Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen?
deb...@comcast.net
Spilling Secrets
from Dominick Dunne's Diary
Vanity Fair, April 2006
"It amazes me how many people remember the mysterious death in 1965 of
Dorothy Kilgallen, the controversial gossip columnist and television
personality, which was reported in headlines nationwide as an
accidental
overdose of sleeping pills and liquor. On January 25, when I was a
guest on
Larry King Live, a woman called in from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to ask if I
had
known Kilgallen and if I had any opinions about her death. I hadn't
given a
thought to the columnist for decades, but a rush of information came
out of
my mouth, as if I had taken something long forgotten out of a storage
vault.
When I first lived in New York, in the 1950s, Kilgallen was a huge
celebrity. Her Sunday-night television show, What's My Line?, was
watched by
millions and her daily column, "The Voice of Broadway," in the New York
Journal-American, was so popular that she gave Walter Winchell a run
for his
money. She also happened to be a first-rate crime reporter, as her
father,
Jim Kilgallen, had been before her in the Hearst papers. She broke
stories.
She covered trials, including the famous courtroom drama of Dr. Sam
Sheppard, whose conviction for murdering his wife was later overturned.
Kilgallen was not a pretty woman. She had an unfortunate chin, which
robbed
her face of beauty, but on opening nights and at El Morocco and the
Stork
Club she projected an aura of glamour with her magnificent evening
dresses
and jewels. She had wit, power, and a mean streak. Everybody read her,
and a
lot of people were afraid of her. Frank Sinatra hated her. Both Johnny
Carson and Jack Paar disliked her and took potshots at her. She was
married
for years to Richard Kollmar, the father of her three children, and
they had
an early-morning radio show called Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick. She
went
to Mass on Sundays. She was a heavy drinker, and she took Seconal to
sleep.
She had lovers, and at one point fell madly, passionately in love with
the
effete singer Johnny Ray, whose greatest hits were "Cry" and "The
Little
White Cloud That Cried." Ray's romantic inclinations, however, went in
another direction.
With her fame and her contacts, Kilgallen was able to get what was
perhaps
the only interview Jack Ruby ever gave before he died in prison. Ruby
was
the mystery man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of
President Kennedy, in the Dallas Police Station two days after Kennedy
died,
in one of the most watched and most shocking historical moments ever
recorded on television. Ruby owned a nightclub in Houston called the
Carousel, and he had friends on both the police force and in the Mafia.
How
he was allowed to be in the station at the moment Oswald, shackled and
surrounded by police, was being moved through it remains a baffling
question. Kilgallen, a conspiracy theorist, never believed that Ruby
killed
Oswald out of some deep affection for President Kennedy, as the Warren
Report suggested. She died within months of interviewing him.
What I had recalled for the woman from Tulsa was a persistent rumor at
the
time that the sleeping pills in Kilgallen's stomach had not dissolved,
which
meant that they were undigested. Liz Smith, another famous gossip
columnist,
told me recently that the late Arlene Francis, who was also on the
panel of
What's My Line?, had been with Kilgallen the evening she died, and she
always maintained that Dorothy was not drunk that night. I forgot to
tell
the woman who called in that no notes or tapes from the Ruby interview
have
ever been found. Kilgallen told people that she was going to break the
case,
so Ruby must have told her something that someone important didn't want
her
to print. At least that's my interpretation. She once wrote in her
column
that if Lee Harvey Oswald's widow ever told the whole story of her life
with
Oswald it would "split open the front pages of newspapers all over the
world," according to Lee Israel in her biography of Kilgallen. There
was
talk that the CIA had silenced her, but it was never proved. Seconal
and
vodka were given as the official cause of death. She was found in bed
in her
town house, on East 68th Street, but it was not the bed she normally
slept
in. She was in full makeup, including false eyelashes. She had been
reading
a novel by Robert Ruark, which was by her side. Although Kilgallen
could not
read without eyeglasses, the police report made no mention of any on or
around the bed.
In later years, when I worked in live television, I became a friend of
Dorothy's younger sister, Eleanor Kilgallen, who was the New York
casting
director for Universal Studios in Hollywood. A couple of times, after a
couple of drinks, I asked Eleanor about Dorothy's death and the Ruby
notes.
She would never talk to me about it, and she made me feel like a skunk
for
asking, but I was dying to know the truth. Since that call from
Oklahoma,
I've been thinking once again about Kilgallen's death, and so are a lot
of
people I've been hearing from."
robertc...@yahoo.com
deb...@comcast.net wrote:
> Spilling Secrets
> from Dominick Dunne's Diary
> Vanity Fair, April 2006
>
>
> "It amazes me how many people remember the mysterious death in 1965 of
> Dorothy Kilgallen, the controversial gossip columnist and television
> personality, which was reported in headlines nationwide as an
> accidental
> overdose of sleeping pills and liquor. On January 25, when I was a
> guest on
> Larry King Live, a woman called in from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to ask if I
> had
> known Kilgallen and if I had any opinions about her death. I hadn't
> given a
> thought to the columnist for decades, but a rush of information came
> out of
> my mouth, as if I had taken something long forgotten out of a storage
> vault.
>
Sorry to see so intelligent a man as Dominick Dunne feeding the
conspiracy theorists.
James Neibaur
>
> Sorry to see so intelligent a man as Dominick Dunne feeding the
> conspiracy theorists.
I agree, Bob. There is no shortage of nutcases who believe these outrageous
theories, but when someone with the talent and intellect of Dunne pays any
kind of attention, it can be rather disquieting.
JN
deb...@comcast.net
> --Lee Oswald, Fri. night Nov. 22, 1963
Oswald said it,
Roy believes it,
that settles it.
The assassins speak!-
John Wilkes Booth- "Sic Semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!"
Charles J. Guiteau- "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts & Arthur is
president now!"
Leon Czolgosz-"I done my duty. I am not sorry for my crime."
Lee H. Oswald- "I'm just a patsy! I didn't kill anybody!"
William Bojanowski
"Louisiana Lou" <Louisi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Propaganda is all phony." - Bob Dylan
If that quote is from the song "It's Alright Ma" then it's incorrect as
a quote.
"Old lady judges watch people in pairs,
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals, insult , and stare,
While money doesn't talk it swears,
Obscenity, who really cares,
Propaganda, all is phony"
Bob Dylan