Dorothy Kilgallen



Born: Dorothy Mae Kilgallen; July 3, 1913; Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: November 8, 1965 (aged 52); New York City, U.S.
Cause of death: Acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication
Resting place: Gate of Heaven Cemetery

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen (July 3, 1913 – November 8, 1965) was an American columnist, journalist, and television game show panelist. After spending two semesters at the College of New Rochelle, she started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", which was eventually syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death.

Kilgallen's columns featured mostly show business news and gossip, but also ventured into other topics, such as politics and organized crime. She wrote front-page articles for multiple newspapers on the Sam Sheppard trial and, years later, events related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, such as testimony by Jack Ruby.

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Early life and career

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Sam Sheppard murder trial

Kilgallen covered the 1954 murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a doctor convicted of killing his wife at their home in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village.

The New York Journal-American carried the banner front-page headline that Kilgallen was "astounded" by the guilty verdict because of what she argued were serious flaws in the prosecution's case. At the time of the Cleveland jury's guilty verdict in December 1954, Kilgallen's sharp criticism of it was controversial and a Cleveland newspaper dropped her column in response. Her articles and columns in 1954 did not reveal all she had witnessed in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Nine years after the verdict and sentence, and after the judge had died, she claimed at an event held at the Overseas Press Club in New York that the judge had told her before the start of jury selection that Sheppard was "guilty as hell".

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Kennedy assassination

Kilgallen was publicly skeptical of the conclusions of the Warren Commission's report about the assassination of President Kennedy and Jack Ruby's shooting of Lee Oswald, and she wrote several newspaper articles on the subject. On February 23, 1964, she published an article in the New York Journal-American about a conversation she had with Jack Ruby, when he was at his defense table during a recess in his murder trial.

She also obtained a copy of Ruby's June 7, 1964, testimony to the Warren Commission, which she published in August 1964 in three installments on the front pages of the New York Journal-American, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and other newspapers.

What's My Line?


The What's My Line? panel in 1952: Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf,
Arlene Francis, and Hal Block, with John Daly as the host

Kilgallen became a panelist on the American television game show What's My Line? on its first broadcast, which aired live on February 2, 1950. The series was telecast from New York City on the CBS television network until 1967. She remained on the show for 15 years (until her death).

Beginning in 1959, the series was not always telecast live. Goodson Todman Productions used videotape, a recent invention. In 1961, producers were able to stockpile enough videotaped episodes so that Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, and John Charles Daly could take their first long summer vacation. In 1965, they returned from another long summer vacation to do a live telecast on September 12. It was followed by eight consecutive Sunday nights when Kilgallen appeared live, the last of them being November 7, just before her death.

Death


The footstone of Dorothy Kilgallen
in Gate of Heaven Cemetery

On November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found dead in her Manhattan townhouse located at 45 East 68th Street. Her death was determined to have been caused by a combination of alcohol and barbiturates. The police said there was no indication of violence or suicide. According to New York City medical examiner James Luke, the circumstances of her death were undetermined, but emphasized that "the overdose could well have been accidental".

Her Funeral Mass took place on November 11 at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan; John Daly, Arlene Francis, What's My Line? producer Mark Goodson, Betty White, Ed Sullivan, Joseph E. Levine, and Bob Considine were among the 2,600 people attending. Coverage of the funeral in the New York Journal-American, where she had worked, included "Mrs. Bennett Cerf" (Phyllis Fraser), among the notable people who attended. She was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, Westchester County, New York.

Legacy

In 1960, Kilgallen was one of the initial 500 persons chosen to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the What's My Line? telecast of November 14, 1965, To Tell the Truth regular panelist Kitty Carlisle, who had been a guest panelist on three previous episodes of What's My Line?, filled in for Kilgallen. Carlisle said on-camera that although she was occupying Kilgallen's seat, "no one could ever possibly take her place."

In a 1996 memoir, Kilgallen's colleague and friend Theo Wilson wrote that her work as a crime reporter was often overlooked during her lifetime and was forgotten after her death:

"Part of being a good reporter is to be anonymous, to stay out of the story so that you can better watch and study and listen to the principals. She couldn't do that, mostly because people wouldn't let her. She'd walk into a trial and the prosecutor would ask for her autograph for his wife or the judge would send out greetings."

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