Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972), an American newspaper and radio commentator, invented the gossip column at the New York Evening Graphic.

• At the height of his popularity, in the late 1930s, 50 million people—two-thirds of American adults—read Winchell's syndicated column and listened to his Sunday-night radio broadcast.
  • Sam Kashner in "Sweet Smell of Success: A Movie Marked Danger". Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood.

• Hated, feared, and revered, he presided over Table 50 of the Stork Club on East 53d Street in Manhattan, creating and destroying celebrities at the drop of his trademark gray snap-brim fedora.
  • Mervyn Rothstein: (12 June 1990) "That Loathsome Winchell. A Natural for a Book". NY Times. (review of Walter Winchell: A Novel by Michael Herr)

"He came to dinner at our house and was at his Royal best,always referring to himself in the third person. After he had left,myfather Chico said--"That's one of the things wrong with show business.A (CENSORED) like that can make or break a career" Maxine Marx,in the book she wrote about her father Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers