail.

Born April 7, 1897 in New York, Winchell began his career in vaudeville, where a popular backstage scandal-sheet he penned and published about the private lives of the performers gave the would-be writer his first taste of the power of the press—a hunger that would remain for the rest of his life.

That first brush with the power of the pen also taught Winchell that the possession of private, personal information as much as the use of that information—or even the threat of its publication—would endow him with personal power, the wielding of which would bring Winchell both prolific praise and continued condemnation.

When Winchell joined The New York Daily Mirror in the late 1920s, he was already established as the country’s most widely read newspaper columnist, appearing in nearly 2000 newspapers with an estimated weekly readership of over 50 million.

Winchell later added a weekly radio broadcast to his accomplishments, beginning each program with what would become a familiar refrain to many Americans—“Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea; let’s go to press.” By 1938, Winchell’s was the most popular radio show on the air, with more than 20 million households tuning in each week.

In the years leading up to World War II, Winchell gained healthy praise and admiration for his ongoing attacks on Adolph Hitler and his march toward war, calling attention to Germany’s treatment and murder of its Jewish citizens.

The decade of the 1950s were not so kind to Winchell, due mostly to his ill-fated decision to champion the cause of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin;. And his continuing feuds with many colleagues in the media, entertainment figures and politicians didn’t help matters either.

It's the classic rise and fall, covered neatly in director Paul Mazursky’s “Winchell,” a lively biopic featuring an Emmy-winning performance by Stanley Tucci as the firebrand muckraker. It also features fine supporting work from Paul Giamatti as Herman Klurfeld, Winchell’s primary ghostwriter, and Glenne Headly as Winchell’s part-time love interest and celebrity spy.

While “Winchell” doesn’t break any new cinematic ground, it does an outstanding job of capturing the man, and perhaps more importantly, the evolution behind the media’s descent into that space where celebrity, commentary and hard news mix.

Not content to whitewash Winchell’s transgressions or paint him merely as misunderstood, Scott Abbott’s screenplay, based on Klurfeld’s book, provides a mostly balanced point of view. Though Mazursky’s cinematic complexity never matches its subject matter in terms of weight, the straightforward treatment maintains interest throughout in a man who, for better or worse, was surely an American original.

Author’s note: The trailer below is a clip from Walter Winchell’s appearance on the television show, “What’s My Line.”

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