Dorothy Kilgallen

I am 67 years old. I remember the show and Dorothy. Growing up on a farm in the middle of the country, shows like this were the only glimpses we yokels had of the outside world. I thought the whole panel lived wonderful lives.

I just finished that book last month. It was fascinating.

I first became aware of who Kilgallen was on YouTube reruns of "What's My Line?". The book made it clear she was both a pioneering female journalist as well as a highly promotable gimmick for her newspaper, The Journal-American (they enrolled her in a sort of "Amazing Race" around the world when she was 23 and promoted it with huge headlines).

The most interesting parts of the book (besides the JFK connection) had to do with her wastrel-drunk husband, Richard Kollmar, and her affair with teen heartthrob Johnnie Ray, who was 20 years younger and a big 'mo.

But she was definitely a pioneer, not just as a woman journalist but as one of the first big journalist-celebrities.

But who remembers Dorothy Fuldheim?

She and her husband had a breakfast time radio show "Dorothy and Dick" - every weekday. I listened to several at the Museum of TV and Radio in NYC. They would read and discuss what was in the newspapers that morning. He would tell a few jokes and she rarely got them. I would imagine that the newpaper they used for the broadcast was the Journal-American since she worked for them.

Who is Dorothy Kilgallen? Is she currently appearing in a motion picture on Broadway?

A bigger mystery---

whatever happened to me??

LOL R5!

I love those old What's My Line shows, and I wasn't even born until many years later. I love how classy they all were and how well they all spoke, as well as the old-timey phrasing.

"Are you in a motion picture that's currently playing in one of the picture houses on Broadway?"

A lead line from one of her stories re the Soviet premier visit to USA - "Khrushchev stuck out his tummy and waved at me!"

The "What's My Line?" YouTube when Eleanor Roosevelt was the Mystery Guest is just wonderful. Dorothy Kilgallen - as usual - guessed who it was but, in true 50's form, asked if the guest was "Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt." Eleanor was there to promote United Nations Week and - in true Sophia Petrillo mode - she had her purse with her

There's another YouTube video where the panel reacts to Kilgallen's death.

She did not have a career in the legitimate theater, but she often wrote about it anyway!

There's also a YouTube compilation of "Strange Moments from What's My LIne?", one of which has Kilgallen seemingly wacked out on barbiturates or something.

The custom was to have the panelists introduce each other one at a time. Arlene Francis introduces Buddy Hackett, then stands there looking grim and worried. Buddy nervously performs an introduction of Dorothy.

Then Dorothy trips out, starts to introduce Bennett Cerf in awkward, slurred speech, fakes a sneeze, and finally carries it off.

R12-- in the Lee Israel book, near the end of her life, Dorothy would show up in make -up for that evening's "What's My Line?" She looked out of it, holding onto walls and asked the make up artist if she looked all right.

I have a feeling that Arlene and Bennett found Dorothy very, very tiresome.

Frank Sinatra HATED her. Called her the Chinless Wonder.

I've got to get this book. I remember Kilgallen from What's My Line. Weren't she and Kitty Carlisle in love with gay men? I wonder if they ever fooled around. I think the chances are good that she had something on the Kennedy assassination. She was, above all, a very sharp woman.

Johnnie Ray was before my time but he was really big I hear. I remember going to a gay bar in the 70s and it was closed for a private party for Ray. When I asked the doorman who that was, he slammed the door in my face. "Yeah, right."

Although I find her to be the most compelling WML panelist, it's hard to ignore her reaction to the appearance of gay icon supreme Patsy Cline at Carnegie Hall:

"When country music performers from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall to benefit New York's Musicians Aid Society in 1961, Kilgallen dismissed them as "hicks from the sticks". In her column she advised that "everyone should leave town. The hillbillies are coming".[56] Patsy Cline, one of the headliners, responded that "Miss Dorothy called us Nashville performers 'the gang from Grand Ole Opry - hicks from the sticks.' And if I have the pleasure of seeing that wicked witch, I'll let her know how proud I am to be a hick from the sticks." (Wikipedia)

R12: what was the first part of that clip about? A crasher?

The panelists on those game shows (What's My Line and its siblings, such as To Tell the Truth and I've Got a Secret) seemed to exude an air of New York café society classiness, despite the fact that the shows themselves were pretty low-budget affairs, with a sponsor's name prominently displayed at all times.

I wonder what it would have been like if they'd participated in later game shows, like "Hollywood Squares."

"I'll take Bennett Cerf to block, please."

Actually, Paul Lynde on WML would have been a riot.

I'm obsessed with Dorothy Kilgallen!

But I found Lee Israel's bio quite wanting. Muc of Dorothy's life is skimmed over and it seemed like Israel wasn't really granted interviews with a lot of the necessary people...or they simply weren't willing to speak on record. I believe Dorothy's grown children were not (unsurprisingly) participants.

And IIRC Arlene and Bennett are barely quoted and only politely, at that.

I'd like to think there will be a more informative bio but at this point none of Dorothy's acquaintances are alive to comment and there's probably very little audience interested.

Btw, if you're interested, there's a wonderful oral history of What's My Line? by Bennett Cerf, hopefully still out there on youtube, in which he talks about his dislike for Dorothy, among other things.

Interesting, R21. Here's a link:

[quote]Johnnie Ray was before my time but he was really big I hear.

Check out "There's No Business Like Show Business." In the film, Johnnie Ray plays the son of Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey. His brother in the film is played by Donald O'Conner and his sister is played by Mitzi Gaynor. Donald's girlfriend is played by Marilyn Monroe. A fun film!

R21- a new book is coming out this winter. The workng title (it could change) is GOOD NIGHT DOROTHY KILGALLEN.

Sadly she is one of many, many victims of the JFK assassination. She figured out the connection between Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald and the involvement of the military-industrial complex, and they killed her for it.

Richard Kollmar,her husband committed suicide in the early 70's. He was found in the bedroom where Dorothy died. The five story town house where they lived, had 28 rooms and Kollmar had his own sleeping quarters on a different floor from Dorothy. He was a terrible drunk as was Johnny Ray although according to the Israel book, Johnny Ray cleaned up his act and got sober.

I always wondered how Dorothy and Dick could reliably wake up every morning after a night of clubbing and drinking and do their radio program, even if it was only coming from their townhouse. And apparently, the show ran for many years...5 days a week!

Check out on youtube the WML? appearance of a chorus boy from the Broadway musical Wish You Were Here, produced by Dick Kollmar....but unrecognized by Dorothy. He's kind of hunky though not what we think of today as a chorus boy.

Thanks for posting r22!

Doesn't Bennett's voice disprove the notion that he spoke with a broad and haughty Mid-Atlantic accent? He always sounded pure Bronx (or is that Brooklyn?) to me. It was just the big words he knew that were so hoity-totiy.

[quote]I always wondered how Dorothy and Dick could reliably wake up every morning after a night of clubbing and drinking and do their radio program

Maybe they really didn't drink as much as has been publicized after their deaths. It just doesn't seem as if they could get stinking drunk and then put on such charming conversation a few hours later.

What was the address of the townhouse?

Old girl was lucky she never crossed paths with Patsy Cline.....or did she????

Johnny Ray with Judy and her new husband Mickey Deans on 3/15/69. Judy was dead about 3 months later.

The first line in "Come On Eileen" the big hit by Dexy's Midnight Runners is "Poor old Johnny Ray..."

If her townhouse had 28 rooms over 5 floors there must have been at least 5 rooms on each floor.

That's a big townhouse!

That is one rough-looking 47 yr old Judy.

Jesus r33 that IS a big townhouse! I wonder how many millions it would cost today.

Johnny Ray was indeed big . . . in the penile area, if the rumors were true.

Why does Judy Garland have a piece of craft paper stapled to her forehead? And those pearls don't do a thing for that craft paper.

R27- the Lee Israel book said that in later years when the drinking got really bad, the radio show producer would stockpile some old tapes to play. The night she attended the opening of the musical MR. PRESIDENT, Dorothy was so drunk that her escort had to prop her up as they made their way down the aisle of the theatre. At intermission when she insisted on a drink, the gentleman (not Johnny Ray) found a quiet corner of the lobby where he could shield Kilgallen from others.

R30 pictures of the townhouse. 45 Eat 68th Street.

Joan Crawford was there when some of the police arrived comforting the husband and staff. The book mentions that during the 30's, Kilgallen criticized Joan for combing her hair ringside at a nightclub. Many years later, the two became friends and would cruise around Manhattan in the back seat of Crawford's limo, drinking 100 proof vodka.

Forgot the link R30. Here are a few snapshots of the townhouse.

That Joan never passed up an opportunity to showboat, did she?

Kilgallen's husband on WHAT'S MY LINE?

There's juicier info in r40's link about Dorothy's last days than in most of Lee Israel's bio. Thanks for posting!

The new book about Dorothy mentioned by r24 is apparently a fictionalized account of Dorothy's life. But I still can't wait to read it.

I'm not so sure that there was ever a physical aspect to Dorothy's relationship to Johnny Ray.

And regardless of his homosexuality, were they both ever sober enough to really get it on?

R43- I was told the new book will be about her death. However, I haven't read the link that I posted with the townhouse photos called Kilgallen files. Did you read that there?

There's basically an entire Dorothy Kilgallen library!

No OP, I just heard about the new book through a friend in publishing. Though he doesn't know any of the details except that it's a "novelization" of her life and death.

Thanks for starting the thread. I'm not sure why Kilgallen has always fascinated me so. I watched her on WML? as a little kid and have really gotten into all the clips of the show on youtube, which I find far more engaging and fun than most anything on current TV. I love Arlene and Bennett but I'm really taken with Dorothy!

I've seen some info on her kids posted on the internet previously. I must have a look around and see if I can find something again.

Feel the same way R47. I remember my mom would watch What's My Line? and she never liked Dorothy. I was very little and I don't know why she felt that way. I've always been fascinated by her too.

There was a What's my Line? youtube clip where her two oldest children were mystery guests.

Found the clip of her children.

Johnny Ray on What's My Line? Was this before the relationship developed?

Her death was very mysterious and looked like foul play. The autopsy showed nicotine in her system, but she was not a smoker.

[quote]Her death was very mysterious and looked like foul play. The autopsy showed nicotine in her system, but she was not a smoker.

There were other details that didn't fit. The cause of death was an accidental overdose, but:

- she was found in bed in the master bedroom, which she no longer used (she had taken to sleeping in an attic room on another floor)

- she was still wearing her false eyelashes and wiglet from the "What's My Line?" taping, which she never wore to bed

- there was a book beside her that appeared to have slipped from her hand, but she had already finished the book

- there were no reading glasses nearby, which Dorothy needed.

I don't believe 99 percent of the conspiracy theories out there, but Kilgallen's death was, and is, fishy.

And the book The Honey Badger by Robert Ruark was by her side on the bed. However, she wore reading glasses and they were across the room.

And her hairdresser said that Dorothy had read The Honey Badger months before and had discussed the book with him.

Also:

The air conditioner was on in the room she died in even though it was a cool night.

She was found wearing an elaborate peignoir and nightgown though her hairdresser said she normally just slept in pajamas with socks on her feet.

OOps! Didn't see your comment R52, sorry.

The WML? clip with Johnny Ray is thought to be the night that Dorothy first met Johnny.

And their affair didn't begin until several years later.

I find it so hard to believe that Dorothy was only 52 when she was murd....er, died. Not that she looked so much older, but she just seemed so worldly wise. Maybe she was someone who never looked young.

I can't say that I remember her as I wasn't alive when the show originally aired. However, I watch it on YouTube when I have the time ( like right now) and really enjoy it. Thanks for the clip, R12. I read about her drinking problem but never had the chance to see her drunk on air. That was cringe-worthy Who was the crasher in the beginning? And who was the rude guy toward the end? He was on the panel.

r58: The rude guy on the panel who seemed to have a chip on his shoulder for Bennett Cerf was Henry Morgan who was a regular panelist on Goodson and Todman's I've Got a Secret. He was also one of those 1950s curmudgeonly humorists who were kind of famous on TV for just being famous.

R21 I think the reason Bennett and Arlene were hardly quoted was that Bennett had a lot of animosity towards Dorothy, and Arlene was simply scared. My memory is failing me, but I remember reading Arlene saying that after Dorothy died, she looked over her shoulder for a long time. She seemed to believe Dorothy had been killed, and that if the murders suspected Arlene had been told anything by Dorothy about the JFK assassination, she was afraid they'd come after her. This may have even been at the end of Israel's book. I just can't quite remember right now.

The mystery guest on Dorothy's final show was Joey Heatherton.

Dorothy was found dead just a matter of hours later.

WML? was back on the air the following Sunday evening, with Kitty Carlisle filling in for Dorothy.

As kids my brother and sisters and I would laugh at her because she didn't have a chin, and we didn't like her because she has a weird (to us) attitude.

It's funny how kids perceive adults - and this was at a time when there were "adults" on TV, rather than the young-forever, vapid, uneducated up-tights all over now.

We loved Arlene Francis, thought Peggy Cass (I'm talking about "What's My Line" and "I've Got a Secret.") was one of our aunts, admired Kitty Carlisle but thought she was rather "stuck up," felt like Bennet Cerf was an old uncle who tried too hard, hated Henry Morgan because he seemed to always get things wrong and be proud about it, like Bill Cullen but thought he was sick, and despised Orson Bean because he was a phony and effete. Not that you asked.

Another odd thing about Dorothy's death: her hairdresser found her the following morning in a third-floor bedroom but she always slept in a room on the fifth floor.

Thank you r21 and r22. Those Bennett Cerf interviews were fascinating.

I thought Johnnie Ray was Johnnie Gay.

What was he doing having sex with Dotty K on a regular basis?

Bennett Cerf had been dead since 1971, long before Lee Israel's book was even being written. That story r60 tells about Arlene Francis looking over her shoulder does not appear in that book BTW. Maybe she related it in a later interview? Interesting, nevertheless.

I don't care for Bennett Cerf, in part because of that interview he gave after What's My Line? went off network broadcasting. It was unchivalrous to speak of Dorothy in the manner that he did, slightly more than two years after her death.

Watching the show now, I prefer Dorothy and Arlene to Bennett, whom has a gratingly nasal, high-pitched voice whose puns are eye-rollingly bad and comes off as very elitist.

Dorothy sometimes has a little-girl quality which can be very endearing. Arlene was fun and witty.

Arlene was also such a phony.

Dorothy was a beautiful gal. They don't make them like that anymore. I mean without a chin or anything.

We used to say that Dorothy's theme song was "I Wish You Love."

It begins: "Goodbye! No use leading with our chins!"

Bennett Cerf was briefly married to actress Sylvia Sidney in the 1930's . . . who never appeared as a WML? mystery guest.

His second wife, Phyllis, was Ginger Rogers' cousin. After Bennett's death, she married former NYC Mayor, Robert Wagner.

Arlene always had a big heart on. Found this on the web:

"Actor and game show panelist ARLENE FRANCIS took the blame for one of the stranger accidental deaths on record, when an exercise dumbbell fell from her eighth-story Manhattan apartment and killed a man who had just emerged from the popular Le Pavillion restaurant. In her 1978 autobiography, Francis reported that she had been having the apartment cleaned while she appeared in a summer stock play in Westport, Connecticut. A maid had placed the dumbbells on the sill to anchor a towel covering the window where an air conditioner had been removed. According to Francis, "While the shutters were being cleaned, the dumbbells became dislodged, one falling into the room and the other out of the window." Francis paid a settlement to the man's family, but was not charged with a crime.

Francis was involved in another deadly accident in 1963: while she was driving in heavy traffic on a rainy night on Long Island, her car skidded out of control and into the path of an oncoming car. Francis suffered a concussion and broken collarbone, but a woman in the other car was killed. Her survivors sued Francis for $1.5 million, but later settled the case out of court."

She lived to be 93, but had Alzheimer's for a long, long time before passing away in 2001.

I believe the woman who died in the 1963 traffic accident was pregnant.

I used to swear that sometimes they placed those masks where they were able to peek at who the person was.

[quote]I prefer Dorothy and Arlene to Bennett, whom has

OH MY, R67!

Two other Goodson/Todman ladies who must be mentioned were Betsy Palmer and Bess Myerson of I've Got a Secret.

I had huge crushes on both of them as a wee gay. Betsy for her blonde charm and beauty (she always seemed to be going off on a summer stock tour of South Pacific) and Bess because she was the first and only Jewish Miss America, which went a long way in our household.

I've tried watching those GSN clips of IGAS on youtube but they are quite boring and don't hold up (if they ever did!). Garry Moore's popularity is totally inexplicable today.

Betsy and Bess replaced early 1950s TV icons Faye Emerson and Jayne Meadows around 1960 who were the original panelists.

I know Betsy is still around as she occasionally makes appearances when that horror film she starred in has conventions but Bess really completely disappeared from public life after The Bess Mess Scandal in the 1980s. I hear she is living in seclusion in Florida where all good Jewish Miss Americas go to retire.

But what was really fun about those G/T game shows is that they all originated from NYC in the early days and often featured actors, as panelists or guest stars, who were appearing on Broadway and gave us an insight into that glamorous world before we were old enough to attend the shows.

[quote]often featured actors, as panelists or guest stars, who were appearing on Broadway

Between the Broadway actors who appeared on game shows and their appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Broadway stars of that era were familiar to people all across America. Today, people wouldn't know an Idina Menzel or a Tovah Feldshuh if they fell over them.

r67, and I love Bennett for his honesty in that oral interview, not only about Dorothy, but about Hal Block and the entire history of What's My Line?

Though much of it may be only through his perspective, it's great that he was so forthright for those of us with an interest in the show and the early days of TV.

I loved the story of John Daly never forgiving Dorothy.

Yes, r75, when I was writing that I was ready to go to sleep. It didn't look right, but I was too tired. Figured someone would catch it.

Oh I see, R59. I wish I could see the entire show just to see how everybody got along after that exchange. It must have been awkward.

One of the things I love about WML? is how uncensored and spontaneous everything is up against the supposed decorum and high etiquette of 1950s TV manners and behavior.

And it always feels like you get to see the big stars who were the Mystery Guests without the benefit of a script or any control of the situation they're in. Many of them are a lot wittier than they were ever allowed to be on screen.

Shame on GSN for no longer airing the vintage B&W WML? episodes, even at 2:00 AM, as they used to do.

When did GSN become the Family Feud Channel?

This turned out to be a fascinating thread.

There's a recessed chin, but that was so noticeable.. almost like a deformity.

[quote] Shame on GSN for no longer airing the vintage B&W WML? episodes, even at 2:00 AM, as they used to do.

Maybe it's a contractual obligation, but GSN has a one hour, overnight block of B&W WML & IGAS the last two weeks of the year.

She was a right-winger, another reason that Arlene and Bennett had no use for her.

Dot did have a chin, but it was sort of vestigial.

Cut this lady a break. She was friends with Lenny Bruce, for christ's sake. Somehow I get the impreszion Arlene Francis' attitude towards DK wasn't quite as bad as Bennett Cerf's, although like the others did not like Voice of Broadway and thought DK could do better.

R77 so true!

When WML? went daytime/syndicated in 1968, Bennett sometimes appeared on the panel with Arlene, Soupy Sales and a rotating guest panelist.

Arlene just seemed to get younger and prettier looking with every year of the show, at least in its B&W years.

Though there wasn't color TV, you can still note her trying out every shade of hair dye available.

She must have had some surgery done but as the show only took a few weeks off during the summer, I don't know when she would have had time.

My mother always said that Dorothy had had several corrective chin operations over the years but if that's true, her chin never improved.

Not sure if I read this in Lee Israel's book, but Dorothy apparently fancied that she resembled Sophia Loren! I can sort of see it if I squint very hard...lol!

The reason the book that was found with Dorothy when she died was suspicious is because she was well-known to never re-read a book after she had read it once. Her friends all confirmed this. It was one of her quirks that they were all familiar with.

Her death really was strange.

Arlene's daytime show went to color long before WML.

R77,

Not to gainsay your main point, but Tovah Feldshuh is familiar to some--and me--for her film work.

Arlene was Armenian, btw.

WML was one of my favorite shows as a kid. Arlene actually was better looking as she aged. If there was a rivalry between Arlene and Dorothy it could have to do with Dorothy being more curious and intelligent than Arlene. Dorothy's death is suspicious. I believe she was murdered, but we will never know the truth.

Dorothy undoubtedly played the game to win and probably guessed more occupations than the other panelists but Arlene was far more witty and entertaining and unpredictable. There's a great youtube compilation of Arlene's WML bits that I must find and post.

And Dorothy once famously moaned: "Why can't I sometimes be the adorable one?"

Like I said, I didn't grow up with the show but I enjoy Arlene the most. She was funny and warm. However, I do like Dorothy. She took the game seriously and tried to win, and that's also entertaining. In fact, I like all of them, the panelists and the host.

Arlene got knocked up (at age 56!) by Edward Andrews in "The Thrill of It All."

That role was supposed to have been played by Jeanette McDonald, but she became ill and Arlene was cast.

I found out who she was recently and it's all very fascinating with the Marilyn-esque death. Love those What's My Line episodes on youtube with the golden age stars.

I wish someone would write a new, definitive biography on Dorothy!

There is a book coming out but it's about her death.

I worked with an older man who grew up in NYC and was a devout Catholic. He said that during the depression when everybody else was starving Dorothy Kilgallen would come to mass in furs and jewelry.

A lot of love here for a right wing nut job.

I'll take that, r104. Her death is fascinating.

Wow! That's awful if true, R105.

Dorothy had a crazy work schedule, according to Lee Israel's book ... she had a daily newspaper column, spent every evening out at supper clubs and nightclubs, a live daily morning radio show with "Dick" (they often did the show after coming home from the clubs), and then it was time to get a few hours' sleep and write another huge column.

"Bess really completely disappeared from public life after The Bess Mess Scandal in the 1980s. I hear she is living in seclusion in Florida where all good Jewish Miss Americas go to retire."

I read she has either Dementia or full-blown Alzheimers.

[quote]I know Betsy is still around as she occasionally makes appearances when that horror film she starred in has conventions

Cars played a funny role in the casting of Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees in the original FRIDAY THE 13TH. The deciding factor for the producer was that she owned a car and could drive herself to and from the set at no expense to the low-budget production. As for Betsy, she only took the part because she needed a new car and the modest salary was just enough to buy one. For all that, the role did end up giving her a sliver of screen immortality among horror buffs.

One of meaner moments on WML? happened when Edward G. Robinson was the Mystery Guest and the panel quickly identified him.

With air time to fill, Dorothy told a "funny" story about how Robinson had recently turned down a request to participate in a charity fund-raiser while visiting NYC. He got out of the event by pleading poverty. She scoffed at the idea, citing his famous collection of paintings, making it clear that Edward G. had plenty of dough.

She then added the kicker that he could be seen dancing and dining, living the high life in Manhattan's swankiest clubs for the remainder of that same weekend. Although her manner was merry, the tale was a hatchet job, delivered in person on live TV no less. Robinson smiled and laughed it off but I imagine he had some choice words for the producers once he got off camera.

Betsy, 86, lives on the Upper West Side.

1963, the evening before JFK's assassination, Joan Crawford attended a Pepsi boardmeeting in Dallas with Richard Nixon. There they plotted how to get Pepsi's sugar cane fields in Cuba back from Castro. Joan also met with JFK in Dallas just before he was shot. She teased him about having security, saying she didn't have any in her Pepsi travels. Pepsi is of course known worldwide as a CIA front.

And as a previous poster noted, there are some very weird timing issues regarding Joan Crawford and November 8, 1965, the day that Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead with Crawford soon on the scene.

Joan Crawford---CIA moll? Did Bette know something the rest of us didn't?

Bennett Cerf's son, Christopher, is the Commissioner of Education for New Jersey. Chris Christie appointed him.

r110 is Sukhreet Gabel.

Arlene Francis Kazanjian Gabel considered herself an actress. The public thought of her as a panelist and radio host.

[quote]She teased him about having security, saying she didn't have any in her Pepsi travels. Pepsi is of course known worldwide as a CIA front.

It has been speculated that Nixon's assignment in the JFK killing was to make a public appearance in Dallas with no visible security. In those days only gangsters relied on conspicuous armed protection. The Kennedys were sensitive about being seen as Irish Mobsters. So if Nixon showed that he was not afraid of the public in Dallas, presumably JFK would desire a lighter rather than a heavier security presence in the fatal motorcade.

R114 Time to change the tinfoil, dear.

r114 here. I had a friend formerly of US Air Force intel lived in Dallas back in the 1960s. He met and drove Kilgallen around the city during the period she interviewed Jack Ruby. They even went to the basement entrance of the Dallas police jail. Supposedly, the entrance was too low for the armored car to fit, so Oswald had to be escorted outside.

Upon Miss Kilgallen's request, my friend measured the height of the entrance. Later, he and Kilgallen found and measured the height of the armored car that was supposed to pick up Oswald. There was plenty of room for the car pass through the entrance. Kilgallen concluded that Oswald was set-up for an assassination. Contrary to the many assertions that Kilgallen was mentally incoherent, my friend said she was one of the most lucid individuals he ever met.

It should be noted that BOTH Crawford and Nixon publicly ridiculed the President about "over protection." Crawford later claimed that she regretted her ridicule. But spin it all you want---there's still remains a right-wing miasma that overhangs Crawford in regards to the deaths of JFK and Kilgallen.

On that fateful November day, 4 US Presidents were in the city - Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Bush #1.

Fascinatingly mysterious.

Bush #2 would have still been in high school, but perhaps already home in Texas for Thanksgiving?

[bold]Action Keys to Daily

Life of Joan Crawford[/bold]

By Tony Zoppi

November 22, 1963

“I must keep active,” said Joan Crawford, and that just about summed up the theme of Thursday morning’s interview with filmland’s glamour queen.

“I get up around 6 in the morning and plan my day – mentally and spiritually. I never rush. Getting an early start enables me to do things in detail. I do my best work before 9 a.m. with the help of three secretaries.”

Well into her 50s, Miss Crawford has the energy of an ingénue.

“There is no such thing as an ordinary day for me,” she cooed. “An ordinary day would bore me to death.”

Miss Crawford is in town for a Pepsi meeting. She flew in Wednesday night, aboard a company plane whose passenger list included former vice-president Richard Nixon. He is now legal counsel for Pepsi-Cola.

“No, I don’t think either of us will attend the luncheon here for President Kennedy,” she smiled.

Asked to comment on the new cultural look at the White House, the interview took a curt tone.

“Although I’ve known Jack Kennedy for years, I never discuss religion or politics in public.”

“Now, let’s all have a Pepsi.”

Not entirely true, R59. Henry Morgan's on-air crankiness was often part of his shtick. He had a radio show prior to WML and it was quite popular, often because he got away with some jokes that were awfully edgy for the time, implying sexual trysts between characters and stuff like that. Sponsors hated him, so he took to insulting his own sponsors on his shows, too. Very David Letterman sorts of stuff, all decades before Letterman even graduated from high school.

BUT Morgan was also a Grade A asshole. He beat his wife, hated when others upstaged him on his show (which was easy to do, since he had such a dry wit and could be condescending). There's a great article about him here including a link when he appeared as a guest on Letterman. One of the comments in this post goes into detail about the Morgan-Cerf feud on WML.

Damn, R123, that is creepy.

r125, the CEO of Pepsi, Donald M. Kendall, who presided over the board meeting with Nixon and Crawford, later was involved in the overthrow of another president---Chile's President-elect Salvador Allende, in 1970. Kendall was a CIA operative, using Pepsi plants around the world for CIA operations.

Other Pepsi personnel are involved in the JFK assassination. Edward Meyers, the owner of the Queens, New York Pepsi plant, was in Dallas and had dinner with Jack Ruby at the Bon Vivant Room at the Cabana Hotel, the night before the assassination.

I suspect Kilgallen asked Joan Crawford too many questions.

Good lord, R126, you're right. There's a whole section on Lawrence Meyers, Edward's brother, and their relationship with Jack Ruby on this extensive JFK assassination website.

I need to stop reading about all this before bed.

She had no chin.

Liberace once said on the Mike Douglas Show that JFK's assassination saved his life. He had gone to sleep in a freshly painted room the night before and if he hadn't been awakened, earlier than usual, with the news of the shooting, he may have died from inhaling the fresh paint.

Yet, an entirely different story regarding Liberace and the JFK assassination was depicted in HBO's Behind the Candelabra.

On April 2nd 1975 a young man was listening to a talk at his school when he heard the lecturer tell about the Esquire account of Nixon's trip to Dallas, and how and when Nixon had learned about JFK's death. That young man then told the lecturer, "My father was an executive for the Pepsi Cola Company, and he was in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 at that convention. He has told me that Nixon was there in Dallas at the convention when the announcement was heard that JFK had been killed, Nixon left later that afternoon,"

This young man is the son of Mr. Harvey Russel of the Pepsi Cola Company. When Mr. Russel was informed of his son's account, he agreed that his son's story was true. Mr. Russel confirmed that Nixon was attending that meeting at the time the shots were fired. He added Nixon was there representing the Pepsi Cola Company's law firm Mudge, Rose, Nixon et al.

Mr. Russel confirmed that the session Nixon was attending broke up when the assassination news came through. Nixon then returned to his hotel and later in the afternoon had been driven to the Dallas airport by a Mr. Deluca, also a Pepsi Cola official.

r3. Dorothy Fuldheim! Compared to her DOTTY KG was just a Zbrosdway gossip columnist. Dorothy kill fallen was no more a journalist than Ed Sullivan. but, jack ruby told her plenty and it probably hot her killed.

Is there any more info on the new book about Dorothy? Title/ Author? Publication date?

I'm obsessed with her.

TIA!

I've found nothing regarding a new book on Kilgallen.

If there was one about the ties between her death and the JFK assassination, wouldn't the publisher want it out in time for JFK's 50th anniversary?

Perhaps not R133 -- why let it get lost in the avalanche of books when the 50th Anniversary of Dorothy's own death is just 2 years away?

[quote]That role was supposed to have been played by Jeanette McDonald, but she became ill and Arlene was cast.

Jeanette was three years older, or 59 and pregnant! Hilarious!

R114 / R120, more please about Joan Crawford's weird timing issues on November 8, 1965!

[quote]I don't care for Bennett Cerf, in part because of that interview he gave after What's My Line? went off network broadcasting. It was unchivalrous to speak of Dorothy in the manner that he did, slightly more than two years after her death.

You do realize that was an oral history that Bennett thought next-to-no-one would read, and was supposed to be on-the-record and truthful, right?

What was on her transistor radio?

Here's the E! Mysteries and Scandals take on her story...

The sudden out-of-town boyfriend angle is interesting...

Re: "Out-of-Towner" boyfriend

[quote]Adam Ronald Pataky was born in Danville, Illinois, on 21st May, 1935. His father owned a heating and air conditioning business. In 1950 the family moved to Columbus, Ohio. After high school Pataky attended Stanford University but failed to graduate.

Pataky returned to Columbus and graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in journalism in 1959. In 1961, he was hired as a film and drama critic for the Columbus Citizen-Journal.

In June, 1964, Pataky went on a trip paid for by Twentieth Century-Fox who used it to publicize three of its films: The Sound of Music, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. On the trip he met and began a relationship with fellow journalist, Dorothy Kilgallen. This relationship was kept a secret. In her book, Kilgallen (1979), Lee Israel gives Pataky the name of "Out-of-Towner". Apparently Pataky went up to Kilgallen and asked her if she was Clare Booth Luce.

It has been suggested by John Simkin that Kilgallen suspected that "Out-of-Towner" was a CIA spy. She therefore told her friends this is what he said so that if anything happened to her, a future investigator would realize that he was a CIA agent with links to Clare Booth Luce.

On 8th November, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York apartment. She was fully dressed and sitting upright in her bed. The police reported that she had died from taking a cocktail of alcohol and barbiturates. The notes for the chapter she was writing on the assassination of John F. Kennedy had disappeared.

She may not have been the most attractive woman but she always seemed to try to do her best with what she was given. At least she never surrendered to sweatpants.

Re: Clare Booth Luce

After WWII, Clare Booth Luce was on a journalist assignment in the Philippines. There she met and fell in love with General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's intel officer. As "Sir Charles" (as he was called) was still married, he broke off the affair. But he and Clare remained friends for life.

From another website:

"Two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a long-distance telephone operator in Mexico City monitored an international phone call. She heard one of the voices saying: "The Castro plan is being carried out. Bobby is next." The telephone numbers were traced. One number belonged to Emilio Nunez Portuondo, the Latin American Affairs editor of Willoughby's Foreign Intelligence Digest."

On the day of the assassination there was a party in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by Clare. According to a maid that was present, when news of the President being shot was announced, it was greeted with cheers by the party-attendees.

Also keep in mind that Clare's husband, Skull & Bonesman Henry "Harry" Luce used Time-Life as a CIA front around the world, just like Donald Kendall used Pepsi.

BTW, Joan Crawford starred in "The Women" (1939), based on Clare's play of the same name.

I believe Clare Luce was herself a CIA spy, yes?

Clare knew one of the two CIA operatives known as "Lee Harvey Oswald," as Clare and her "wife" Henry Luce were financing anti-Cuban operations.

Clare and Joan knew what was going to happen on November 22. And why the party in the middle of the day? Was Clare expecting something to celebrate?

Also Clare's boyfriend, ex-MacArthur G-2 Charles Willoughby, was working as the security head for oil executive H.L. Hunt of Dallas at the time of the assassination.

BTW, another member of MacArthur's clique, Col. William Gale Potter, was arrested by the FBI in California for plotting to assassinate the then Senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy, who was running for President against Nixon. The Freepers and Teabaggers of the day were gunning for JFK even before he became president!

The Army physician assigned to the MacArthur's clique was Loyal Davis, father of Nancy Davis.

It's really is a small world.

Yikes, it all just gets weirder and weirder.

Does anyone else see that Dorothy's nose became a completely different shape in the 1960s?

It was turned up and pert as a young woman (and even into the 1950s) but was kind of hawk-like by the time of her death.

Strange plastic surgery!

Who should play her in the inevitable biopic?

NOT Reese Witherspoon, r149!

Cynthia Nixon might be a good choice.

Inevitable biopic? She's been dead for decades. No one except DL'ers cares a hoot about her, or even know who she was.

That being said, I nominate Rooney Mara.

Lens Dunham if she could lose several lbs.

R108, it's a stupid story. People dressed for church in those days, and any jewelry she would have been wearing would have been appropriate. It wasn't like now where people didn't know how to dress.

And as far as churches being full of poor people in rags as she pranced down the aisle, do you think she was slithering into church in the Bowery? Please. She would have been at churches with people like her, of her class.

And, by the way, she was in her 20s during the Depression. Put that crap the fool at R105 said into perspective. (Not that I'm defending the woman - couldn't stand her - but at least dislike or like her for legitimate reasons.)

I know her husband Dick Kollmar was considered a philandering letch but was he into men or women?

How much of this CIA stuff is true?

The CIA and Pepsi stuff is generally considered to be true, because Pepsi owned sugar plantations in Cuba and it was easy to hire on an executive to do a little spying for the CIA while they were in Cuba. I'm pretty sure Coke had executives on the CIA payroll, too.

This continued into the 1970s when Nixon went from being Pepsi's lawyer to POTUS, and David Kendall, mentioned above, asked Nixon for his help in assassinating Chile's president because it was cutting into Pepsi's profits.

The link below is about interviews a former US Ambassador to Chile gave back in the 1990s regarding this entire conspiracy. Get this: It all started with Kennedy.

Clare Booth Luce first met the Kennedy family in London. It was 1940 and Joseph Kennedy Sr. was the US Ambassador to Britain. An affair begun between Clare and Joe, then later allegedly with JFK. As with Republican Joan Crawford (who made movies for Joe when he was head of RKO), the Republican Clare gave her support to the 1960 Democratic candidate JFK. Both Joan and Clare came to regret their support and wanted JFK destroyed.

In 1961, Clare and Henry Luce, H. L. Hunt and the CIA began the Alpha 66 group in Puerto Rico to overthrow the Fidel regime in Cuba. In 1962 Alpha 66 launched attacks on Cuban port installations and foreign shipping. There were concerns that war could be ignited between the US and the USSR as Russian vessels were being targeted. Attorney General Robert Kennedy tried to suppress Alpha 66 by conducting raids on their training camps in Florida, in a repeat of the 1961 Houma Bunker Raid in Louisiana (depicted in Oliver Stone’s "JFK") right after the Bay of Pigs. This and the general hands-off approach to Cuba led to a split between the Kennedy administration and the Luces, along with Pepsi, the Cuban exile community and US organized crime, who saw JFK doing nothing to recover their seized assets in Cuba.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Your link does not work.

Jack Ruby worked for the Richard Nixon in 1947, Nixon then representing California's 12th congressional district.

[bold]Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up: His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy[/bold]

by Don Fulsom

"Giancana's half-bother Chuck and nephew Sam claimed in their 1992 book Double Cross that the Mafia don had a long, warm, and mutually rewarding relationship with Nixon that dated back to the 1940s. In those times, Giancana was helping Chicago Syndicate boss Anthony Accardo consolidate the city's rackets and gambling operations, and Nixon was a freshman congressman from California. In recounting for his relatives a big favor the congressman did for Giancana back then, the gangster established a direct link between Nixon and a Chicago hoodlum who later moved to Texas and went on to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald: "Nixon's done me some favors, all right, got us some highway contracts, worked with the unions and overseas. And we've helped him and his CIA buddies out, too. Shit, he even helped my guy in Texas, (Jack) Ruby, get out of testifying in front of Congress back in forty-seven … By sayin' Ruby worked for him.""

[bold]Richard Nixon-Jack Ruby Connection[/bold]

Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s vindictive opponent in the previous election and one who ultimately replaced him, had long-time personal ties to Oswald’s hitman, Jack Ruby. A 1947 FBI memo says: “Nixon intervened on behalf of a Chicago gangster who was about to be called as a witness before a congressional committee . . . It is my sworn statement that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago, noted as a potential witness for hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, is performing information functions for the staff of Congressman Richard Nixon, Republican of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in the aforementioned hearings . . . That same year, Rubenstein moved to Dallas, Texas, and changed his name to Jack Ruby (cited in Called to Serve, p.534).”

The jailed Jack Ruby’s last words to the uninterested party of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Representative Gerald Ford (a Bilderberger while yet in Congress and President after Nixon), and Leon Jaworski (later Watergate’s special prosecutor), are especially telling: “Gentlemen, unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me . . . My life is in danger here. Well, you won’t ever see me again . . . A whole new form of government is going to take over the country, and I know I won’t live to see you another time . . . I want to tell the truth and I can’t tell it here.”

The “investigators” left for lunch and never returned. He died shortly after of cancer in prison, never having testified publicly. Where they were when they heard about the Kennedy assassination — except one man — Richard Milhous Nixon. He was in Dallas that very day with the very CIA men involved, but afterwards forgot where he was.

What was Jack Ruby thinking when he shot Oswald in full view of the police and the public?

Was he deluded enough to believe that he would be rewarded for killing Kennedy's killer?

And did the Luces and others really believe that killing Kennedy would ultimately result in dominating Cuba?

Did they really believe that LBJ would be any more helpful to their goals?

I think that is pretty damning how Nixon is clearly linked to Jack Ruby.

So does no one here believe the E Howard Hunt "deathbed confession"?

Madeleine Brown, E. Howard Hunt and the whole "LBJ did it" is an attempt to deflect from a whole class of rich and powerful people.

Clare Booth Luce tells the Warren Commission that Oswald tried to infiltrate her Alpha 66 project. And Oswald's assassin is known by Nixon. Madeleine Brown's imaginary meeting of big shots may have actually taken place at the Baker Hotel in Dallas, where the Pepsi people stayed and met.

If there's a Lady MacBeth in this, it's probably Clare Luce Booth.

[quote]I've found nothing regarding a new book on Kilgallen

Peter Filichia who writes a theatre column for the Bruce Kimmel kritzerland site told me that a new book was coming out about the Kilgallan murders. That's where I heard it. Don't have a title or author.

I didn't kill JFK I missed Jackie. I told her no wire hangers.

In addition to Clare, JFK allegedly had an affair with Joan Crawford as well.

Jackie in that interview tape said Clare could be a lesbian. So that would mean two scorned, closeted lesbian Republicans that killed JFK.

"Mommie Dearest" needs a new chapter---"The murder of Jack and Dorothy."

Dallas is MY place.

So, am I getting this right?

The "Out-of-Towner" boyfriend of Dorothy's, Adam Pataky, developed an intimate (possibly sexual) relationship with her so that he could gain her trust and ultimately murder her so she wouldn't expose secrets about JFK's assassination?

For me, the real mystery is why is it that Marilyn Monroe was the only 1950's celebrity never to appear as a mystery guest on What's My Line?

I wondered that as well R169 - in fact in some of the other shows (Lana Turner's appearance was one), the panelists sometimes incorrectly guessed Marilyn Monroe.

Bennett Cerf was always desperately hoping for a Monroe appearance and embarrassed not only Lana (who actually took it quite good-naturedly), but Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield as well when they appeared.

Some other big 1950s celebs who should have made Mystery Guest appearances:

Elvis Presley

Grace Kelly

Cary Grant

Marlene Dietrich

Mae West

Clark Gable

But just about everybody else showed up sooner or later.

Dorothy Kilgallen is one of DL's oddest obsessions. (I mean this in a nice way. Sort of.)

One of the reasons Dorothy obsesses me is because her kind of homely celebrity could never happen today.

I suppose one could mention Ann Coulter but it's just not the same thing.

It's also because of the way her persona was revealed in all of those years of ad-libbed live WML? episodes, striving so hard to remain lady-like and genteel and yet coming off as an antagonistic bitch. But still so utterly vulnerable.

And clearly the mystery and controversy of her death is fascinating almost 50 years later, wrapped up as it is in one of American history's darkest hours.

[quote]I didn't kill JFK I missed Jackie. I told her no wire hangers.

Wasn't the real reason because she douched with Coke instead of Pepsi?

For the Kilgallen biopic, we need to find an actress with a vestigial chin .

Vulnerable Dorothy. When her father is on WML. She turns into any Daddy's girls when she guesses "are you my father?". Also one of Arlene's best moments.

r168, no one said the Robert Morse lookalike murdered anyone. Only that Dorothy thought Pataky was sent on a fishing expedition from the CIA. When Ron said the magic phrase "Clare Boothe Luce," that could only have been intended to open the door to Dorothy's life---or warn her off the case.

When Clare was US ambassador to Italy from 1952 to 1956, she and the CIA setup the right-wing Gladio terrorist network on Italian soil. She was CIA at least from 1952. So you can see that Clare was in the assassination business before Alpha 66 in 1962, or November 22, 1963.

I don't think Dorothy was really in love with Ron. She only played along, hoping to find out more. But that doesn't mean she didn't have some fun on the side. When Dorothy died, Ron wisely made himself scarce.

From the link below:

"Ten thousand people filed past Dorothy's coffin, but Ron Pataky was not one of them....At the funeral, Dorothy's bereaved mother, Mae, angrily confronted Dick Kollmar (Dorothy's husband). Pointing a finger at him, she said, "You killed my daughter, and I will prove it." But Marc Sinclaire (Dorothy's hairdresser) said, "I don't think he could have done it. I think more than one person was involved in Dorothy's death.""

Clare Boothe Luce, the most evil woman in American history....

Sounds like Clare Booth Luce is the one who deserves the bio-pic!

R171, Dietrich, like Brando, did appear on the short-lived WML radio series. Unfortunately neither did the tv show. Apparently Ella Fitzgerald and Susan Hayward were also among the very few big stars of the era to not appear at all.

R171 You're right about Bennet Cerf desperately hoping for Marilyn Monroe. He also briefly mistook Terry Moore for her. As an aside, I enjoyed the episode where he guessed Anita Ekberg. By the time she left, he was so worked up, he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

R171 You're right about Bennet Cerf desperately hoping for Marilyn Monroe. He also briefly mistook Terry Moore for her. As an aside, I enjoyed the episode where he guessed Anita Ekberg. By the time she left, he was so worked up, he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

Wow, you know it's a gay board when someone floats the conspiracy theory that JOAN CRAWFORD was involved in the assassination of Dorothy Kilgallen. And no less a person than BETTE DAVIS herself harbored the secret.

LOL this is too much.

It gets better. From Wikipedia:

"Kilgallen and Arlene Francis appeared as Joan Crawford impostors on an episode of the daytime version of To Tell The Truth that was videotaped on November 2, 1965, and broadcast six days later while United Press International broke the news about Kilgallen's death.[61] CBS News immediately noticed the report on its UPI machine from the Teletype Corporation.[62] Anchor Douglas Edwards announced it during the five-minute live newscast he regularly did promptly after the closing credits of To Tell The Truth.[62] He clarified for viewers that the preceding broadcast on which they had seen Kilgallen had been "prerecorded."[62] Kilgallen's appearance on this game show episode has been lost because of wiping.[63] The CBS Afternoon News with Douglas Edwards was not preserved, either."

Thanks for linking that clip, R176. It was delightful!

Washington royalty! Washington royalty!

Marina - get me the rifle!

[quote]I always wondered how Dorothy and Dick could reliably wake up every morning after a night of clubbing and drinking and do their radio program, even if it was only coming from their townhouse. And apparently, the show ran for many years...5 days a week!

Ratings tumbled when Dorothy was off the air for several weeks while rehabbing in a sanitarium in the spring of 1963. Then, one April morning, Dick showed up roaring drunk to do the radio show. He had to be physically restrained and removed from the broadcast room. His surprised guests, Josh and Nedda Logan, stepped in as impromptu hosts and ad libbed to fill the hour. The unhappy sponsors immediately canceled the long-running program.

When she got out of the hospital, Dorothy was furious with Dick for losing the show because it was a primary source of income for them.

Your To Tell the Truth story sounds screwy r183.

How could the panelists, who were all NY luminaries, not recognize Arlene and Dorothy? Were they wearing masks or disguises?

They probably had the contestants behind a screen, as TTTT did on a similar segment where the panel had to guess the real Bette Davis, from Kaye Ballard, Barbara Heller and Bette herself.

WML? would never have Sylvia Sidney as a mystery guest, Bennett's first wife.

Watch Dorothy kiss the ring of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen when he was a mystery guest.

Would you people please stop this!

Who the hell is (was) Barbara Heller?

I like R192!

She was an impersonator whose specialty was Bette Davis, much to Bette's delight.

Barbara also appeared on Bette's segment of "This Is Your Life" in the early 1970's.

Good little summary of Dorothy's late life in this DL fave NY Social Diary from 2004.

R120, the person who could get together with your friend and many others of the "little people" involved in pieces of the assassination plot could write a very explosive book. And with self-publishing, this could be done very quietly, too, until it just came out, with many copies sent all over so it couldn't be covered up. There is an incredible story here.

The last DL shutdown occurred on Oct. 18th when the thread started on the Crawford-Nixon connection. Hmmm....

r182, I was only joking about Bette Davis, though Crawford's daughter claimed that her mother killed her step-father. I have no opinion on this.

R196, it should have been noted earlier in this thread that Kilgallen was a CIA media outlet herself, especially regarding the Castro issue. She herself was right in the middle of the Cuban exile community in Florida, as was her friend and wife of the former US ambassador to Cuba, Florence Pritchett, who met Dorothy on "What's My Line."

Pritchett died anywhere from 8 hours to two days (depending on who telling the story) after the death of Dorothy.

From another site:

"In 1947 Florence married Earl E. T. Smith, member of the New York Stock Exchange. The couple had three children. In June, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Smith as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba. FBI files reveal that over the next two years John F. Kennedy made more than a dozen visits to Cuba in order to meet Florence. Florence also met Kennedy in Miami and Palm Beach, where their homes were conveniently adjoined."

Florence Pritchett is thought by researchers as Dorothy's source on Anti-Castro activity in the Cuban-American community in the late '50s-early '60s, which Smith himself was involved with. Dorothy was aware of the Luces' activities with Alpha 66 before she ever met School of the Americas' alumni Ron Pataky. Two of the drugs found in Dorothy's blood---amobarbital and pentobarbital---are used as "truth serums" by the US government.

Note that nearly everyone in this affair is a Republican, except for JFK, ironically.

We really need a movie about Bette and Joan assassinating JFK.

r124, it was actually Harry Morgan who beat his wife. The two are confused because of the similarity of the names. Ironically, Harry Morgan (born Harry Bratsberg) first changed his name to Henry Morgan. But he had to change back to Harry because another Henry Morgan (born Henry Lerner Van Ost, Jr.) was already established.

I think there were many times Dorothy looked better than Arlene Francis on "What's My Line?" AF sometimes looked a little too masculine.

Perhaps, but then Arlene had a chin.

The fabulous Arlene was "The Amazing Armenian."

JFK with Florence Pritchett at the Stork Club in 1944. The two carried on an affair for 19 years. Kilgallen suppressed news of this her entire career, especially during the time Florence's husband was US ambassador to Cuba in the late '50s.

Florence was a long-time columnist at the "New York Journal-American" who died shortly after the death of Kilgallen. Pritchett's death is given as cerebral hemorrhage as a result of leukemia. She was 45 years old.

Dorothy allegedly gave copies of her notes on the JFK assassination to Florence.

R199, I'm pretty sure both of them were known for spousal abuse, oddly enough. If I recall, Harry Morgan's abuse happened with his second wife Barbara Bushman, but never with his first wife Eileen Detchon. There was a rumor that Harry was dealing with some sort of dementia and started to become violent in his late 70s.

Henry Morgan the radio star would go on long rants in interviews about how women were horrible. It was so bad that even in the 1940s it got him bad press.

You're right that Harry Morgan used to be billed in movies as Henry Morgan, then Henry (Harry) Morgan, then finally just Harry Morgan. And neither Morgan were born with that name!

During the 1960s, Henry Morgan was on a local talk show in the NY area, referring to his ex-wife, Isobel Gibbs, as a "psychopath." Though he was divorced from her in the late '40s, he was still complaining about her for allegedly making up stories about him.

Back in 1948, Isobel was a political activist and this got Henry blacklisted during the red scare that was only in its baby phase back then. She sued for separation after six months of marriage. But Henry paid for years afterward.

He was on "What's My Line" in the 1970s, so he never appeared with Kilgallen.

Morgan was a good BS detector. If he were alive, would have a field-day with what's going on now.

According to a list of drugs released under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA MKULTRA program experimented with nicotine and ethanol alcohol. Also amobarbital, pentobarbital and Secobarbital, which are listed as hypnotic sedatives. All of these substances were found in Dorothy Kilgallen's body.

Barbiturates inhibits the activity of nicotine from published animal experiments. Presumably the reverse would be true. If Dorothy was interrogated, different substances could have been injected into her body at different times, for different purposes. Barbiturates act as a suppressant. Nicotine acts as a stimulant.

From another site:

"Another (MKULTRA) technique investigated was connecting a barbiturate IV into one arm and an amphetamine IV into the other. The barbiturates were released into the subject first, and as soon as the subject began to fall asleep, the amphetamines were released. The subject would begin babbling incoherently at this point, and it was sometimes possible to ask questions and get useful answers."

Possibly Dorothy was injected with one or more of the barbiturates, then before she could fall asleep, they injected her with nicotine. When she awoke into a semi-conscious stupor, they questioned her.

When they were done, they simply overdosed her with the barbiturates.

Mystery solved, or rather staring everyone in the face all along.

The following is a partial transcript of an interview between Lee Israel and Dr. Hoffman.

HOFFMAN – SECOND SESSION – BEGINNING PAGE 1.

MARCH 9, 1978

There is no nicotine in the stomach. That would be extremely serious … It would raise the possibility that she was slipped nicotine in something she had eaten or drunk. From my reading of the work sheets, my conclusion is that there was no nicotine present in the stomach… There’s no indication of what was looked for, so I can’t state with absolute certainty. There was no indication of nicotine in the stomach.

If in fact she were not a smoker and had not been smoking, then the presence of nicotine in the brain and the liver is highly unusual, unexpected.

To the best of my knowledge no one has determined how much nicotine would get into the system from someone being in the room with smokers. My prediction would be that it would be trace amounts at best. I would not think that that would account for significant quantities in the brain and liver, as was reported in that case.

R202, I wonder who "America's" first and second most famous women were at the time that caption was written.

I guess one have been the then-current first lady, whomever that was at the time.

The most famous US women at the end of the 1950s is subject to hindsight. But if Arlene Francis is suppose to be the third most famous woman in the US---according to “TV Guide”---it should be noted that the First Lady of the era, Mamie Eisenhower, did not particularly court fame and may not even be in the top ten.

The most famous US woman of the 1950s was probably Clare Boothe Luce---successful Broadway playwright, former editor of “Vanity Fair,” congresswoman, US ambassador to Italy, wife of the most powerful publisher in the US at the time, Henry Luce of Time-Life. Up to that time, she was considered the most successful American female. And one that actually had political clout. But she is deliberately forgotten today, due to her right-wing politics and her Loretta Young-like religious proselyting.

The second most famous American woman at that time? In the 1950s Joan Crawford was still riding the peak of her fame. After three divorces in the 1930s-early '40s, the 1945 “Mildred Pierce” shot Joan back to the top again, proving there are second acts in American life. She had the most affairs with the most famous actors in Hollywood, which continued into the '55, till she married the CEO of Pepsi, Alfred Steele. Back in 1939, Joan starred in “The Women,” based on the Clare Boothe Luce's Broadway play. Even at the end of the decade, Joan was still more famous than even TV's Arlene, who was in the original 1936 Broadway production, but now in everyone's living-room. So we come full circle.

The 2 most famous (recognizable, not admired or revered) women in 1959 were undoubtedly Eleanor Roosevelt and Mamie Eisenhower, whose photos would be recognized by Australian aborigines.

I would contend that Lucille Ball might be an alternate to either of those two.

Not so much Joan Crawford and certainly not Clare Booth Luce.

What about Marilyn Monroe or Kim Novak?

r210, I understand your reasoning, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but there is some hindsight there. In 1959 most of the world neither knew nor cared about the First Lady of the US. Even here Mamie was a non-entity. Eleanor was semi-retired in Duchess County, NY. And Joe McCarthy was far from being as discredited as today's historians would have you think. Birchers were as much as a fad back then as Teabaggers and Birthers today. After the divorce, Mom dated a Birch-branch and he was like Bill O'Reilly, only worse---he advocated nuking the USSR and China. Luckily, people like that weren't the majority back then, and they aren't now, despite FOXNews.

My parents and their friends were born in 1920s and that generation were well familiar with the three women I mentioned. We lived in NYC and the adults saw the game-show contestants on stage. And they spoke of Clare and Joan in disparaging tones. There were rumors about those two even back then. I never heard anything bad about Arlene, though. Though I dislike Joan, I have to put her up with Bette and Stanwyck and Jean Arthur.

Possibly Lucy Ball was the most famous woman on TV in the 1950s then and now, but I wasn't a fan. I thought her unfunny and still do. Even Loretta Young was way better, and I was only a little kid and not even a Catholic!

Clare was big back in the Eisenhower era when all the Roosevelt haters were still alive. Even as a child I thought her creepy. She was a Dame of Malta version of Ayn Rand, but only battier. But I'm glad you think Clare is unimportant. She and her husband and Time-Life were a evil influence on this earth. The sooner all traces of them and their ilk disappear from history, the better.

r209 was sort of tongue-in-cheek to tie the three ladies together, so don't take it literally. But Dorothy was a part of this CIA "Mighty Wurlitzer" of disinfo. She finally broke free, only to lose her life.

Kim and Marilyn? Has anyone noticed that almost every female mentioned in this thread was under FBI/CIA surveillance? And most of them had affairs with the Kennedys.

Kerry Kollmar, Dorothy's youngest child...

Very interesting, r203. All these deaths connected to the Kennedy assassination are as coincidental as famous men being born on holidays!

I think Arlene was sexy in a MILF sort of way. Dorothy, not so much.

Disagree. Masculine always trumps chinless.

Interesting family account of the day she died.

r218, Kerry's portrait is that of a man utterly defeated. Richard Kollmar is hiding some terrible secret from the world. Perhaps in order to safeguard the children, he betrays everything else, including Dorothy's sacrifice.

A decision like that would destroy anyone. Like the boxer in Hemingway's "The Killers," Richard was already dead, even if persons unknown killed him in 1971, as they did Dorothy Kilgallen in 1965.

r212, I was only 10 in 1959 so perhaps not the best barometer of who was most well-known then, but I was certainly unaware of Clare Booth Luce. Unlike the other ladies, she rarely appeared on TV, never in films and maybe only occasionally in LIFE magazine.

R210 is correct. Definitely Mamie and Eleanor.

Strange that Kerry doesn't mention the presence of his older brother in that account of the day Dorothy died. I wonder if they were in boarding schools by then.

Or maybe old enough for college?

Arlene was #4, if that!

Arlene was the very first actress to be offered Murder She Wrote. She hated the character and thought it would be a big bore. Maybe if she had made her do everything with the mask on it would have livened it up a little.

r190 has a video clip to another piece of the puzzle---Cold Warrior Fulton Sheen. Excerpt from an article below:

"Clare Boothe Luce and the Jews: A Chapter from the Catholic-Jewish Disputation of Postwar America

Andrew R. Heinze

American Jewish History 88.3 (2000)

"He Who brought you into the vineyard has not stopped leading you," Monsignor Fulton Sheen wrote to Clare Boothe Luce in the winter of 1946-1947, a year after her celebrated conversion to Catholicism. "Out of all America, out of the world," Sheen continued, "He chose the darling of the worldlings to prove the power of His Grace." Sheen's choice of the word "worldling" coincided nicely with Brooks Atkinson's review of Luce's 1936 Broadway hit The Women. Atkinson liked the play's toothy portrayal of 'unregenerate wordlings.' Among Fulton Sheen's famous converts, Clare Luce was a star. Once an editor of Vanity Fair, she had gone on to become a well-known playwright and essayist as well as a member of the United States Congress (1943-1947). In the 1950s she served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and she was mentioned as a possible Republican candidate for the vice-presidency in 1956. Full of restless creative energy, gifted with words, bright and sharp-witted, Luce brought to American Catholicism an eloquence that exceeded what she had given Broadway. As she was preparing a massive religious confessional that would span three issues of McCall's in the spring of 1947, Sheen reminded her that her account would be "the greatest personal narrative of conversion ever done in this country." God, he said, "gave you everything . . . a brilliant intellect, an unusual charm and expansive personality . . . prestige and materialities . . . but He kept back one thing-His peace."

"In a 1948 article for The American Scholar, "Monsignor Sheen and Mrs. Luce," writer Fanny Sedgwick Colby expressed her concerns that Catholics were being hurt by Fulton Sheen's and Clare Luce's recent condemnations of psychoanalysis. Sheen spoke out at St. Patrick's Cathedral in a sermon called "Psychoanalysis and Confession." Luce's views appeared in a three-part series she had written for McCall's magazine in 1947, describing her journey from hedonism to piety. Beyond objecting to what she considered the anti-intellectualism and inaccuracy of Sheen's and Luce's statements on modern psychology, Colby perceived antisemitism in Luce's new cosmology. "By a repetitive, even if inadvertent, pattern of racial spotlighting," Colby observed, the McCall's articles, "leave with the careful reader an impression that responsibility for our present spiritual inadequacy rests not only on Freud, but as well on other outstanding thinkers of Jewish origin." "Indeed," she continued, "it would be possible for a careful reader to come to the reluctant conclusion that Mrs. Luce's thesis is this: We Christian innocents have been duped into our present godless condition by the unholy triumvirate of Communism, Psychoanalysis and Relativity. These three, symbolized by Marx, Freud and Einstein, are the result of the messianic impulse of the religiously frustrated Jewish ego.""

The lowdown to the Heinze article is that science, whatever its current imperfect state, must inevitably conform to reality. Religion does not. It ceaselessly conducts war against reality, thus religion's gods must eternally keep back one thing---peace.

JFK was on the side of reality, not religion. And maybe even Dorothy found her way there too.

[quote]Arlene was the very first actress to be offered Murder She Wrote. She hated the character and thought it would be a big bore. Maybe if she had made her do everything with the mask on it would have livened it up a little.

"Jessica, they found this man dead at the bottom of the lighthouse!"

"Really? Would it be possible for me to use his services?"

LOL, R226.

"Her remains were hidden in a sort of homemade coffin."

"Was it bigger than a breadbox?"

Maybe at this point Clare Booth Luce deserves her own thread, but honestly...until I read all these posts here, I didn't think she was famous for much else than writing The Women on Broadway (which Anita Loos considerably edited and spiced up for the film).

Did she write anything else that would be considered relevant today?

r228, the reason I brought up Clare Boothe Luce is that she is central to the death of Dorothy Kilgallen. Clare is forgotten today, and for good reason. She represented a darker period in US history. Her descendents are Phyllis Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.

Clare left a foundation whose influence I cannot determine. See link below.

To be fair to Bishop Sheen, he did moderate his views after Vatican II and reached out to minority groups. But it is the opinion of some that the true results of this "outreach" is the current Neo-Con movement of which the above mentioned Republican women are an integral part.

Apologies on the seemingly overemphasis of Clare, but some background was needed to explain who she was. When LBJ said "We had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," when one surveys the terrorism in Italy since the 1960s, we need only to look at the activities of Clare Boothe Luce.

Maybe we can go back to America's Sweetheart, Arlene.

R229, she was far more accomplished and intelligent than the dolts that you name as her "descendents"

r230, I agree. It would be like saying today's actresses are descendents of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Arthur.

Excerpt from another site:

"Ann Clare Boothe, was born the illegitimate child of Ann Clare Snyder and William Franklin Boothe, in New York City. Although her father, a violinist, deserted the family when Clare was nine, he instilled in his daughter a love of music and literature. She was related to the theatrical Booth family, but after the assassination of President Lincoln, members of the family added the "e" to their last name in order to disassociate themselves from John Wilkes Booth."

It must be noted that Arlene Francis was part of the acting ensemble in the original 1936 Broadway production of The Women.

Check out IBDB.com

Weirder and weirder, indeed!

Re: Clare's boyfriend General Charles Willoughby

In 1940, Clare Boothe Luce first interviewed Colonel Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's intel officer, in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He was called “Sir Charles” due to his monocle and aristocratic manner. After the war, she interviewed him again in the same city in 1948. This time they conducted an affair, which Willoughby broke off as he was already married. He goes first to Japan, then Korea. But the two remained in contact for the rest of their lives.

According to Bruce Cumings in “The Origins of The Korean War” Vol. I and II (Princeton University Press), Willoughby helped H. L. Hunt make $100 million in the soybean futures. In 1950, Hunt brought the majority of these futures. Later, Willoughby put 24 South Koreans in Chinese communist army uniforms, then executed them. He showed the bodies to the South Korean army, who then attacked the North Koreans. Willoughby and MacArthur also profited. After Willoughby, then MacArthur, were fired by Truman for still largely disputed reasons, Willoughby became security chief for H. L. Hunt in Dallas. Willoughby also published a magazine. From another website:

"Two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a long-distance telephone operator in Mexico City monitored an international phone call. She heard one of the voices saying: "The Castro plan is being carried out. Bobby is next." The telephone numbers were traced. One number belonged to Emilio Nunez Portuondo, the Latin American Affairs editor of Willoughby's “Foreign Intelligence Digest.”"

During the late '40s in the Philippines, a former OSS officer, Col. Edward Geary Lansdale, was under Willoughby. Ed later shows up in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He appears in a famous photo, the suited man with a withered hand, who passes the three tramps.

Willoughby was also involved with the Anti-Castro, Cuban exile community in Florida during the 1960s and moved there in 1968. He died in 1972.

[all posts by tedious, racist idiot removed.]

Before Clare married Henry Luce in 1935, she was the mistress of Bernard Baruch, who was Jewish. But the question here isn't so much Clare sleeping with Bernie, but what kind of man would sleep with a woman like Clare?

Despite working with previous Democratic presidents, he became a right-winger who coined the phrase "Cold War." What's generally unknown about Baruch is he's the one who financially supported the leaderless Trotskyites into becoming anti-communists.

These newly minted anticommunists were among the mob that supported Joseph McCarthy during the '50s. The Red Scare was really an anti-Stalinist movement in certain respects.

If there was a No. 1 anticommunist in the US during the '50s, we could name Cardinal Spellman, J. Edgar Hoover, Edmund Walsh or Joe McCarthy---or Bernard Baruch. Why did Bernie do it? Who influenced him? For a possible answer, see r225. Clare was on a mission to convert the world to Roman Catholicism. Her "wife," Mr. Clare Boothe Luce, said the great mission of the 20th century was to convert China to Christianity, though he remained a Protestant.

Call the Luces what you will.

Just read this about Clare Boothe Luce's first husband:

"After a honeymoon period of sobriety, George returned to his old ways and was drinking heavily... When he was sober he was very pleasant and a good companion. But as time went on he was rarely sober. And under the influence of alcohol he ventured his jealousies, sometimes inflicting physical as well as verbal abuse on Clare. In the last four years of their marriage she suffered four early miscarriages.

Clare told her mother that she was considering leaving her husband. She argued that she should stay with him, pointing out that no man could line long who drank so heavily and that if he died, Clare would be left a very rich widow with her whole life ahead of her. Clare rejected the idea and on 20th May 1929 the marriage was dissolved. Brokaw, who was worth $12 million, gave her a settlement of a $425,000 trust fund. This assured her of an after-taxes income of more than $25,000 a year. George Tuttle Brokaw remarried soon after the divorce. His second wife was the 23-year-old, Frances Ford Seymour. Clare's mother was correct, and Brokaw died six years later in Hartford Sanatorium, where he had been committed as an alcoholic, leaving $5 million to his young wife. She later married Henry Fonda and was the mother of Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, but committed suicide by cutting her throat with a razor on her 42nd birthday while in the Craig House Sanitarium for the Insane."

"Arlene was the very first actress to be offered Murder She Wrote. She hated the character and thought it would be a big bore. Maybe if she had made her do everything with the mask on it would have livened it up a little."

Not true at all. Arlene would have been 76-years-old when the series debuted in 1984 and in the early stages of Alzheimers.

The role was first offered to Jean Stapleton, who turned it down.

Still another coincidence: John Daly, moderator of "What's My Line?", married a second time to Virginia Warren (m. 1960–1991), who was Chief Justice Warren's daughter.

No. It was offered to Arlene. Maybe the early stages and age is really why she turned it down instead of the boring line, but it was offered to her first. I know it was also offered to Jean.

In response to the discussion about the most famous women of the 1950s : Dinah Shore has to be up there with Ball and Luce. From 1951 through the rest of the decade, Shore was hosting a hugely popular variety show. The first women to do so continuously for so many years. And her affiliation with Chevrolet and their famous jingle only added to her fame.

To recap what we know so far about Dorothy's case:

1. Dorothy's friend, WML panelist and fellow “Journal-American” columnist, Florence Pritchett, was married to Earl Smith, the last US ambassador to Cuba. Florence was a mistress of JFK, news of which Dorothy kept suppressed. Dorothy was a CIA media outlet and gatekeeper.

2. Earl Smith was a supporter of the anti-Castro movement in Florida, together with the Luces, H.L. Hunt and Charles Willoughby.

3. At Dallas police headquarters, the armored car parking itself at basement entrance---instead of driving right into the basement itself, thus avoiding the news crowd---convinced Dorothy that Oswald was set-up to be killed by Ruby.

4. We do not know what Jack Ruby told Dorothy in the jail interview.

5. Ronald Pataky gratuitously met Dorothy. He mentioned "Clare Boothe Luce," Dorothy thought the CIA sent him and that her life could be in danger.

6. November 8, 1965, Dorothy is found dead with five listed drugs tested in the CIA MKULTRA program. At least four of them fit the profile of a MKULTRA interrogation experiment. Joan Crawford shows up at Dorothy's home. Richard Kollmar destroyed Dorothy's research notes.

7. Florence Pritchett is found dead eight hours after the discovery of Dorothy's body.

8. January 3, 1967, Jack Ruby dies of a fast-acting cancer.

9. On January 7, 1971, Richard Kollmar was found dead in bed of a drug overdose.

Was Florence Pritchett really ever a WML? panelist? I feel like I've watched all the hundreds of clips available on youtube yet don't remember ever seeing this woman.

This needs to be a TV movie.

r120 two (probably stupid) questions:

When you say Dorothy was a CIA media outlet, do you mean she intentionally was spreading the lies they fed over the years?

And re Ronald Pataky, did he mention Clare Booth Luce when first meeting Dorothy because he knew she would understand it as some kind of password or code to assure them sharing info?

TIA.

r243, the IMDb mentions Episode dated 19 July 1950. But I read an article that claimed Florence appeared in more than one episode, and that Florence and Dorothy were together.

The link to the single episode has no Dorothy on it, though.

10. Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was born minus a chin.

R242, you weren't alive then, were you, at the death of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald? Because Lee Harvey Oswald was shot live on TV. News reporters were all over that basement. The vehicle was parked outside so that law enforcement would have to walk him a ways to the car, giving Jack Ruby the needed access.

Second, where is your evidence that Richard Kollmar destroyed those notes? And, finally, where is there any evidence that DK was a CIA media outlet.

What is her townhouse like today?

r245, during the 1950s, Dorothy was part of what CIA Deputy Director Frank Wisner called "the Mighty Wurlitzer." Wisner is making an analogy to the big theater organ with the CIA's worldwide propaganda machine.

The CIA project was actually called "Operation Mockingbird." All established US journalists were expected to cooperate with the government. And most did. Dorothy actually made right-wing attacks on Jack Paar in print because he said favorable things about the communists in Cuba on "The Tonight Show."

Dorothy also suppressed on her own stories about the affairs of JFK. The only time she violated her policy ended with the death of Marilyn Monroe. Why Dorothy did so is unknown.

Ronald Pataky attended the School of the Americas, where they teach you interrogation techniques. We don't know why he mentioned Clare's name, but it appears to be a psychological trick of some kind. But Dorothy knew, as she should, of Clare's CIA connections as Dorothy covered the anti-Castro scene in Florida. She also knew Florence Pritchett and her husband, the ex-Ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith.

"What is her townhouse like today?"

Here it is today, 45 East 68th Street.

Owner after Richard Kollmar was none other than Roy Cohn.

I wonder if that townhouse has yet another story on top, recessed behind the molding, for servants' quarters?

And would the kitchen in a townhouse like this be on the street level rear or in the basement?

Maybe she killed Ruby, slipped him a drink laced with a cancer causing chemical.

[quote]This needs to be a TV movie

On American TV the CIA are always attractive and heroic, and Lee Harvey Oswald always acted alone.

They don't call it the Boob Tube for nothing.

Ok, then. A webseries. Starring Cole Escola as Dorothy Kilgallen.

r254 - if you look at CAPTAIN PHILLIPS the Navy and the Navy Seals come off very heroically. Those "3 clean shots" endlessly referenced in the film are quite unrealistic; the pirates were sprayed with bullets - at least 17 - not that I don't agree - the Navy was defending a US Citizen against real pirates, after all, but still.

On review I read criticized the casting of the government staff in THE FIFTH ESTATE, (including Laura Linney), saying they were portrayed too flawlessly. Therefore in this environment, I would not expect the movie or tv industry to develop a film. Nor would I expect the publishing industry to tackle such a subject.

What celebrity death (real or hypothetical) would be comparable to Dorothy's in terms of public reaction?

r257

That's a confusing post. Hypothetical? And Kilgallen WAS a celebrity.

Oh I left out the word "today", sorry! What celebrity death (real or hypothetical) TODAY would be comparable to Dorothy's, in terms of public reaction?

Marry me, r255

The below quote from Helen Lawrenson, a frenemy of Clare Boothe Luce, is a good description of a psycho- or sociopath.

"When I first knew her I didn't like her. Few women do. I can think of no one who has aroused so much venom in members of her own sex. Much of it is envy. But not all. Other more talented and successful women have disliked her intensely. Some years ago, when a magazine published an article about her entitled The Many Faces of Clare Boothe Luce, the most frequent comment by her peers was, “I thought she had only two.”

As I grew to know her better and as I learned from various personal sources something of her early life and background, I became, if not unreservedly fond of her, at least sympathetic. She made real friendship impossible, perhaps because she seemed to trust no one, love no one, remaining inaccessible deep in the malistic concept that rankled under her shield of opaque, steely self-assurance. Oddly, I was sorry for her, because I believe that despite the stunning and ineluctable procession of her triumphs, she was basically an unhappy woman, never satisfied, never content.

...she parlayed a nimble, mousetrap mind, apodictic nerve and a will as tough as lignum vitae beneath an exquisitely angelic facade into one of the most strategically calculated and fascinating success sagas of the century. Her technique was simple: aim for the top.

Clare Booth Luce, Dorothy Kilgallen and Pamela Churchill...friends to NO women.

In her early days, Clare went on double dates. Her basic SOP was to tell the other female not to dress up as everyone was dressing casual. Then she'd dress to the nines and dominate both men during the date, while the other girl was totally humiliated.

Throughout her life, she'd use men, then dump them. The one man she couldn't quite get a hold of was...JFK. He saw through her.

Wasn't Clare at least 20 years older than JFK?

Wasn't Clare really old when JFK was president?

She lived on the same street as the Ricardos and the Mertzes?

The Mertzes and Ricardos lived at 623 East 68th St. so yes, the same street, but not the same block.

The Mertz brownstone was in the East River.

Btw, did Fred own that place, or just manage it?

Fred and Ethel bought it after they married, I believe. Of course, once they moved into the Ricardos' guest house in CT, Mrs. Trumble managed the brownstone.

Clare Boothe Luce was a member of Congress, editor of Vanity Fair, an accomplished writer, and an ambassador. She married wealthy and powerful too. She also had some access to presidents, both Rs and Ds.

To compare her to modern day talking heads is absurd on the face of it.

The affair supposedly took place after WW2, after JFK left the navy and Clare was in her mid-40s. The two often wrote each other throughout the 1940s, during the war and after, but they eventually fell out.

Before the war, Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy, was having an affair with Clare in London and elsewhere.

"Harry" Luce was impotent and allowed Clare to have her flings. And since when did Clare get too old to nail a man? As the non-PC Texas proverb goes, "Women and rattlesnakes have one thing in common---the last thing that dies is their tail."

Dorothy was well aware of most of this, as it was common social gossip at the time. But Dorothy was a gatekeeper. As with Clare, Dorothy also liked young men, which proved to be her fatal mistake.

Clare in connection with the "suicide" of an earlier Dorothy:

"History has recorded that Dorothy Hale, the widow of American muralist Gardner Hale, died in New York City on October 21, 1938 after plunging sixteen stories from her apartment window at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. She was thirty-three years old. Dorothy’s death was ruled a suicide.

Decades later the story of Dorothy Hale became legendary when Clare Boothe Luce, renown playwright and wife of Time magazine founder Henry Luce, gave an exclusive interview to a noted Kahlo biographer. Clare confirmed that she had commissioned Frida Kahlo to paint Dorothy in November, 1938 and intended the painting to be a beautiful portrait as a gift for Dorothy’s grieving mother. Clare was so horrified when she received Frida’s rendition of Dorothy’s death that she placed the canvas in a storage area for nearly thirty years before donating it ‘anonymously’ to the Phoenix Art Museum in the 1960’s. When the painting was linked to Clare in the 1970’s during a surge of interest in Frida Kahlo’s art, Clare felt compelled to give historians her account of the story that was written in her own words.

Clare stated that Dorothy was a struggling actress who had substantial financial problems. Clare explained that Dorothy had suffered a bitter rejection in 1938 when Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s top advisor, broke off their romantic relationship and ended Dorothy’s hope of marrying him. In a dramatic revelation, Clare said that the police brought her the only note found in Dorothy’s apartment after the alleged suicide. The note thanked Clare for her friendship and asked that Clare notify Dorothy’s mother of the death.

Excerpts from Clare’s account have been reprinted throughout the world in numerous books, articles and on websites that detail the painting and its background. But lurking beneath the surface of this meticulously crafted narrative is a disturbing number of inaccuracies.

The story of Dorothy Hale has never been thoroughly examined. Until now. The review of police records, diaries, telegrams, letters, archival documentation, and interviews with family members has revealed stunning contradictions that raise pertinent questions. Did the alleged suicide note that Clare claims to have received even exist? Why did Harry Hopkins involve the White House and two key players of the Roosevelt Administration to handle damage control around Dorothy’s death? Was Clare ever in contact with Dorothy’s grieving mother? What secrets did Dorothy know about Harry Hopkins and Clare Luce before she was found dead? Was Dorothy Hale’s death a suicide or a murder made to look like a suicide?"

Why has there never been a definitive biography of Clare?

She was obviously a fascinating character. I'm not young and yet knew nothing of these revelations.

JFK would fuck any pussy presented to him. I can't believe anyone would even question that.

Has anyone read the Clare Luce bio "Rage for Fame"? There's supposed to be a second volume coming from the same author

r120 how do you know all this stuff?

are you cancer stick man from long ago? or that washington guy (Whispers?) who'd always post interesting stuff?

Whoever you are, keep it coming. Do you have a book out?

Clare's Booth wasn't the only thing about her that was loose.

JFK fucked Marlene Dietrich when she was in her late 50's.

Can we all get back to talking about me?

Was WML? taped in what later became Studio 54?

Yes and no, R278.

WML? was produced at CBS Studio 52 which later became the Studio 54 disco and theater. But it was never taped. It aired live and was recorded via kinescope, which is basically a B&W film camera aimed at a studio monitor. The final season aired in color but was only preserved on B&W film.

By the mid-60s they would occasionally videotape episodes for airplay in the near future. But that was an added expense and they only resorted to it when scheduling conflicts prevented too many cast members from appearing live. At some point late in the run, WML? moved production from Studio 52 to the Ed Sullivan Theater where David Letterman now tapes his show.

Watch our Dottie tear into John Daly as if they were at a Senate hearing at around 5:50 into this clip. What's My Line is serious fucking business in her world.

Bringing it briefly back to Dorothy and WML, it appears Ingrid Bergman, Katherine Hepburn and Loretta Young never appeared as mystery guests either.

Well, Dottie was damned right, r280!

Watch Arlene eyefuck a young Frank Gifford.

Peter Gabel today, only child of Arlene Francis and Martin Gabel.

Peter was on WML when he was young. Hot as fuck.

Indeed, R285.

Relations must have been tense on the set between Earl Warren's son-in-law, John Daly, and Dorothy after she started attacking Warren in print as a cover-up artist.

Re: Jack Ruby and Dorothy Kilgallen's interview

Three journalists investigating Jack Ruby---Bill Hunter ('Long Beach Press-Telegram'), Jim Koethe ('Dallas Times Herald'), Dorothy Kilgallen (“New York Journal-American”)–--died under disputed circumstances. Hunter and Koethe entered Jack Ruby's apartment after the Oswald shooting. Dorothy interviewed Ruby in jail. Hunter died April 23, 1964. Koethe died September 21, 1964. Kilgallen died November 8, 1965. Florence Pritchett, a friend of Dorothy's and fellow journalist on the “Journal-American,” died eight hours after Dorothy's body was found. She died of cerebral hemorrhage following a three-month bout with leukemia. Allegedly, Florence had copies of Dorothy's notes on the JFK assassination.

With the possible exception of Florence, the other three were directly connected with the Ruby case. Dorothy was the only journalist that ever interviewed Ruby in private. What she found out has never been revealed. Ruby himself died, January 3, 1967, of pulmonary embolism after a seven-month bout of lung cancer. While she was alive, Dorothy released a transcript of Jack Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission---ahead of the government's published version.

In Ruby's testimony may be clues to what he told Dorothy in private.

Ruby stated that Oswald did not assassinate JFK and that he himself was involved in the assassination plot. He fingered former Air Force general Walker, who was a leader in the Dallas chapter of the John Birch Society. Ruby does not mention the chapter's main financier, H. L. Hunt, nor the head of Hunt's private intelligence-security network, former Army general and General Douglas MacArthur's chief intelligence officer, Charles Willoughby. Both Hunt and Willoughby were two of the three most important members of the Dallas chapter, the third being Dr. Robert J. Morris, who was an Office of Naval Intelligence officer in the Pacific during WW2 and knew Willoughby during that period. Morris also knew former FBI agent, Guy Banister, who was also ONI in the Pacific during the war. Banister was the alleged handler for Oswald in New Orleans.

In his Warren Commission testimony, Ruby used “John Birch Society” as if it were a code phrase, much as Nixon later used “Bay of Pigs” for the Kennedy assassination. Ruby was seen entering the home of Walker before November 22, 1963.

In connection to Willoughby, a former officer under Willoughby's command in the Philippines after WW2, Edward Geary Lansdale, was photographed walking past the three “tramps” on November 22. Both Willoughby and Lansdale conducted assassinations for the US Army and CIA in East Asia after the war.

Both H.L. Hunt and Willoughby supported, along with Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, terrorist operations against the Castro regime in Cuba in the 1960s. Clare herself helped organized the Gladio terrorist network in Italy while she was US ambassador there. She interviewed Willoughby before WW2. After the war, she reinterviewed him, but this time conducted an affair, which he broke off. But they remained friends.

It would be impossible for Ruby not to know who Hunt, Willoughby and Morris were, if he knew anything about the Dallas chapter's leadership. And if he told Dorothy about the Birchers, then she could easily discover the leadership above Walker and connect the dots beyond Dallas. After her interview with Ruby, Dorothy eventually went to New Orleans, where Morris' friend, Guy Banister, operated.

If the JFK conspirators could be generalized, they tended to be right-wing Catholics, either on the WW2 staff of General Douglas MacArthur, or ONI in the same theater. Or socially connected to them, as with Willoughby-Clare. And in the assassination business.

Relations were reportedly tense between Dorothy and all of the other WML panelists from the beginning, R287. Dorothy had no qualms about including any dressing room gossip in her column, which alienated the others. Bennett Cerf spills the tea starting at around 6:40 of this clip, including an incident for which John Daly never forgave her.

Dorothy would have a chin, today.

Dorothy would look like Bristol Palin.

I am pleased that there is so much interest in Kilgallen by the DL Community. I go way back. I used to read her column in the Journal American and listened to her morning breakfast show with her husband, Dick Kollmar. Loved her on WML. And I've been intrigued by her bizarre death for a half century. I have the feeling that some day, the missing piece of her involvement in the JFK assasination will be brought to light. I hope I will still be around for that.

Very interesting, r288, but that doesn't answer the question why did Ruby kill Oswald?

r120 is the whole story online somewhere?

I thought the post at R288 was interesting, too and would also like more info

All those young idiot posters contributing to The Hottest Football Players Ever thread need to watch the link at r283....at once!

Oswald was the only shooter. but there was a conspiracy

In that WML clip of Arlene and her son, she appears to be the most delightful mother ever! Can you imagine growing up with her?

r293, fear of pograms. Which is probably why Dorothy's old beau Bernard Baruch became more Catholic than the Pope in fighting communism after WW2. Think of all the frightened Muslim-Americans who hung up or flew American flags after 9-11.

r294, r295, nothing that I've posted in this thread is original, nor is it published in the form of r288, which is looking at it from Dorothy's point of view.

The references are all floating around in the form of webpages and library books. I first heard of the Birch thesis on Tom Snyder's "The Tomorrow Show" during the 1970s, though I forgot the guest's name.

r292, by seeing the assassination through Dorothy's eyes, it really brings the pieces together. I also hope that you're around to see the puzzle assembled.

R296 Kathie Lee Goldberg Johnson Gifford

Her maiden name was EPSTEIN, you poseur!

[quote]All those young idiot posters contributing to The Hottest Football Players Ever thread need to watch the link at [R283]

Dorothy and Arlene are acting as if they just saw the Tarleton Twins nekkid at the Twelve Oaks barbecue--and they LIKED it.

You've got a lovely back. I don't care what you do with it.

r289, interesting clip. All five sections of the Cerf interview are in the link below. Section two and three deal with Dorothy. Dorothy was the "villain" of the show, who approached it as a crime reporter (which she really was).

The fifth clip is interesting for Cerf's recall of the single show done in Chicago. The mystery guest was Harry S. Truman. But the producers made a mistake by informing the sponsor, Remington-Rand, whose chairman was the one of the generals that Truman fired during the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur, as mentioned in r234. Socialite Perle Mesta appeared instead.

Quote from political researcher Brian Quig on November 22, 1963:

"For anyone who recently joined the CIA-DRUGS discussion, Clare Booth Luce had quite a bit to do with the JFK assassination. In fact when I interviewed one of Clare's servants who worked the party she was throwing at her BILTMORE CIRCLE home on the grounds of the world famous ARIZONA BILTMORE RESORT when it was announced that the president had been shot and then that he was dead. Ann S. told me everyone at this party cheered when the death of the president was announced."

"I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me."

Clare Boothe Luce

I just learned that Dorothy Kilgallen apparently wrote a blind item on August 3, 1962, about Marilyn Monroe and JFK having an affair: "she's proved vastly alluring to a handsome gentleman who is a bigger name than Joe DiMaggio in his heyday. So don't write off Marilyn as finished."

Two days later, Marilyn was found dead. It's thought that Dorothy was set up, and told to publish the blind item in anticipation of Marilyn's "suicide." Dorothy later tried to tell people she meant Robert Kennedy, not JFK.

Marilyn and Dorothy both died of a combination of alcohol and barbiturates, by the way.

r305, that makes more sense!

At the time she died, was there much of an investigation or public outcry?

Why didn't her father investigate her death?

He was a well known reporter and outlived Dorothy by nearly twenty(20) years.

This is the kindest I've ever seen Datalounge be to a less than cover girl looking woman.

I think you're forgetting Meryl.

I wonder how much Jesse Ventura writes about Dorothy in his new book. Funny how he's getting zero media coverage.

Mafia killed Kilgallen. She had interviewed Jack Ruby and new the head mobster from New Orleans was behind Oswald. Her "boyfriend" at the time was a mobster hit man.

My guess is they killed Marilyn too in same manner.

Yes, R312, the CIA Mafia who work hand-in-glove with other organized crime outfits.

Talk about a snake-tongued bitch!! Check out this "critique" of Russia's First Lady in the 60's..

(3) Dorothy Kilgallen, New York Journal American (15th September, 1959)

The grisliness of her attire amounts almost to a demonstration of piety... It would be difficult to find clothes comparable to hers in the waiting room of a New York employment agency for domestic help; in this decadent capitalistic republic, applicants for jobs as launderesses, chambermaids, and cooks usually are far more a la mode than Russia's first lady... Mrs. Khrushchev's blue-and-gray suit was wrinkled... at least four inches shorter at the hem than is currently correct... It had no point of view, right or wrong. It was just there like a home-made slip cover on a sofa.

Jesus what a bitch. LOL.

Wonder they didn't nuke us.

Dorothy's critique of Mrs. Krushchev's wardrobe completely backfired on her.

Lots of sympathy for the grandmotherly Russian First Lady and much hate mail sent to Dorothy. Americans did not find Dorothy's words appropriate or funny.

Did she lose her column over this incident? I can't remember the time line but did The Journal American go out of business first, or was she first fired by them, or did she die first?

Poor Dorothy. If she were alive today, she'd be a star on "Fashion Police."

Bennett Cerf was a major crybaby, who was credited for being far wittier than he really was. He always came off as effeminate to me, the lisp didn't help him, either.

The word effeminate is a childish epithet?

ef·fem·i·nate

At least Cerf refused to publish Ayn Rand's essay in which she compared JFK to Adolf Hitler. See link below.

"It developed that one of the essays likened Jack Kennedy to Hitler, saying that their speeches and objectives were basically the same. I read the piece and absolutely hit the roof. I said, “I'm not going to publish any book that claims Hitler and Jack Kennedy are the same.” JFK was still alive at this time. Ayn charged in and reminded me, “You said when I came to you that you would publish anything that I wrote.” I said, “That was novels. I didn't know that you were going to go into this sort of thing. You can say anything that you want in a novel, but this is something that I did not contemplate. All that I ask you to do is leave this one essay out.” (There were about fifty essays in the book.)

Ayn was enraged. Arguing with her was like running your head up against a stone wall."

I, for one, love watching Bennett on WML? clips.

I agree he often comes across as rather petty and foolish but he's charming in his own right and seems to have been highly well-connected, respected and even loved by other celebrities of his generation.

It's inconceivable today that the head of a publishing house could ever be a nationally known celebrity.

I think he comes across as lugubrious.

Based on your prior posts, you would think that R324.

I dimly remember that Dorothy subtly outed Merv Griffin in her column. Could that be possible?

I'd never seen a color photograph of Dorothy before.

So who could play her in a biopic?

I could see Andrea Riseborough in the role. She has a chin, but then most of us do.

Amanda Seyfried or Rooney Mara

It's too bad about the chin because she gets everything else right.

Perhaps they could school her in gurning.

Dorothy with her sister Eleanor, who is still alive.

Her sister kind of looks like Mimi Hines

Just thinking that Dorothy was in her early 50's when she died. Those should have been the best years of her life. Dedicated professionals reach their apex during that period. It's when all your hard work begins to pay off. .. And look what happened.

Sad..

Sarah Paulson could play her.

which words are banned. is it fag queer effeminate or all of them.

why ef·fem·i·nate of all words. that is kind of dumb.

Believe it or not, Dorothy actually fancied that she looked like Sophia Loren.

And if you look at photos of Sophia in the 1950s, before her chin surgery, you can see why.

I dunno, R338, I'm not seeing any older pics of her where she doesn't already have the cleft chin. It was the nose job that changed her appearance.

[quote]The most famous US woman of the 1950s was probably Clare Boothe Luce--

Thats a stretch. I'd say Mamie, Monroe, Roosevelt, or any number of other women were more famous.

"So who could play her in a biopic?"

Sutton Foster

To the public, Kilgallen was a gossip writer and someone who skillfully covered murder trials as well as a panelist on WML. Kilgallen was not as popular with movie and Broadway stars as Data Lounge posters.

She famously broke the news that Bogart had cancer, while his family was successfully hiding the news from Bogart himself. Kilgallen also incorrectly wrote that Bette Davis had cancer. In the 1950s, cancer was thought about as a death sentence.

Jack Paar took her on directly on "The Tonight Show," later Frank Sinatra started to call her the "chinless wonder" during his night club act. Until then show business folks were afraid of Kilgallen because her newspaper column was so widely read. John Daley, Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf were far from the only people who disliked Kilgallen.

Not entirely true on the Bogart story, R342. He knew he had cancer -- he underwent chemo and surgeries and all his friends, including Sinatra, knew he had been diagnosed with cancer.

But Kilgallen did write a vicious article on him around the time he was diagnosed, basically calling him a Communist (she was right-wing). Then later she wrote an article saying he was dying on the 8th floor of Memorial Hospital. He wasn't, and the hospital didn't even HAVE an 8th floor. Bogart called her editor and screamed at them until they printed a retraction.

So you're exactly right that she was not well liked, and I would imagine some of the reason she seems so linked to a conspiracy is because she was determined to dig up dirt on anyone, or make it up if she had to, and thus fell afoul of all manner of politicians and well-connected celebs who were not unhappy when she died.

[R343] Thank you for the correction on Bogart.

I am not entirely sure I believe Kilgallen was killed because she knew too much about the assassination.

With so many people looking closely at the events in Dallas, it's difficult to think that Kilgallen was such a danger beyond any of the others.

She was an excellent reporter, but, as I remember, murder trials were secondary to her gossip column -- perhaps only because there were not that many very high profile trials.

She was the only one to get Jack Ruby to talk. Who was, by the way, in pretty deep debt to that mobster from New Orleans. The mobster also had Dallas as his territory and he hated Robert Kennedy. RFK really went after him. The mobster did meet with Oswald in Mexico. His lawyer had a quote about mobster saying they decided to kill off the head of the snake (JFK) in order to get back at Bobby.

All this told by a historian on CSPAN about a year ago. Douglas Brinkley put him on. He wrote a book. I do remember he is now the historian for the Naval War College. He got most of his info right out of the Archives - some of which had just been recently released. I know not why the government doesn't want to admit it all. They do know and have for quite awhile. I bet Hoover knew it at the time. Bobby's kids have admitted that their Dad knew and told them.

But they shut Dorothy K up. They killed anybody who got in their way. Murder was the mafia's solution to any problem. Probably still is. RFK is really the only person who truly stood up to them and went after them and he paid dearly for it.

The Media does not cover up for the Mafia.

The Media DOES cover up for the CIA.

If the Mafia had killed Marilyn, JFK and Dorothy, the Media would not have covered up for them and still be covering up for them.

Brilliant , r345. The mob got both the Kennedys, although there is more and more speculation about Onassis and RFK. Whoever got a Palestinian to off RFK knew what they were doing - given the hysterical nature of the issue, nobody would dare investigate.

Lauren Bacall makes an appearance on WML? before she and Dorothy had their falling out.

She's there to publicize the opening of How to Marry a Millionaire.

And here's the first of 2 of Jack Paar's appearances on WML?

Apparently, his later tiff with Dorothy was because of a comment she made in print about his daughter being overweight.

r349

You filled the wrong slot.

Sorry!

Another attempt at Jack Paar.

Has anyone read Lee Israel's "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

I was looking for the references for Dorothy in the Amazon "Look Inside" preview. At least Lee didn't forge any letters from Dorothy. But she does give inadvertently insights on how secret police agencies go about forging documents.

BTW, it was the same religious nation-group that went about inserting paragraphs about Jesus into the Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews." And concocted the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." And ghosted the diaries of would-be George Wallace assassin, Arthur Bremer.

This must means Lee Israel is Roman Catholic, ha-ha.

WML? clips need their own thread.

[quote]With so many people looking closely at the events in Dallas, it's difficult to think that Kilgallen was such a danger beyond any of the others.

r344 But Dorothy was hardly the only one with unique/intimate knowledge of certain facts surrounding JFK's murder, who ended up prematurely dead under mysterious circumstances.

Jack Ruby only mentioned "General Walker" and the "John Birch Society" in his testimony to the Warren Commission.

Dorothy Kilgallen only mentioned "Clare Boothe Luce" and the "CIA" when she said if anything should happen to her....

Neither of them said anything about the Mafia.

I read the Israel bio years ago---think I'll have to track down a copy & reread it.

Here's the book. Written by a respected historian...

Re: r358, a two sentence book review of "The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy" by David Kaiser:

"Lee Harvey Oswald did kill President Kennedy by himself." (p. 416)

"Nothing suggests that the CIA was involved in the assassination." (p. 416)

You're too funny, r358.

What in the FUCK is this thread? I came in here to read gossip about What's My Line? and I get Joan Crawford, Clare Boothe Luce and MKULTRA conspiracy theories about Dallas in 1963!

This is an underground DL classic. I didn't think we made threads like this anymore.

Re: H. L. Hunt

From Jack Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission:

Chief Justice WARREN: Well, I don't quite get the full significance of it, Mr. Ruby. I know what you feel about the John Birch Society.

Mr. RUBY: Very powerful.

Chief Justice WARREN: I think it is powerful, yes I do. Of course, I don't have all the information that you feel you have on that subject.

Mr. RUBY: Unfortunately, you don't have, because it is too late. And I wish that our beloved President, Lyndon Johnson, would have delved deeper into the situation, hear me, not to accept just circumstantial facts about my guilt or innocence, and would have questioned to find out the truth about me before he relinquished certain powers to these certain people.

Chief Justice WARREN: Well, I am afraid I don't know what power you believe he relinquished to them. I think that it is difficult to understand what you have to say.

Mr. RUBY: I want to say this to you. The Jewish people are being exterminated at this moment. Consequently, a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I know I won't live to see you another time.

Regarding the “whole new form of government” that Ruby was warning Warren about, from another forum on the No. 1 member of the Dallas chapter of the John Birch Society, H. L. Hunt:

"According to a former aide to Hunt, John Curington, Hunt left Dallas hours after the assassination (with the FBI's help) and moved into the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., presumably so he could be close to the new president in case LBJ needed his advice. Hunt then sent Curington to Dallas police headquarters to check out the security in the building, in particular in the elevators used to transport prisoners. Curington told researcher Harrison Edward Livingstone in 1992: 'I thought this was rather strange, but I did so; and even ended up in the same elevator with Oswald and his police escort, quite by accident. I could easily have killed Oswald right then. Hunt was right glad to learn that the elevators had no security. I walked in and out of the building three times and nobody ever checked me or my briefcase.' "Hunt was frequently escorted to public engagements by extreme right-winger Lieutenant George Butler of the Dallas Police, the man who prematurely gave the 'all clear' to transfer Oswald, moments before Jack Ruby shot him.”

Four years after the assassination, Hunt told his Washington DC lobbyist, Walter Tabaka, that Tabaka's idea of Hunt offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the killers of JFK would make Hunt himself a marked man within 48 hours.

BTW, one of the founding members of the John Birch Society was Fred Koch, the father of the Brothers Koch, whose political activities have lead to that “whole new form of government” that Ruby was warning about. And is here now.

Re: Henry Luce and the Zapuder film:

By 25th November, 1963, Zapuder's film had been sold to Life Magazine. In charge of the purchase was C. D. Jackson, a close friend of Henry Luce, the owner of the magazine. According to Carl Bernstein, Jackson was "Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA". When appearing before the Warren Commission, Zapruder claimed he received $25,000 and then gave this money to the Firemen's and Policemen's Benevolence. However, when the contract was eventually published it showed that Zapruder received $150,000 for the eighteen-second film.

On 29th November Life Magazine, published a series of 31 photographs documenting the entire shooting sequence from the Zapruder film. It was only later discovered that the critical frames that depicted the rearward motion of Kennedy's head were transposed to indicate a forward motion. James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager and assistant to Life Magazines Executive Editor, realized that a mistake had been made: "I asked about it when the stills were first printed, (they didn't read right) and then duped for distribution to the European and British papers/magazines. The only response I go was an icy stare from Dick Pollard, Life's Director of Photography. So being an ambitious employee, I had them distributed." In 1965 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover explained this reversing of the Zapruder frames as a "printing error".

The Lee Israel bio is rather slapdash.

If you know nothing about Dorothy it's OK for starters, but lacking lots of pertinent info, not only about Dallas but even WML?

Bumping a DL classic! Hollywood should make a film about this thread. I would say Cynthia Nixon is the best choice so far to play Dorothy.

Has Emily Blunt been mentioned for Dorothy? Or Emily Mortimer? Both are prettier than the original but might be interesting.

I fear the bio-pic could never happen because Dorothy was homely and surrounded by less-than-beautiful friends and colleagues.

I mean, who would you cast to play Bennett and Arlene? John Charles Daly? Husband Dick? Lover Johnny Ray?

Hollywood would never buy that story today.

r366

Hollywood has a long tradition of whitewashing the ugly out of real people.

I have a faint memory of her but didn't know she was a journalist.

She should have told everyone that she found out nothing and knew nothing.

Anyone who had something to tell about the Kennedy killing, ended up in an accident...dead. It was obviously a murder committed by the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex, same as Robert Kennedy's murder.

And if you think I don't know what I'm talking about think Bush/Cheney. The most hated men in America but they are still alive.

Did she ever go by "Dot"? (Or "Dotty"?)

[quote] Did she ever go by "Dot"? (Or "Dotty"?)

If she tried, I'd've slapped the shit out of her.

She wasn't homely, but she also wasn't wildly attractive.

Here's a great shot of her at the 1959 premiere of "Pillow Talk", with Rock Hudson and Tallulah Bankhead.

She just needed the chin surgery...it would have turned her into an attractive woman. I guess they didn't have that surgery back then.

Her son was named Dickie?

Anyway, here's some writing on her very suspicious death...

It's virtually impossible to understand today why Dorothy's mysterious death wasn't more loudly questioned at its time, considering all the conflicting evidence that was found at her bedside.

I suppose her husband and some of her closest associates might have feared for their own deaths if they made a stink, but still....it's very hard to understand...

Can anyone enlighten me as to the state of the times that allowed this?

I was 22-years old when Kilgallen died. The main reason her death was not questioned in the context of the Kennedy assassination is easy. By Nov. 1965, there were so many different theories about what happened to Kennedy that most people tuned out on yet another one -- this time involving interviews with Ruby.

As I wrote above, Kilgallen was known mainly as a gossip columnist and panelist on WMY. Yes, she did report on murder cases occasionally, and report well. Frankly, Kilgallen has been given an importance in this thread (and previous Kilgallen threads) that she never had during her lifetime or immediate after.

Sorry if I was misleading, r376, but I wasn't asking why Kilgallen's death wasn't more vocally questioned at the time because of her possible connection to JFK's assassination, but why it wasn't more insistently questioned as a murder instead of an accidental death when there was so much evidence at her bedside to suggest otherwise.

Even if she had NO connection to JFK, I find it bewildering and inexplicable that the officials were allowed to get away with such a shoddy investigation into her cause of death.

Her dad, also a journalist, died in 1982 at 94.

So it would be like Maria Menunos dying, today?

More on the Douglas MacArthur and H. L. Hunt connections to Dorothy Kilgallen, Jack Ruby and the JFK assassination:

One of the mysteries of the JFK assassination is the fragmenting bullet, which wasn't patented until 1969, six years after the assassination. The inventor was Texas native son “Cactus” Jack Y. Canon, a former US Army CIC operative, who operated “Canon Associates,” a “Murder Inc.” that operated under General Charles Willoughby and Colonel Edward Lansdale during the US occupation of Japan in the late 1940s. Canon's targets were usually progressive politicians, student leaders, labor unionists, Soviet agents, uncooperative military officers and even a member of the US State Dept. An ”anerometer bomb” was allegedly placed on the plane of one Colonel Cyril Wild of New Zealand, which resulted in an explosion when the plane reached 5000 feet. Still later, after US Ambassador George Atcheson had a falling out with General Douglas MacArthur, Atcheson's plane mysteriously ran out of fuel only 65 miles west of Pearl Harbor. Atcheson disappeared as well as MacArthur's No. 1 “problem child” in the State Dept.

Major Canon remained with the Army after Truman fired Generals MacArthur, Willoughby and Bonner Fellers in 1951. Fellers later moved to New Orleans and became a member of the John Birch Society. He allegedly shared the same office building in New Orleans with fellow Bircher Guy Banister and worked together in the same right-wing NGOs.

MacArthur supporter, oil executive H. L. Hunt, headed the Dallas chapter of the John Birch Society, which Charles Willoughby also joined. Hunt also supported General Walker, after he is fired by JFK. Walker too became a Bircher.

After being fired by Truman, Willoughby moved to Park Avenue, NYC, down the street from Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, in the “Irish Gold Coast” section of Manhattan---close by St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Thomas More churches---which Dorothy Kilgallen was so familiar with. MacArthur, with the help of H. L. Hunt, lived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, also on Park Avenue. Interesting how Kilgallen actually lived near the future perps during the '50s.

Later, Willoughby had a falling out with MacArthur and moved to Dallas, where he worked for H. L. Hunt as his security and intel chief (and various covert projects). H. L. Hunt himself spent millions to get MacArthur elected POTUS during the '50s, but no go.

Elsewhere in Texas, the then Lt. Colonel Canon was court-martialed in San Antonio for shooting two cows, stealing ammunition and threatening an enlisted man. Canon left the Army in 1959 and worked with Frank Sturgis and the CIA in supplying equipment for Castro. Some of these equipment dealings allegedly involved Jack Ruby. Later, Canon got involved with Henry and Clare Boothe Luce's Alpha 66 and other anti-Castro groups.

During the 1960s, “Cactus” Canon rejoined Willoughby in two new enterprises, both being financed by H. L. Hunt. One was Willoughby's “International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture.” The other was being an associate editor for Willoughby's “Foreign Intelligence Digest.”

In 1961, MacArthur visited JFK at the White House and warned him against a mainland war in Asia, which is uncharacteristic of a man who advocated using nuclear bombs during the Korean War to retake North Korea and China. Was MacArthur trying to cover himself with “plausible deniability”?

After the JFK shooting, Canon's old boss in Japan, Edward Lansdale, is photographed walking past the three “tramps” at Dealey Plaza.

Canon allegedly shot himself in the heart with one of his “Glaser Safety Slugs” at his home is southern Texas in 1981.

Getting back to Dorothy Kilgallen, her interview with Jack Ruby alone would have lead straight to all of the above MacArthur staffers. The “warning” about Clare Boothe Luce from Dorothy's boyfriend simply linked the former Army officers and Birchers to the CIA.

"So it would be like Maria Menunos dying, today?"

More like Perez Hilton dying today.

Regarding John Daly's father-in-law, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, there has been an open secret since 1938 that as a young DA of Alameda County, California, he killed his father with a frying pan. Apparently, they argued about Dad leaving the bootlegging and prostitution industry, even though the wages of sin help put Earl through law school.

The mob and alphabet agencies supposedly know about this and used it to keep Earl in line.

Warren's career parallels Tom Dewey's---"Mr. Clean" cleans up a county as DA, then cleans up the state as Attorney General, then gets elected governor of the state.

Ironically, Dewey and Warren ran on the Republican presidential ticket in 1948, but lost in part due to Republicans like publisher Robert McCormick refusing to endorse the ticket, due to both men's connection to organized crime.

BTW, Dorothy must have know this and more.

Unlike the 1960 election, Truman defeated Dewey with votes to spare. He received almost 2.2 million more votes than Dewey and defeated him by more than four percentage points.

[R382]: So writing than Dewey lost in part due to Republicans like publisher Robert McCormick not supporting him is questionable to say the least.

R383, you're too funny.

4% isn't a landslide. And yes, Truman did win. But a switch of less than 1% of the vote in the three swing states of Ohio, California, and Illinois would have given the win to Dewey.

If the Republicans were even a bit more united, they would have probably won. But Dewey even lost the right-wing, Republican state of Ohio. After a contentious national convention, Dewey's opponents, the conservative supporters of Robert Taft of Ohio, who were the Teabaggers of their day, decided that they could wait another four years of Truman. But having Dewey and Warren would be even worst than Harry. Both Dewey and Warren were also perceived as being "liberal" by the right-wingers. The Bircher smear of Warren being a commie goes back to pre-Bircher days. Plus Republicans in the know knew about the mob ties.

Three years later, when Harry fired "I shall return" MacArthur, that was the end of Harry's career. As noted in a previous post, Mac wouldn't even let his old boss appear on "What's My Line"!

Incidentally, McCormick, having the resources of the "Chicago Tribune," investigated Dewey and found out the ties to Lansky, Luciano and Co. In the late '50s, Dewey gave up on appearing as "Mr. Clean" and joined the partnership of Resorts International, along with Allan Dulles and Meyer Lansky. Of course later, they lost the casinos in Cuba to Castro.

Eleanor Roosevelt, perhaps in a moment of exasperation, told Gore Vidal, "People are what they are; you can't change them."

But they can change themselves. Looking back on John F. Kennedy and Dorothy Kilgallen, they certainly changed. Both were right-wing, McCarthyites back in the 1950s. Dorothy was the ultimate Republican "Hearst Girl" in her witch-hunting of subversives on the American scene. The CIA Operation Mockingbird never had a sweeter songbird.

Yet in the end, they turned away from their Social Darwinistic background and challenged the status quo. They bravely defied armies of once fellow predators. And of course Jack and Dorothy had to die. And yet what they stood for---a defiance of the inhuman---will be long remembered after what they turned away from is forgotten.

Tell me have you seen, my good friend Dorothy. Can you tell me Where she's gone?

Eleanor Roosevelt once told Gore Vidal, "People are what they are; you can't change them."

But people can change themselves. John Kennedy and Dorothy Kilgallen certainly did. Both were the rightest of McCarthyites during the 1950s. Jack was still much the old Joe Kennedy. Dorothy was the ultimate Hearst Girl, witch-hunting the American scene for subversives. Operation Mockingbird never had a more elegant songbird.

Yet in the end, they turned away from the predatory class they came and challenged their former fellow predators. But the Armies of the Night slew them and curse their memory without relent.

But what Jack and Dorothy defied---the creed of the inhumane--will be long remembered as what they turned away from is dust.

I thought I lost r385 and reposted r387 from memory. Almost the same.

R384: I can play 'what if' better than you, and without your conspiracy agenda. If Strom Thurman had not run for president as a Dixicrat in '48, Truman would have won the electoral votes of four more states, all in the south. But, Thurman placed Truman in the center, just where he wanted to be. Thurman and Truman's all-out campaigning in the weeks before the election had far more to do with Truman's vistory than the people you mention.

As to Truman and MacArthur, you seem to have forgotten MacArthur's run for president as a Republican in 1952; his campaign went nowhere. In the sixty years since Truman left office, his reputation has increased to the point that MacArthur's firing is seen as the correct decision.

The right-wingers you mention were rewarded for their efforts by Taft's defeat by General Eisenhower at the Republican convention in 1952. In politics, it's always dangerous to give up a possible victory, by trying to predict what will happen in four years.

To 385- Bennett Cerf, in all those post-WML interviews, did not believe Kilgallen changed at all. As he stated, her first goal was to get the story. That's exactly what happened with the Jack Ruby interviews. She was an excellent reporter, that's it. Kilgallen would be the first to laugh at your characterization of her.

Pres. Kennedy was seen as mostly ineffective in his relations with Congress and slowly progressing in foreign policy until he screwed up the change in governemnt in Vietnam, with the assassination of Diem and Nhu just three weeks before his death. (I was in college in 1963, so I lived through that year.)

Finally, all those people who represented force of evil got Lyndon Johnson who passed The Great Society programs, civil rights, war on poverty, medicare, head start -- laws & programs that JFK could not get through Congress.

With this post, I am moving on -- clearly people in this thread are obsessed with Kilgallen and her connection to the Kennedy Assassination to a point that is amazingly ridiculous.

[quote]With this post, I am moving on -- clearly people in this thread are obsessed with Kilgallen and her connection to the Kennedy Assassination to a point that is amazingly ridiculous.

Agreed. Let's get back on point here. It's obvious that Kilgallen was just a pawn and Joan Crawford is who we should be focusing on.

Now r389 introduces special pleading with Strom Thurman. No one knows who the voters for Thurman would have voted for otherwise. They could have stayed home and not voted at all. You need a course in logic, r389.

And "many" of the right-wingers were even more disappointed with Ike and far from "rewarded." What does r389 think McCarthyism and the John Birch Society is all about?

r390, of course Dorothy changed. Going against the Establishment instead of covering up the murder of JFK. That's real change, not the superficial characteristics that Cerf talked about. She could have been like Dan Rather and went along with the cover-up. She knew the killers she was going up against, as did Jack. But I guess they weren't afraid like most of us.

And how do you know if JFK "screwed up" or was screwed in regards to what was going on in Vietnam? The real story is far more complicated than you glibly make it sound.

And the forces of evil you mentioned are still here and stronger than ever. And repealing and subverting all the legislation you mentioned. And what truly "amazingly ridiculous" is it's happening because of naysayers like you.

[quote]But what Jack and Dorothy defied---the creed of the inhumane--will be long remembered as what they turned away from is dust.

Bobby Kennedy, too.

On a lighter note, on this day in 1962, Dorothy Kilgallen sneezed while attempting to introduce Bennett Cerf on "What's My Line?," leading to speculation of her alcohol and drug use which persists to this day.

On a darker note, DK was devastated when Kennedy was assassinated and was determined to find out what really took place in Dallas. She was being wiretapped and was getting threats, yet she persisted.

The lady was not exactly a gutless wonder.

On a lighter note, on this day in 1962, Dorothy Kilgallen sneezed while attempting to introduce Bennett Cerf on "What's My Line?," leading to speculation of her alcohol and drug use which persists to this day.

On a darker note, DK was devastated when Kennedy was assassinated and was determined to find out what really took place in Dallas. She was being wiretapped and was getting threats, yet she persisted.

The lady was not exactly a gutless wonder.

[quote] not exactly a gutless wonder.

Just a chinless wonder.

WW r397

According to Juliet Prowse, Mr. Sinatra could not cut the mustard in bed.

We all have our flaws.

What's the source for the Prowse comment?

I believe Dorothy and her younger son Kerry had experienced a personal tour of the White House hosted by JFK himself just weeks before he was shot.

He obviously charmed Dorothy. But had she been an outspoken fan of his before that?

If I remember my WML? clips well, I think she was always entranced by any of the Kennedy-related contestants like John-John's nanny, the man who built JFK's rocking chair, etc. But then, so was most of America.

"If I remember my WML? clips well, I think she was always entranced by any of the Kennedy-related contestants like John-John's nanny, the man who built JFK's rocking chair, etc. But then, so was most of America."

WTF does this paragraph mean?

[quote] WTF does this paragraph mean?

American had a love affair with the Kennedys.

Which American?

Sal Mineo was the source of the Juliet Prowse comment, when they worked on "Who Killed Teddy Bear" in 1965.

Did Sal think Elaine Stritch was a lesbian?

I do not know whether or not Sal thought Elaine Stritch was a lesbian. I did not ask nor do I particularly care. I only glommed onto the information about Mr. Frank Sinatra because, quite frankly, I have had more than a few scores to settle with the hedonistic thug for more than a few years.

The only reason I got the tidbit regarding Mr. Sinatra's sexual ineptitude was because I threatened to go public with Sal's dalliance with Bobby Sherman.

Oh, and by the way, when you are out and about Friday night, think of me whilst sipping whatever alcoholic beverage you may have. Friday marks the 48th anniversary of my abstaining from alcohol, albeit forced.

When people think of me whilst drinking, it sends a slight alcoholic high in my direction. It is quite pleasurable!

From article in NY Times:

"Dulles was 60 years old when he took over the C.I.A.(1953), and had slowed down a bit. Nonetheless, he was rumored to have become familiar with one of the highest-profile women of the era, Clare Booth Luce, the wife of Henry R. Luce, the publisher of Time and Life (who in turn was said to be keeping company with Mary Bancroft)."

Dulles was fired by JFK in September 1961 over the Bay of Pigs (along with Charles Cabell, the brother of Dallas mayor Earl Cabell). But Dulles later was part of the Warren Commission.

So Clare's score includes: George Brokaw, Bernard Baruch, Henry Luce, Joseph Kennedy, Charles Willoughby, Roald Dahl, JFK and Allen Dulles. And at least four of them figure in the JFK assassination.

John Kerry thinks Lee Harvey Oswald was NOT the lone gunman!

r410, Kerry is referring the cover story of the first conspiracy---that Oswald was part of a team of communist assassins, who were sent by Castro and the Soviets to kill prominent anti-communists in the US, including General Walker, Nixon and JFK.

There's a theory the reason why JFK really went to Dallas was to stage a fake assassination attempt by right-wingers. Bobby Kennedy was supposed to stage-manage this, but the psyop got infiltrated and turned into a real assassination. That's why family friends of the Kennedys refer to the brothers as Abel (Jack) and Cain (Bobby).

So the assassination consists of two parts. Bobby headed the staged event. The ones who turned it into the real thing are the Luces, Willoughby, Allen Dulles and H.L. Hunt.

The coverup also consists of two parts. The first is the Warren Commission, whose only real purpose was to prevent WW3. As President Johnson told Senator Richard Russell over the phone, 40 million Americans would die in an hour if they didn't turn Oswald into the lone gunman with no connections to any government. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover didn't have anything to do with assassination, but simply tried to head off any public outcry for an invasion of Cuba and nuclear confrontation with the USSR.

The JFK assassins were religious fanatics (Catholics and Protestants) that believed in an afterlife, so a nuclear Armageddon would put them in Heaven and all the commies and JFK-lovers in Hell.

There was in addition to the Warren report another coverup---the assassination of witnesses by the Jesus Christers, carried out by the likes of James Jesus Angleton and David Sanchez Morales.

The whole affair can be illustrated like a Venn diagram, with four overlapping circles---two assassination plots and two coverups. The Luces and Allen Dulles were in at least two of them.

ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY

On November 9, 1963, Miami police audio taped a conversation between one of their informants, William Somerset and a wealthy right-wing extremist named Joseph Adams Milteer. In the tape, Milteer reveals his knowledge of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy ( "it's in the working" ) from a "building with a high powered rifle".

r412, Milteer and the entire "white racists-did-it scenario" is a red-herring being shilled by the FBI as a fallback scenario. There were thousands of right-wingers talking about assassinating JFK during the early 1960s, and Milteer is only one of them. Note that Milteer only talked about a lone shooter, which is the FBI's official position all along.

And the alleged photo of Millie at Dealey Plaza is someone else.

Dorothy Kilgallen was more interested in the John Birch Society and CIA, though she was aware of the KKK in Dallas.

The US Establishment isn't going to coverup for Milteer.

The precursor of the JFK assassination is the 1962 death of Enrico Mattei, allegedly involving Bill Harvey of the CIA Rome station.

Mattei is the Italian oil exec who defeated the then US ambassador's attempt in 1956 to let US oil corporations monopolize the Italian energy sector. The ambassador was Clare Boothe Luce, who was also working with the then CIA Rome station chief, James Jesus Angleton, on setting up "Operation Demagnetized," an underground terrorist network that would be renamed "Gladio."

Though Mattei won the battle against the US oil companies, he lost his life. In 1961 a Gladio operative planted a bomb on a plane that carried Mattei. Also killed with Mattei was Time Magazine reporter William McHale, who covered Mattei's defeat of Luce.

R412's clip is compelling. What if it was the right-wing racists of Dallas? I agree that the establishment would not cover up for such small time types, but if they were connected to some powerful people...

r415, that clip leaves out all the good stuff. Milteer is actually talking about shooting at the President while he's on the veranda of the White House. Milteer never mentions anything about Dallas.

Also, it's obvious that Milteer's psychotic, for he thinks the JFK will be surrounded by fifteen look-alikes at the White House to decoy would-be snipers. Little wonder the FBI didn't take him that seriously. See the link to the complete transcript.

BTW, the 6.5mm Italian Carcano allegedly used by Oswald was also used by the CIA at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA had the US Army buy 4 million rounds in 1954, some of it which was used by the CIA in the Balkans in Albania and Greece against the communists.

This same ammo made it's way back to the US as surplus. But I never believed JFK was shot with a Carcano.

I was thinking that Clare Boothe Luce, who was ambassador to Italy from 1953 to '56---as well as the CIA Rome station chief, James Jesus Angleton---might have had something to do with the choice of the Carcano. But it's probably just a coincidence.

Not normally a conspiracy theorist. But, every big conspiracy theory and Jules B. Kroll appears. The most famous Kroll is actor and comedian, Nick Kroll, and Jules wants to keep it that way. Dorothy was murdered. Then, smeared. The M.O for political murders is always to discredit and destroy.

r120 Milteer and Somerset WERE Birchers and KKK-ers. It's not an either/or proposition. The FBI, at least many elements within it, was aligned with the Milteers/Somersets and CIA. Some of them knew they were all working together, others didn't.

All things considered, I'm guessing that Lee Harvey Oswald was one hot fuck, as I'm also guessing that John Wilkes Booth was.

I'm watching Killing Kennedy right now on the National Geographic network. It stars Rob Lowe as JFK and Ginnifer Goodwin as Jackie and it's surprisingly good. Very hot young unknown actor as Oswald.

But I'm disappointed that so far Dorothy has not made an appearance!

Excepts from two articles about Dorothy's meeting with Jack Ruby:

"When (Dorothy) appeared in court on Thursday, during the selection of jurors, presiding judge Joe B. Brown effervesced at the sight of her.... (Brown) invited her into his chambers. He declined to discuss the case,but went on at some length about his history of heart attacks. He preferred them to head colds."

"On the day her Oswald story appeared in the journal, Dorothy was summoned to the defense table by Joe Tonahill during a noon recess. He told her that Jack Ruby wanted to talk with her. This may not have been the first meeting between the New York columnist and the accused murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald. Tonahill received the impression that they seemed to know each other, that they related in a way that bespoke previous acquaintanceship."

"Miss Kilgallen is the only journalist who was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby after he killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Judge Joe B. Brown granted the interview during the course of the Ruby trial in Dallas---to the intense anger of the hundreds of other newspeople present."

"We will not divulge exactly what Miss Kilgallen did to obtain the interview with Ruby. But Judge Brown bragged about the price paid. Only that was not the real price Miss Kilgallen paid. She gave her life for the interview. Miss Kilgallen stated that she was "going to break this case wide open.""

The first quote indicates how Judge Brown fell head-over-heels for Dorothy. The second quote indicates a previous relationship between Jack and Dorothy. She had her news sources in the underworld and Jack may have been one of them.

The fourth humorously indicates how Dorothy may have seduced the judge into giving her that private interview with Ruby.

R418 Interesting. They submitted the report that got killed the NBC story. It was called the "Kroll Report," and it was regarded as legitimate. Yet, if you do some digging Jules Kroll emerges as one of the most shadowy figures. 911 conspiracy theorists mention him quite a bit too.

Hmmmm!

Where are Dorothy's older kids today? Dickie and Jill?

Have they ever spoken about their mother since her death?

I believe Jill is a designer of some note, but I can't find anything like an interview online. If both your parents die like Richard and Dorothy did then you might not want more attention.

There are a couple of links to the other kids at R204 and R218, though.

Pretty much the same people who killed Kennedy did 9/11. The CIA the military industrial complex, the military. Their need? Tax payer money.

There's a claim that Audie Murphy passed on info on the JFK assassination to Dorothy Kilgallen. This happened sometime after Murphy met Texas Senator John Tower in Ruidoso, New Mexico in December, 1963. Present at this dinner meeting was Bill Decker, the Sheriff of Dallas County, who was supposed to take custody of Oswald in the basement of the Dallas city police.

Usually known as an actor (and WW2 hero), Murphy was also a song writer and friend of Reprise Records producer, Mike Shore, who in turn was the friend of Jack Ruby and Dorothy. Shore founded Reprise with Frank Sinatra. Shore produced several songs by Murphy, as well a movie with one of Dorothy's sons.

Both Murphy and Tower later died in mysterious plane crashes. At the time of his death, Murphy was trying to free his friend, Jimmy Hoffa, from prison.

Richard Nixon sent George H.W. Bush to attend Murphy's funeral. Murphy's was on WML 3 July 1955.

Why were the crashes 'mysterious' r427?

Where is the claim about Audie Murphy being a source for Kilgallen?

For any of you long time WML? watchers, have you ever noticed how the panel, and Dorothy in particular, could be very disdainful towards a Mystery Guest who was a TV star, especially in the 1950s shows?

She rarely guessed who they were and always used the excuse that she just didn't follow TV, as if it was some new-fangled invention (well, I guess it was!).

But then, it's probably true, she wasn't often sitting around at home in the evenings.

Here's a picture of Audie Murphy with JFK in the 1950s. Murphy's own personal investigation in the JFK assassination may have contributed to the downturn of Murphy's film career.

Wow JFK looks so ill in that photo.

JFK looked like that before he was given steroids.

Re: Audie Murphy.

It's been suggested on other JFK forums that Audie and the pilot survived the plane crash. The bodies of Audie and the pilot were found outside the wreckage. The bodies of the other passengers were burnt inside the plane. Audie is thought to have dragged the injured pilot out of the plane, only to have killed by the first "rescuers."

The real lowdown to all this is that JFK and Audie were able to survive the Axis, but not our own government.

The new American Experience PBS documentary on JFK details his illnesses.

As a young man, he took steroids for his colitis, which destroyed his spine and caused his lower back problems, which required surgery.

Addison's disease would have shortened his life, eventually.

An assortment of STD's from all his sexual activity, had to undergo a circumcision at the age of 18 in 1935, due to gonorrheal infection.

Here's a piece of useless trivia . . . the mystery guest on Dorothy's last WML? appearance was DL fave Miss Joey Heatherton.

And Joey Heatherton was never heard from again....hmmmm....

Joey Heatherton is still alive...somewhat.

Even more useless trivia . . . WML? was on the air the following Sunday night with Kitty Carlisle Hart occupying Dorothy's seat on the panel.

The show ended with each panelist offering their thoughts on Dorothy's passing, but none of them looked the least bit upset.

Apparently, just a few weeks before her untimely death, Dorothy barged into a preview of the new musical SKYSCRAPER starring Julie Harris, and wrote an unfavorable review before the show opened.

And she wasn't even The Journal-American's theater reviewer. The show closed in the red only a little while later, suffering from very tepid business.

So she had more enemies than the just the Kennedy/Oswald/Ruby conspiricists.

Would Dorothy have been working much had she lived? The Journal-American stopped publishing in 1966. WML? went off the air in 1967.

r440, WML might have gone on for who knows how long. It wasn't the same without Dorothy. Her gossip column was still syndicated. And her book...?

Had Dorothy lived, she certainly would have continued working, either in print, radio or television.

She was well known and had a following, much like Liz Smith, who's bounced from one job to another over the years.

Dorothy would certainly have divorced Dick before the 1960s were over.

I wonder what her politics would have been like as the sixties progressed. I get the impression her attitude was evolving...she was a big fan of Lenny Bruce, even served as a character witness for him in a trial in 1964. Which is almost certainly something she would NOT have done in 1954.

She died during the early stages of our involvement in Vietnam, and just before the Hippie era. Would she have hated the war? Would she have eventually come to have a better understanding of the whole anti-war movement?

Would she have released her own MY WAY OF LIFE?

r444, Dorothy was a friend of Bishop Fulton Sheen, who was on WML (r190). His conversion of Clare Boothe Luce and their contretemps with the Jewish community is noted in r225. Despite his support of McCarthyism during the 1950s, he changed during the '60s and turned against the Vietnam War, much to the dismay of his protege. This turnabout also enraged Cardinal Spellman. Sheen later got "promoted" to archbishop of the extinct diocese of Newport, Wales. The convert Clare became ever more reactionary, ending her life supporting the CIA messiah, Sun Myung Moon.

Sheen, Dorothy and the Kennedys moved in a progressive direction. Unlike the unconscious Clares of this world, they weren't afraid of trying to rectify an erroneous past.

[quote]The last of the great newspaper society columnists is Aileen Mehle, the woman the Hearst Syndicate hired to take over Igor Cassini's "Cholly Knickerbocker" column after the FBI began investigating him in the 1960s about his connections to Fidel Castro and Cuba. Mehle, who is now 87 and still on the pulse of the buzz around New York City, slightly changed the pen name and column to "Suzy Knickerbocker" and was even given the vacant seat on the CBS panel game show "What's My Line?" previously held by fellow Hearst columnist Dorothy Kilgallen after she died suddenly.

Igor Cassini was a gossip columnist at the "New York Journal-American," his New York landlady being Joan Crawford. He was also an old friend of Joe Kennedy. When Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General prosecuted Cassini for being an unregistered agent for Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo (not Castro as in the above quote), Igor's wife, Charlene Wrightsman, committed suicide.

Igor was the younger brother of Oleg Cassini, the fashion designer who was the official couturier for Jacqueline Kennedy. Oleg designed the pink dress that Jackie worn in Dallas. Oleg was best friends with George de Mohrenschildt, the CIA agent and H.L. Hunt associate that was Oswald's mentor in Dallas. George introduced Oswald to another CIA operative, Ruth Paine, who got Oswald the job at the Texas School Book Depository.

BTW, Jackie bought her Oleg Cassini dresses from the Chez-Nion dress shop, owned by George de Mohrenschildt's aunt-by-marriage, Nona McAdoo. The McAdoos lived next to Igor Cassini when Charlene Wrightsman Cassini committed suicide in the apartment owned by Joan Crawford.

Jackie's pink suit was Chanel, not Cassini.

BTW, it was not new . . she had worn it on at least three occasions prior to the trip to Texas in November of 1963.

Per order of the Kennedy family, the still bloodstained suit cannot be displayed in public until 2103.

r449, thanks for bring up the Cassini-Chanel issue. I haven't decide what's what yet. Below is a Fashionista article on this controversy:

[bold]Karl Lagerfeld Says Oleg Cassini Knocked Off That Pink ‘Chanel’ Suit Jackie Kennedy Wore the Day JFK Was Assassinated[/bold]

by Leah Chernikofft

The pink bouclé suit Jackie Kennedy wore in Dallas on November 22, 1963 has become a part of history–it’s what she was wearing the day her husband, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. According to biographer William Manchester’s account of the assassination, Mrs. Kennedy refused to take the suit off after it was stained with her slain husband’s blood, saying “Let them see what they’ve done.” The suit, according to an LA Times article, is now “perfectly preserved in a vault in Maryland…banned from public display for 100 years.”

So, leave it to Karl Lagerfeld to bring a new (to us, at least) piece of (fashion) information to light about that fateful day. It’s been generally assumed that Jackie Kennedy was wearing a Chanel suit at the motorcade. Only Lagerfeld says it was a fake, a “line-by-line copy by [Oleg] Cassini.”

Tim Blanks interviewed Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld about their Little Black Jacket book project for the latest issue of Style.com/Print. When Blanks asked Carine when she saw her first Chanel jacket, she responded “The first Chanel jacket that I saw–that I knew was Chanel–was on TV. It was on Mrs. Kennedy–the pink one.”

Nope! You were fooled along with everyone else Carine. “In 1963,” Lagerfeld replied. “It was a fake, a line-by-line copy by Cassini. She did have real Chanels, [but] her sister ordered them. We have all the proof.”

So we did a little more digging and it turns out whether or not Jackie’s suit was actually Chanel has been up for debate for a while amongst fashion historians. The dress has it’s own Wikipedia page, which we’re not putting all our trust in, but an interesting little section at the end of the entry points out that the other theory about the dress is that it came from the Chez Ninon dress shop in New York (in this Bill Cunningham piece in the Times he confirms that Jackie was a client) where it was created using the “line-for-line” system (Karl’s words almost exactly).

According to Justine Picardie’s authorized biography of Coco Chanel, Chanel, Her Life, Jackie Kennedy was a Chanel client starting in the 1950s. But after she was slammed in the press for a reported $30,000 Paris spending spree during her husband’s Presidential campaign, Mrs. Kennedy couldn’t afford to buy Chanel from Chanel and risk more bad press, especially not as First Lady. Too foreign, too spendy. (After the story broke, first in WWD and then picked up by the AP, that the future first lady went on a wild spending spree, Pat Nixon told the Times, “I buy my clothes off the rack and I look for bargains like all other American women.”) So, to avoid another gaffe, Picardie says that Mrs. Kennedy “was able to acquire Chanel outfits sewn for her in New York by a dressmaking establishment called Chez Ninon. The garments were not fake or pirated, but made to order using materials supplied by Chanel in Paris.”

“Thus it was,” Picardie concludes, “that she came to be wearing a vivid pink Chanel suit (complete with fabric, trim and buttons from 31 Rue Cambon, but fitted at Chez Ninon) on 22nd November 1963, accompanying her husband to Dallas.”

An article in the LA Times about the missing pink pill box from the suit, confirms that Mrs. Kennedy “took along two suits, one of them the pink Chanel knockoff created by a New York dress shop so she could indulge her French tastes and still buy American.”

Case closed? While Lagerfeld was right, that it was a line-for-line copy, it seems Oleg Cassini, Mrs. Kennedy’s favored designer, had nothing to do it. And if the suit was made with Chanel fabrics, is it really a knock off? Regardless, thank you Mr. Lagerfeld, for prompting us to explore this fascinating little bit of history.

To summarize Joan Crawford's role in the JFK assassination:

1. JFK refused to invade Cuba and recover Pepsico facilities and sugar fields. Joan and Nixon on November 21, 1963, publicly ridiculed JFK for being overly protected by the Secret Service. This led to JFK riding in an open car with little protection. Joan after the assassination publicly "regretted" her statements.

2. Joan's friend, Charlene Wrightsman Cassini, was driven to suicide when her husband was being prosecuted by Bobby and the Justice Department. Family and friends of Charlene blamed Bobby for her death.

3. Joan was close friends with Henry and Clare Boothe Luce. The Luces and Pepsi were connected to the Anti-Castro Cuban movement. After Ron Pataky said that Dorothy looked like Clare, Dorothy warned friends that if something should happen to her, her death is related to a CIA agent connected with Clare.

4. Joan showed up at Dorothy's house immediately after Dorothy was found dead.

Merv Griffin used to tell this story often.

Dorothy died on the same day as the famous east coast blackout in November of 1965.

Merv was hosting a party at his apartment that evening, when the blackout hit all of NYC.

By candlelight, the guests decided to phone Dick Kollmar and express their condolences over Dorothy's sudden passing.

According to Merv, Joan Crawford took the phone and said with complete sincerity to Kollmar, "Richard, the lights all over New York City have been dimmed in honor of your Dorothy.".

r452, there are other variants of this blackout story, where Crawford is at her apartment on November 9, 1964.

1. Gotham Center for New York City History version: Joan Crawford standing on her balcony with a drink in her hand looking out at the blacked out city said to friends, "What a glorious tribute to Dorothy."

2. Lee Israel's version: On Tuesday, November 9, the lights went out up and down the eastern seaboard. Joan Crawford, under the influence of grief and spirits, stared out her window and was heard to exclaim, "What a wonderful tribute to Dorothy!"

Whether any of these Joan Crawford stories are true, they sound pretty creepy (to me at least).

r136 asked about Crawford's "timing." Joan had a 12:30 luncheon appointment at Dorothy's house on November 8, 1964, when Dorothy's body was found. That's how Joan ended up being the family spokeswoman to the press that day.

Darwin Porter says the oink hat belongs to a drag queen in Connecticut that brings it out only at Christmas.

I mean pink.

Dorothy Kilgallen died in 1965, not 1964.

Ms. Cassini, like many, was a pill-popping fool for a long time before she kicked the bucket. FWIW.

r456, thanks for the spotting the wrong year.

Charlene Wrightsman's grandfather invented the oil depletion allowance, which JFK wanted to abolish. Igor Cassini later claimed his father-in-law, Charles Wrightsman, was involved the JFK assassination, due to Robert Kennedy's persecution of Igor and the resulting suicide of Wrightsman's daughter.

Igor Cassini gives a fictionalized account of this in the novel "Pay the Price."

If Dorothy died early on Monday morning and the blackout occurred on Tuesday night, they waited an awfully damn long time to pay her a tribute.

If you scroll down at the link, there are photos of Jackie wearing the same pink suit on four occasions prior to Dallas.

There's also a rare shot of Jackie lighting up a cigarette in private. It's been reported that she smoked as many as three packs a day.

Since we're on the subject of Jackie, her mother Janet Norton Lee used to date Nona McAdoo's nephew, George de Mohrenschildt. This was when Janet was between marriages. "Uncle George" taught Jackie as a child how to ride a pony. He was also a friend of Edith Beale of "Grey Gardens."

George's wife Jeanne worked side-by-side with Abraham Zapruder at Nardis Sportswear of Dallas during the 1950s. Besides Oswald and the Paines, George was friends with H.L. Hunt, GHW Bush, Robert J. Morris, the Luces, the Brothers Cabell, etc.

George at one time was the son-in-law of CIA honcho Samuel Washington, who supervised 250 agents. Washington was descended from both brothers of George Washington.

I'm putting this here instead of the JFK assassination thread, as there is enough background posts on Clare Boothe Luce:

At a White House luncheon in the spring of 1963, Henry "Harry" and Clare Boothe Luce walked out during dessert, much to the dismay of JFK. The President wanted the Luce publications to stop giving publicity to the anti-Castro Cubans and their raids on Cuba. When the Bay of Pigs invasion failed in 1961, the Luces pushed both in press and private for a new invasion. Through “Fortune” magazine, C.D. Jackson promoted the CIA line of JFK's cowardice being responsible for the disaster. Clare wrote that the issue was "not only of American prestige but of American survival." “Life” magazine had began a series, glamorizing the high-jinxes of the Cuban exiles. In one instance, they attacked the Soviet freighter Baku, which involved Russian nationals. In an effort to head off WW3, JFK invited the incorrigible pair to a peace powwow. But the talks failed and the President would be dead before the year's end.

Later at Time-Life headquarters in New York, an enraged Harry told the staff that the publication empire was declaring war against Castro's Cuba. They would furnish money and logistical aid the raiders, the commando teams to be embedded with Time-Life reporters and photographers. But far from being a private enterprise, there has been allegations that the CIA was actually using the Time-Life crusade for plausible deniability.

The lowdown to this is whoever killed JFK wanted the nation to think that a Cuban agent (Oswald) did it. The resulting outrage would result in a military invasion of Cuba. Since LBJ didn't invade Cuba, this is near absolute proof that LBJ neither knew or participated in the assassination.

Keep in mind that a true psychopath isn't afraid of death, which has been noted during the execution of clinical determined psychopaths. LBJ did or was alleged to have done many bad things, but that didn't make him a psychopath. In fact, he WAS afraid of death.

Anyone who would risk nuclear war with such reckless abandon in this caper is either a psychopath (Clare) or a religious fanatic (Harry).

Dorothy Kilgallen was quite familiar with these two, who also lived in east Manhattan.

r120, have you posted this before?

TILT and the "Phase Three" Story of Clare Boothe Luce By Prof Peter Dale Scott Global Research, November 29, 2012 Region: USA Theme: Culture, Society & History

A new biography of William Pawley clarifies the millionaire's status as a friend and adviser to presidents, despite his reactionary views that often made the State Department and even the CIA reluctant to deal with him. His ability to modify and on occasion even overturn official U.S. policies easily qualifies him to be considered part of that mostly invisible milieu I have clumsily called the American "deep state," a milieu both inside and outside government with the power to steer the history of the public state and sometimes redirect it. It would be wrong to think that Pawley had such power only because of his personal wealth and connections. I hope to show that from the beginning of his career to his sudden death by a self-inflicted gun wound, Pawley always acted in conjunction with other powerful people from both the overworld and the underworld- in short, with what I have called other dark forces of the deep state.

The key to Pawley's controversial status was that he made (and sometimes lost) his fortunes under foreign dictators he was personally close to: Chiang Kai-shek in China, Presidents Prio and Batista in Cuba, and Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Long after the U.S. Government ceased to support these men, Pawley maintained their confidence, which was one of the reasons elements of the U.S. Government chose on occasion to use him as an asset. Another reason is that all these dictators had developed contacts with the U.S. underworld, often because of their involvement in the trafficking of opium and heroin into America. As we shall see, Pawley himself had at least one CIA-linked mob contact, John Martino.

The book shows how Pawley's personal wealth and associations enabled him at times to mount his own foreign policy, one supported by friends inside government and also by other wealthy individuals and corporations who saw their wealth or policy objectives doomed by the fall of strongmen like Chiang Kai-shek and Batista. Among Pawley's closest influential friends were Henry Luce of Time-Life, Henry's wife Clare Boothe Luce, Allen Dulles, and Richard Nixon (who according to Anthony Summers had is own web of associations men who had links to organized crime).[ 1 ] All of these people shared what has been called Pawley's "pathological hatred of Castro."[ 2 ]

On at least two occasions I believe Pawley's support for a minority right-wing clique led to significant and lasting changes to American foreign policy. The first was after Chiang Kai-shek's expulsion from mainland China to the island of Taiwan, when "Pawley became the point man for an end run around American policy toward Taiwan."[ 3 ] It was the official policy of the U.S. State Department under Dean Acheson to plan for a containment policy in East Asia in which Taiwan would not be defended. But Pawley lobbied Acheson to allow for Chiang in Taiwan to be assisted by "a small group of American civilian, economic, industrial and [ retired or ex-officers ] military advisors."

This plan when implemented, apparently with assistance from at least one underworld figure along with Frank Wisner's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), became a significant factor in the survival of an independent Taiwan, and also in the growth of the post-war Asian drug traffic.[ 4 ] (Though the book does not mention this, Pawley was also "instrumental in setting up the infamous Civil Air Transport [ CAT, later Air America ], an airline that later became notorious for ferrying drugs from the Golden Triangle in Asia."[ 5 ]) The Taiwan plan also enabled the notorious "China Lobby" to continue to lobby and pass money to the American Congress, helping among other things to secure the election to the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1968, and again of Ronald Reagan in 1980.[ 6 ]

cont.

The Carrozza biography describes Pawley's lobbying for a private Taiwan defense mission as a one-man campaign. But the definitive history of the Korean War by Bruce Cumings shows how the end run around the State Department was fostered by other important individuals inside and outside government, including General Douglas Macarthur as the head of U.S. forces in Japan, Macarthur's intelligence chief Charles Willoughby, former OSS Chief William Donovan, mob figure Sonny Satiris Fassoulis, and "Texas oilmen" presumably including H.L. Hunt.[ 7 ] This ad hoc coalition was not all-powerful, and fell apart the next year when H.L. Hunt tried and failed to promote Macarthur, after he was relieved of his command by Truman, as a candidate for the presidency. This fluidity exemplifies the reasons why I argue that the so-called "deep state" should not be seen as a structure, but as a milieu.

With the support of elements from the same milieu, Pawley affected U.S. policy again under Eisenhower, with perhaps even more long-lasting and widespread consequences. By 1952 Frank Wisner's free-wheeling OPC had gone so far afoul of U.S. laws and policy that it incurred the wrath of both President Truman and CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith. As a result OPC was merged into the CIA and was known thereafter as the CIA's Department of Plans. However Smith's and Truman's intentions of curbing OPC were soon thwarted, thanks to their ill-advised appointment of Allen Dulles, an OSS veteran who was again a practicing Wall Street lawyer, to be the CIA's assistant director in charge of the former OPC.[ 8 ] Wisner's OPC "cowboys," now merged into the CIA's new Department of Plans, continued to operate as before, especially after Dulles was promoted by Eisenhower to become the new CIA Director.

But tensions and ill-will continued in the Department of Plans, between the veterans of OPC and those of the old CIA's Office of Special Operations (OSO). Matters came to a head in 1954, with the CIA's preparation to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in operation PBSUCCESS. Eisenhower asked his friend Pawley to participate in a planning group for the operation, along with the Latin American representative of U.S. Steel. Eventually Arbenz was defeated, with the aid of three planes paid for by Pawley's personal advance of $150,000 to the Nicaraguan government of Anastasio Somoza.[ 9 ] Pawley was personally commissioned by his friend President Eisenhower to obtain the planes, after the two men heard first hand from Allen Dulles that the chances of winning without them were "Nil."[ 10 ]

More importantly for American history, Pawley noticed that plans for PBSUCCESS were being leaked to the U.S. press, and he learned that the source was a high official in the CIA's Department of Plans (presumably an old-guard opponent of the ex-OPC "cowboys"). Pawley brought the problem of the inside leaking to Eisenhower, "whose response surprised him, 'I want you to conduct a thorough investigation of the covert side of CIA operations for me.'"[ 11 ] Pawley declined to lead the new commission, giving as a reason " a possible breakdown in the special relationship Pawley had with Dulles brothers." Instead Pawley's old friend Gen. Jimmy Doolittle became head of the Commission, with Pawley as a member.[ 12 ]

The Doolittle Commission's report in 1954 led to a complete victory for the OPC faction in the Department of Plans.[ 13 ] In addition to purging old officers deemed inefficient, the report also urged that the CIA become an "organization more effective, more unique, and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy."[ 14 ] The door was opened to far larger CIA operations, including the waging of a war with a drug-financed army in Laos.[ 15 ] "Dirty tricks" such as assassinations were now sanctioned as a covert adjunct to U.S. foreign policy. Today, with use of lethal drones at the core of the U.S. war on terror, it might be said that "dirty tricks" have become U.S. foreign policy.

cont.

Seen from a different perspective, the Doolittle Commission represented a consolidation of control over the CIA by Allen Dulles, Wisner, and the OPC. Behind Pawley's recommendation more than one historian has seen the hand of Dulles himself;[ 16 ] for Pawley had the reputation of being a member of the CIA's "Old Boys network and . especially close to CIA Director Allen Dulles."[ 17 ]

My chief criticism of Carrozza's excellent biography is that it repeatedly highlights Pawley's image as a maverick lone entrepreneur. In fact Pawley consistently acted in concert with other influential figures from the overworld, united in lobbying groups for the military-industrial complex like the American Security Council [ ASC ] and the Committee on the Present Danger [ CPD ]. Carrozza does note how in 1969 Pawley used the newsletter of the ASC to publish his recommendation that Nixon's withdrawal plans for Vietnam be supplemented by unleashing "the armed forces of the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan."[ 18 ] But he treats as a personal initiative Pawley's publication in 1974 of a newspaper ad supporting "funding outlays of $20 billion for the B-1 bombers and Trident submarines."[ 19 ] In fact these two expensive and highly controversial weapons systems were being fiercely debated in post-Vietnam Washington, where the campaign on their behalf was being led by the American Security Council and later the Committee on the Present Danger (a member of which was Pawley's close friend Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of Henry Luce of Time/Life).[ 20 ]

Pawley's actions in short were not just idiosyncratic, but rooted in the agendas of a militant sector of the overworld. Given Pawley's status in this overworld, and above all his ease of access to Dulles and his circle, including Henry Luce (another personal friend), one has to ask whether Pawley did not have high-level support in the following episodes, detailed in Carrozza's book, with respect to both Cuba and possibly even the Kennedy assassination.

New Information about Oswald's First Approach to Carlos Bringuier: He Was Taped

If Carrozza is to be believed, Pawley's well-known role as a supporter of anti-Castro activities outside the CIA made him aware of an important tape of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, a tape which for some reason did not reach the Warren Commission, and would seem to contradict the account of Oswald's activities in the Warren Report.

An early and energetic opponent of Fidel Castro, Pawley (according to David Kaiser) "may have been the man who first suggested to Ike that Castro should be assassinated."[ 21 ] From the time of Castro's takeover, Pawley became a well-known backer of anti-Castro operatives. Many of these he vetted and then referred to the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami, with such regularity that he was assigned his own special CIA cryptonym, QDDALE. But his own preferences for a post-Castro leadership were wealthy Batistianos like Dr. Antonio Rubio Padilla, who was too reactionary for the CIA, too reactionary even for Howard Hunt.[ 22 ]

Pawley in short was acting as a spokesman for those forces in Cuba, including both Cuban landowners and businessmen, and also American corporations like American and Foreign Power, who ran the risk of losing their Cuban investments, even under the kind of moderately conservative government with which the CIA hoped to replace Castro. The same was true of those mob owners of Havana casinos who had not, like Meyer Lansky, had the foresight to hedge their political bets, by developing new casinos in the Bahamas.

Thus it was no accident that Pawley, in his Cuban policies, according to Carrozza, also dealt with mob and casino-related figures who were also too shady for the CIA. Thus, "Pawley's involvement with anti-Castro groups brought him in contact with shadowy figures such as Mafia gangster John Martino, Watergate figure Frank Sturgis," and others.

cont.

In the same sentence, Carrozza also lists "Howard Hunt, and an unidentified anti-Castro youth who tape-recorded Lee Harvey Oswald during an interview when Oswald tried joining a New Orleans anti-Communist group as a hired gun."[ 23 ] (This claim is not supported; and according to the book's Index, Pawley's contact with the unidentified youth is not referred to again.)

This reference resurrects the unresolved allegation of Pawley's close friend and political ally Clare Boothe Luce, about a story from her "young friend," the skipper of one of the anti-Castro raider boats she and Pawley were sponsoring. Luce claimed that her friend (to whom she gave the pseudonym "Julio Fernandez"), told her the night of Kennedy's assassination that he "had these tape recordings of Oswald" in New Orleans, tapes which included Oswald's "bragging that he could shoot anyone, even the Secretary of the Navy."[ 24 ]

This story, never explained, supplies an alternative to the FBI and Warren Report account of Oswald's contact in early August 1963 with New Orleans DRE delegate Carlos Bringuier in his shop Casa Roca, a remarkable visit even before this new information.

It is important to note that both Philip Geraci and Vance Blalock, the two witnesses to Oswald's visit to Bringuier's shop, testified (in divergent and mutually exclusive versions) that, after Oswald left, they "started following him home."[ 25 ] In Luce's version as she told a journalist in 1975, "Fernandez"' contacts "followed him and found he was in a Fair Play for Cuba Communist cell."[ 26 ]

We seem to have two different accounts of the same event. The FBI and Warren Commission version, as we might expect, is what I have called a "phase two version," in which nothing conflicts with the picture they present of Oswald as a lone assassin.

Geraci and Blalock were interviewed by the Warren Commission but said nothing about having taped him (10 WH 76, 82). The Luce-Hernandez version, in contrast, is a "phase one" story, in which Oswald appears as a hired gun working ultimately for Castro: "The young Cuban who called me," Mrs. Luce continued, "said that there was a Cuban Communist assassination team working somewhere - in Dallas, New Orleans, or wherever . [ and ] Oswald was their hired gun."

Luce's Cuban added, somewhat paradoxically, that Oswald, before deciding to work for Castro, "had tried to report the Communist plans to the FBI some time before the assassination."[ 27 ] This switch from anti-Castro to pro-Castro roles for Oswald, unlikely as it may sound, closely mirrors the Warren Report's account of Oswald between August 5 and August 9, 1963. Bringuier himself told the Washington Post after the assassination that on August 5 "I thought he might be an agent for the FBI or the CIA," before Bringuier caught him on August 9 distributing leaflets from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.[ 28 ]

(Today I shall skip what the taping of Oswald implies about the Lake Ponchartrain training camp that Oswald asked about, and go directly to what I say about the so-called Bayo-Pawley plot, the CIA-backed operation TILT that brought in Jerry Hemming and Frank Sturgis, the two men behind the Lake Ponchartrain training camp.)

Pawley, Sturgis, Hemming, Martino, and the Bayo-Pawley Plot

Pawley, Hemming, and Sturgis (along with John Martino) were actively involved with the CIA in a conspiratorial penetration of Cuba in April 1963, the so-called Bayo-Pawley plot (known to the CIA as Operation TILT).

The Bayo-Pawley story has been told many times. David Kaiser has seen in it the hand of Martino's associate John Roselli, and concludes that in the Bayo-Pawley plot "Roselli and Trafficante were using Martino and Pawley as cut-outs to enlist the help of the CIA."[ 29 ]

cont.

The Carrozza account differs from Kaiser's in attributing a more forceful role to Pawley, claiming that it was Pawley himself who "began assembling a team [ which ] included mob figures, Cuban exile leaders, CIA operatives, and mercenary soldiers, some of whom would become well known names during the Watergate investigation a a decade later."[ 30 ]

David Kaiser, in contrast, claims that Pawley "became a pawn in an elaborate scheme hatched by John Martino."[ 31 ] But Pawley's and Martino's outlooks on Cuba were so similar, that there is no need to think that one of them duped the other. It is symptomatic of their convergence that both men used the anti-communist writer Nathaniel Weyl to ghost-write their memoirs.[ 32 ] Pawley, Martino, and Weyl all had links to the John Birch Society, which Gus Russo and others have also linked to the Lake Ponchartrain training camp.[ 33 ]

Furthermore it is not disputed that on April 18, 1963, Pawley contacted Ted Shackley of the CIA's Miami JM/WAVE Station about the raid; and told him "that Martino was to play a role in the operation."[ 34 ] This seems an odd requirement if the purpose of the mission was (as Pawley told Shackley) to extricate Soviet technicians who would testify to the on-going presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. But it makes perfect sense if (as Carrozza suggests) Pawley knew that this was planned to be (or at least look like) an assassination mission, which members of the mob (Roselli and Sam Giancana, according to participant Loran Hall) were paying for.[ 35 ]

Jack Anderson's Phase-Three Report of a "Political H-bomb" and Watergate

Pawley's biographer, Anthony Carrozza, corroborates the story given in 1976 by one of the participants, Loran Eugene Hall, and endorsed by David Kaiser: that a deeper purpose of this raid was to assassinate Castro.[ 36 ] And Carrozza speculates that the team of Cubans exfiltrated into Cuba for this purpose may have been the team that (according to a John Roselli story published by Jack Anderson) came "back to the United States as the team that killed President Kennedy and set up Oswald as the fall guy."[ 37 ] Anderson referred to this possibility as "a political H-bomb."[ 38 ]

In other words, Carrozza gives support to a story first spread by Martino and Roselli in 1963 (and reported by myself three decades later) both of whom "told the FBI that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been Castro's retaliation for Kennedy's CIA-Mafia plots against himself, even to the point of Castro's having 'turned' an assassination team and sent it back to Dallas."[ 39 ]

This "retaliation" story was first published nationally by Jack Anderson, after meeting with Roselli's lawyer Edward P. Morgan, on March 3, 1967. I suspect however that it was circulated much earlier, and may even have been the substance of the long discussion between John McCone and Robert Kennedy on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.[ 40 ] We know that on that same afternoon RFK voiced a version of the "plot that backfired" theory when he spoke to his Cuban friend Harry Ruiz-Williams. What makes the following quote so meaningful is the fact that in 1963 RFK, at odds with CIA plans for the replacement of Castro, was using Williams as his go-between with Cuban exiles for alternative covert operations not sponsored by the CIA.[ 41 ] According to journalist Haynes Johnson, who was present, Kennedy turned to Williams that fateful afternoon and said, "One of your guys did it."[ 42 ]

From early in his presidency, Lyndon Johnson also reportedly believed, perhaps from what he was told by CIA director McCone, that JFK was killed in retaliation for U.S. assassination plots against Castro.[ 43 ] Joseph Califano, a former Army member of Cuban Coordinating Committee under both JFK and LBJ, later formulated this belief more precisely as a "plot that backfired" theory:

cont.

[quote]I have come to share LBJ's view [ that Castro "got him first" ]..Over the years I have come to believe that the paroxysms of grief that tormented Robert Kennedy for years after his brother's death arose, at least in part, from a sense that his efforts to eliminate Castro led to his brother's assassination.[ 44 ]

I like to think of the "plot that backfired" theory as a "phase three" story, because of my arguments elsewhere that it, and more specifically the Bayo-Pawley mission, was planned precisely to coerce the CIA, Life, and even the Kennedy family "into an assassination cover-up."[ 45 ] For many years I have suspected that the true target of the Bayo-Pawley mission was neither the mythical Soviet defectors, nor even to assassinate Castro, but President Kennedy, on a level even deeper than its avowed intention to sabotage Kennedy's policy of détente with Cuba and the Soviet Union. (As Robert K. Brown and Miguel Acoca wrote in their 1976 account, "The Bayo-Pawley Affair," "It was a plot to destroy President Kennedy politically, and the CIA played a major role. Without the CIA, in fact, the weird adventure could not have taken place."[ 46 ] It is indeed true that proof of missiles in Cuba would have completely discredited Kennedy's claim to have successfully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, and put an end to his efforts to develop a policy of détente towards the Soviet Union).

No Soviet defectors were actually obtained, so the plot might at first glance seem to have been ineffective. That however did not at all impede the use of the "phase three" retaliation story as post-assassination political blackmail. By enlisting both regular CIA personnel from Shackley's JM/WAVE station, and also Richard Billings from Life magazine, the plot may have helped ensure that the CIA, Life, and others would later engage in a post-assassination cover-up.[ 47 ]

The plot may also have blackmailed Robert Kennedy: Brown and Acoca report (as Kaiser and Carrozza do not) that the organizers of the raid had at the outset brought in a wealthy Kennedy supporter, Theodore Racoosin; Racoosin reported later that he had contacted "someone in the White House, who had authorized him to organize meetings of Cuban exile leaders, in order to obtain information on the CIA's Cuban operations."[ 48 ]

Such an authorization, if granted, would be enough to explain why Robert Kennedy "immediately moved to shut down" Roselli's "phase three" story when Jack Anderson published it in March 1967. According to David Talbot, Kennedy first requested "a copy of the FBI memo on the . meeting when he was first informed by the CIA about the Mafia plots." and the arranged to have lunch, on March 4, 1967, with CIA Director Richard Helms. Three days later, on March 7, 1967, the Washington Post finally published a bowdlerized version of the March 3 Jack Anderson column. It no longer contained Anderson's reference to "a political H-bomb - an unconfirmed report that Senator Robert Kennedy (Dem-N.Y.) may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother."[ 49 ]

One does not have to believe in the truth of the "plot that backfired" story to believe in the importance of it. Robert Kennedy was not the only major figure to feel threatened by Anderson's "political H-bomb;" so, four years later, did President Nixon. In January 1971 a Jack Anderson column reported again about CIA plots, this time naming mob figure John Roselli, ex-CIA officer William Harvey, and CIA contract agent Robert Maheu, their go-between in the CIA-mafia plots of 1960, (plots involving Nixon but not Kennedy). In 1971, "Could the plot against Castro have backfired against President Kennedy?"[ 50 ]

As I noted in 1976, the column "caused a flurry of investigative memos inside the Nixon White House," including a warning from one of the White House "dirty tricks" operatives, Jack Caulfield, that "Maheu's covert activities . with CIA. might well shake loose republican skeletons from the closet."[ 51 ]

cont.

According to Anthony Summers, Attorney General John Mitchell promptly phoned Maheu, who was currently "under pressure to appear before a grand jury in connection with a Las Vegas gambling prosecution," and arranged a deal whereby, in exchange for Maheu's silence on "the entire Castro story," Maheu would not have to testify.[ 52 ]

This was noted and investigated by two members of the staff of the Senate Watergate Committee, Terry Lenzner and Mark Lackritz, who concluded that White House concern about Anderson's phase-three story "could have been a possible motivation for the Watergate break-in to the office of the DNC."[ 53 ] The two staffers questioned Caulfield about his "skeletons" memo. Anthony Summers writes that "Caulfield first asked to go off the record. After discussion in private, he conceded that his reference to 'covert activities' related to Anderson's Castro plot revelations."[ 54 ]

At the end of a lengthy chapter, Summers concluded, Nixon had good reason to fear exposure of his part in the Cuban intrigues. The information marshaled here shows starkly why it was that in 1971, in the wake of the Anderson articles and the Maheu scare, he renewed his demands for the CIA's files on the Bay of Pigs. He hoped, to be sure, that they contained embarrassments for the Kennedys. At the same time, he knew the agency's records probably contained material compromising to himself. Nixon needed to see them, as he explained to [ his aide John ] Ehrlichman, in order to know what to "duck," to "protect" himself.[ 55 ]

In January 1974 Senator Sam Ervin, Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, rejected the request of the staffers Lenzner and Lackritz to issue subpoenas to their witnesses. [ 56 ] But six months later, on the "smoking gun" tape which led promptly to his resignation, Nixon was heard by the committee to say to his chief of staff Bob Haldeman, "Look, the problem is that this [ Watergate break-in ] will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing."[ 57 ] Summers notes that Haldeman later wrote in his memoir that "It seems that in all those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination."[ 58 ]

Let me close this section with a letter from Pawley to Richard Nixon, dated April 15, 1963, three days before Pawley contacted Shackley about Operation TILT:

Focusing again on Cuba, Pawley recounted the disastrous decisions that both the Eisenhower and the Kennedy administrations had made. There was only one way out of the mess, according to Pawley: [QUOTE]'All of the Cubans and most of the Americans in this part of the country believe that to remove Castro you must first remove Kennedy, and that is not going to be easy.' [ 59 ] [ repeat ]

These were suggestive words to communicate to the man who, along with Allen Dulles, had back in 1960-61 supported Pawley's efforts for a more decisive anti-Castro policy than that adopted by Eisenhower and Kennedy.[ 60 ]

I want to close with some remarks from my concluding section, Why Did Clare Boothe Luce Not Release Her Oswald Story Until 1975?

Pawley and Luce were enthusiastic supporters of Nixon in his 1968 campaign to be elected president, and Pawley joined the "Ambassadors for Nixon Committee."[ 61 ] But their support predictably waned with Nixon's moves in 1971-72 to redefine America's relationship to China and the Soviet Union. Pawley wrote in his unpublished memoir, "Russia is Winning," that "The whole pattern is now colored with a thin, pasty coating called 'detente,' a Communist tactic to prepare the trusting democracies for the kill. It can end only in surrender."[ 62 ]

After Nixon's resignation in 1974, Pawley was even more uncomfortable with the foreign policy of his successor Gerald Ford. In 1975 the John Birch Society publication American Opinion quoted Pawley as stating that Kissinger, whom Ford had retained as Secretary of State, "scares me to death."[ 1 ]

cont.

Pawley was particularly incensed to learn that Ford and Kissinger might lend support to a move in the Organization of American States (OAS) to lift economic and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba.[ 63 ]

It was inevitable that Pawley's political preference in 1976 would be for his friend, and Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, whom Pawley had urged Nixon to consider as his vice-presidential choice in 1968.[ 64 ]

Clare Boothe Luce was also a supporter of Reagan in both 1976 and 1980. Moreover she was a member of two important neocon groups that helped prepare for the 1980 "Reagan Revolution," by lobbying for an end to détente and an increase in defense spending: the Committee on the Present Danger (1976) and the Coalition for Peace through Strength (1978, of which Reagan also was a member).[ 65 ] In 1981 Reagan rewarded Luce for her efforts with a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).

More importantly, in 1964 both Pawley and Mrs. Luce had been important figures in the campaign to elect their friend Barry Goldwater as president. Clare Boothe Luce seconded the nomination of Goldwater at the Republican Convention, and thereafter co-chaired a Citizens group (with General James Doolittle) to elect him. Pawley meanwhile had served as chairman of Florida Citizens for Goldwater-Miller.[ 66 ] After Goldwater's ignominious defeat in 1964, Mrs. Luce continued to be close to him, dining with him at least twice (in 1965 and again in 1967) with their mutual friend William Buckley.

With the unprecedented resignation of Nixon in 1974, American politics were left in disarray, with both left and right struggling (and expecting) to prevail in the post-Nixon era. Major topics, usually too sacred for public discussion, were briefly debated in both Congress and the media, including the size of the post-Vietnam defense budget, the future of the CIA, and even the CIA's past role in assassinations. At the time there was an unprecedented outpour of books attacking the CIA from both the left and the right.[ 67 ]

In this post-Watergate turmoil Democrats and Republicans in the Senate agreed to the formation of the Church Committee to investigate the CIA and FBI. On this Committee the Republicans were represented by Senator John Tower as Co-Chair, and also Senator Goldwater.

Inside the Church Committee a bitter contest, between the advocates or a more open America versus the advocates of a more authoritarian one, became crystallized about the question of who had been responsible for past assassinations: the Kennedys or the CIA. In his massive defense of the "phase three" retaliation story, Gus Russo sums up the positions of Republican Senators Schweiker and Goldwater:

Senator Richard Schweiker headed the Church Committee's investigation into the Kennedy assassination's possible connection to intelligence activities. He has said, "My impression is that the presidents not only knew but ordered these policies by and large. Past presidents have used the CIA as their secret police at home and their secret army abroad."

Perhaps the most forthright Committee member was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. At the time of the hearings, Goldwater remarked that there was friction on the Committee between "those who want to protect the Kennedys and those who want to tell the truth." Years later, he stated it more succinctly, saying, "We spent nine of the ten months trying to get Kennedy's name out of it." When asked by the press who was behind the attempts on Castro's life, Goldwater motioned towards the White House and said, "Everything points right down there."[ 68 ]

Goldwater's description of the Democrats' behavior in the 94th Congress is corroborated by the Democrats' subsequent behavior in the 95th. A new House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), first set up in 1976, was severely reorganized by Democrats in 1977 and put in the hands of Robert Blakey, who had been a former close ally of Robert Kennedy in the Justice Department.

cont.

Although the HSCA achieved much of value, it also studiously avoided the Bayo-Pawley story. The HSCA Report did not mention it, nor did it point out that the Report's author, HSCA editorial director Richard Billings, had himself been a participant in the Bayo-Pawley mission.

But the CIA appears to have been as industrious in protecting its secrets as the Kennedy loyalists. The CIA gave an undercover assignment to one of its officers, psychological warfare expert George Joannides, and assigned him to work as its liaison officer with the HSCA. The Committee never learned that Joannides had also been the case officer for the Cuban exile group DRE, whose publicity director Carlos Bringuier had been repeatedly in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald.[ 69 ]

In the course of their debates, the Church Committee established a subcommittee "to review the role of federal agencies in investigating the Kennedy assassination."[ 70 ]

Goldwater's viewpoint was represented on the subcommittee by Senator Richard Schweiker, a Republican from Pennsylvania. According to Church Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi, the subcommittee was established on September 8, 1975.

Schweiker's move coincided almost exactly in time with Clare Boothe Luce's decision to go public with her "phase three" story that Oswald had been "turned" by Castro. In Fonzi's words.

Right after Schweiker announced the formation of his Kennedy assassination Subcommittee, he was visited by Vera Glaser, a syndicated Washington columnist.[ 71 ] Glaser told him she had just interviewed Clare Boothe Luce and that Luce had given her some information relating to the assassination. Schweiker immediately called Luce and she, quite cooperatively and in detail, confirmed the story she had told Glaser.[ 72 ]

It makes strong political sense that Luce would be anxious to launch her version of a "phase three" story in 1975. Nixon was no longer there to be protected; the president who would be injured by it was now Gerald Ford; and Ford, besides being a member and spokesman for the Warren Report,[ 73 ] was the leader of the anti-Reagan forces in the Republican Party, and perhaps above all the ally and protector of Henry Kissinger with his hated policy of detente.

But if Luce's motives for launching her story at this time were political, she badly underestimated the political explosiveness of the "phase three" story. Eventually the Church Committee would document how both the Secret Service and the FBI found Jack Anderson's story too hot to handle (5 AH 80-82). The reaction of the CIA was quite different: after LBJ asked DCI Richard Helms about it (having been alerted by Earl Warren, who had heard about it from Drew Pearson before the March 1967 story), the CIA produced an Inspector-General's Report of over 100 pages, which even then dealt only obliquely and evasively with Anderson's story.[ 74 ]

Buried near the end of the Report was a section headed with the ominous question, "Should we try to silence those who are talking or who might later talk?"[ 75 ] The Report's response to the question was low-keyed and quite benign, ending two pages later with the sentence, "There might be some value to be gained from endorsing (Robert Maheu's) suggestion that he approach (Edward P.) Morgan and perhaps Roselli and urge discretion."

But in 1975, after Nixon's two CIA directors (James Schlesinger and William Colby) had demanded an accounting of the CIA's past illegalities, the CIA was in a far more desperate plight than it had been back in 1967. We have to ask whether it is only coincidental that the years 1975-78 saw so many violent deaths among those involved in the CIA-mafia plots, and more specifically with the Bayo-Pawley plot.

On June 19, 1975, "a week before his scheduled appearance before the Church Committee to be questioned about the CIA-Mafia plots. Sam Giancana was shot in the back of the head with a .22-caliber pistol."[ 76 ]

cont.

Hey r464-r471, it's best that you summarize and provide a link to the original article.

John Martino also died in May 1975, allegedly after telling his wife, a business partner, and a journalist friend that he had been peripherally involved in the plot to kill Kennedy.[ 77 ] After John Roselli had testified to the Church Committee, his mutilated body, on August 7, 1976, was discovered in Biscayne Bay, floating in an oil drum. Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi records the deaths of three other witnesses he had planned to question: George de Mohrenschildt by alleged suicide, Carlos Prio by suicide, and Manuel Artime, weeks after his diagnosis with cancer.[ 78 ]

Extensive as it is, Fonzi's list of questionable deaths is not complete. William Harvey, the CIA officer who was also a friend of Roselli and one of the three sources Anderson named for his "backfire" story, testified to the Church Committee in 1975; on June 8, 1976, he died suddenly, at age 60, from a heart attack.[ 79 ] William C. Sullivan, head of the FBI's Intelligence Division that so strangely handled (or mishandled) Oswald's FBI files in the weeks before the assassination, was shot in November 1977 with a high-powered rifle, by a hunter who claimed to have mistaken him for a deer. Journalist Robert Novak, a friend of Sullivan, later wrote, "Bill told me I would probably read about his death in some kind of accident but not to believe it. It would be murder."[ 80 ] On May 8, 1978, David Morales, the CIA Operations officer who is said to have selected his close friend Mickey Kappes for Operation TILT, died, after having reportedly told friends, "I was in Dallas when I, when we got that mother fucker, and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."[ 81 ]

But there is one death in particular that could suggest that Clare Booth Luce may have underestimated the political explosiveness of "phase three" stories. It can be seen also as an ironic comment on the fluidity of the dark forces underlying American politics, and the danger of dabbling with them. I shall close with a quote from Gaeton Fonzi's description of how in early 1977 he began to continue his investigations on behalf of the recently created House Select Committee on Assassinations:

On my official first day, I sent to Washington a list of witnesses I planned to interview. William Pawley was near the top of that list. Exactly one week later [ on January 7, 1977 ], William Pawley, in bed in his mansion on Miami Beach with a nervous ailment [ shingles ], put a gun to his chest and committed suicide.[ 82 ]

Although I have never hear of any other person committing suicide because of shingles, Pawley's death by itself proves nothing at all. However I believe that the story of a story I have been telling you today, of a "phase three" story that was indeed a political H-bomb, makes at least two things clear. The first is that President Kennedy was not assassinated by a marginal neglected loner who was quickly killed, but by some deep enduring force in our society, with the power to affect bureaucratic behavior.

And despite their lip service to the findings of the Warren Report, a lot of public figures knew this, and felt very threatened. ---

And that's why Dorothy Kilgallen was killed.

The footnotes for this are at the source. I hope I haven't repeated something already posted, but I did a search for some key names in this document and they didn't get any hits on DL.

r464-r474, Clare Boothe Luce lied to a House Select Committee investigator about talking to a anti-Castro Cuban on the telephone just before midnight on November 22, 1963. All three versions of her story are false.

Clare claimed that day she was reading on a commercial flight from Chicago to New York, when the pilot asked to enter the cockpit and listen to news of the assassination. That a pilot would leave the cockpit and pick Clare out of all the passengers to listen to the news of JFK's death inside the privacy of the cockpit, while keeping everyone else in the dark, is a story invented by an egomaniac.

When she supposedly arrived at her NYC apartment, she got the phone call from the Cuban exile saying that Oswald was a Castro agent bragging about his assassination abilities.

So where was Clare? Witnesses said Clare was at the Arizona Biltmore that day, celebrating the death of JFK.

Like Nixon and GHW Bush, she's another one who doesn't seem to know where she was that day.

BTW, Clare also told the House Select Committee investigator that while Clare was ambassador to Italy, Allen Dulles told her that the reason why the CIA never assassinated anyone in its entire history is because it would only pave the way for someone worse. The only person the US government ever tried to assassinate was Hitler, but that failed. Lesson learned, according to Allen.

Forgive me if this has already been noted upthread, but is there a good bio of Clare out there?

I can't believe her life story has not been explored for the movies. I can't even remember her (or her husband) as a character appearing in the scores of films about the times in which she lived.

Of course I do not believe that Dulles ever told her that. What a silly story (all of her lies, but especially that one). She did live long enough to see the country learn (a lot of) the truth about the CIA's activities of that time , yes?

R476 the first half of her life story has been written; it is called "Rage for Fame". I have not read it yet.

Clare's Allen Dulles tale is attached to HSCA RECORD NUMBER 80-10099-10300, linked below. Also in this record is the first version of Clare's "Julio Fernandez" telephone call.

"Rage for Fame" is hagiography. The real story of Clare is buried in the top secret CIA archives. The Powers That Be will have Alex Jones promoting Michael Collins Piper's "Final Judgment" before the truth of this Clare woman is ever revealed.

Clare Boothe Luce represents the darkest secrets of the Deep Republic.

If only Oliver Stone would film a dual bio of Dorothy and Clare.

I got the impression from reading an old article by Rage for Fame's author about the process of interviewing Clare, that she (the author) felt like she was often getting tall tales or only half of a particular story, or maybe sometimes both. But like I said, I have not read the book, nor have I followed up on its author so perhaps my impression is inaccurate.

Thank you for the link.

Oops, looks like I gave away something verboten on the "John F. Kennedy's murder" thread. Now it's deleted by DL. But if I repost it here....

What did you post r120?

r482,

1. Maybe some stuff a retired USAF pal told me about UFOs being a government psyop. It's related to Operation Mockingbird, which Dorothy was a part of. She published government BS about UFOs. Douglas MacArthur himself proselytized space aliens in his West Point farewell speech. While Doug was a psycho, he's just BSing for TPTB. There's some heavy-duty intel types in the Roswell racket. I personally know that government operatives in the US and UK are instructed to disrupt activist groups and forums with space alien talk.

2. That Jack Ruby may have been trained in "point shooting" in Israel, which he visited. The British SOE (British Special Operations Executive) trained the Shai (Haganah intel) in such techniques during WW2. Ruby was affiliated with the FBI, CIA and Mossad.

3. I mentioned Michael Collins Piper's "Final Judgment," a book that emphasizes the Israeli nuclear program as the basis of the JFK assassination. This relates to No. 2 above. It involves Permindex and Meyer Lansky wanting to build Israeli atom bombs, so they had to kill JFK. Personally, I think Lansky just wanted to recover his casinos in Cuba. Helping out with the nuke program was secondary.

3. I emphasize the rich and powerful Americans that want to invade Cuba. But maybe I mentioned someone I shouldn't have. Maybe it's someone in that Dallas Suite 8F Group, though that's old stuff. 8F connects with everyone mentioned in this thread, naturally.

4. I mentioned CIA assets or agents Mark Weber and Andrew E. Allen. Also the usual disinfo artists that support Judyth Vary Baker. Jim Fetzer has huge links to the Military-Industrial Complex.

5. I mentioned the Trotskyites as being FBI informants---all of them. And how they became McCarthyites hunting the Stalinist reds in the postwar US. I better not mention what happened next or DL will delete this thread! But these pseudo-communists were behind the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee," which of course was a FBI front.

6. The "French Connection" in Dallas, etc.

Better save this page while you can. It will probably be deleted soon.

I wonder if it was my post about Gordon McLendon that did it (because all of that stuff has been mentioned before, I think)?

r484, what's on that recording is mostly on the Wikipedia article on McLendon. Of course he's Yale and Harvard, ONI, CIA, Skull and Bones and just about everything else. Like the CBS station manager of New Orleans at the time, Dan Rather, Gordon has been a suspect for a long time. As you noted, he's more than a little too conveniently placed for someone as fantastically well-connected as he.

That Jack Ruby getting Henry Wade to do a radio interview, then Jack getting a plug for the Carousel Club over the air may have been a signal to the hit team. Or someone.

But maybe there's something new on that recording that everyone's missed. That the Dallas newsmen had nice deep voices was due to smoking no doubt.

What do you guys think about Dorothy Kilgallen's claim about a crashed UFO and alien bodies being recovered? All I know is that she wasn't talking about Roswell. She had a high-ranking anonymous source and she claimed it would blow the lid off of the UFO cover-up and prove once and for all that UFOs exist and the governments of the world, led by the U.S., have been keeping it a secret. When she died the story disappeared because nobody knew the identity of her source.

[quote]"I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling. British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified. "We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men ---probably under four feet tall. It's frightening, but there is no denying the flying saucers come from another planet." This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the 'flying saucer' examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public."

I have just noticed the website Kilgallenfiles has been eliminated. Why?

what was on the site r487?

Hello Dotty!

It was a site in which the main focus was, what happened to Dorothy that night in November 1965. It included her autopsy (she was in decent condition, although she apparently had a hysterectomy after her son Kerry was born).

The author of the site seemed to lose interest in the Dorothy case early in 2012. Apparently she recently decided to delete the site altogether.

I've noticed this thread has now reached nearly 500 posts. I guess there's still an interest.

Is it cached by archive. org?

The 1966 news article below may provide an alternative explanation for the presence of nicotine in Dorothy's body. The modern syringe plunger dart gun was invented in New Zealand for animal population studies during the 1950s. The original drug mix was curare and nicotine. During the 1960s, pentobarbital and nicotine mixes were used. Pentobarbital was one of the three barbiturates found in Dorothy.

In 1962, CIA psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West used a dart gun to inject LSD into Tusko the Elephant at the Oklahoma Zoo for the MKULTRA program. When Tusko went into a psychotic episode, West killed Tusko with a massive dose of pentobarbital.

The 1975 Church Committee, led by Idaho Senator Frank Church, with Texas Senator John Tower, discovered the CIA used dart guns to simulate heart attacks.

[bold]THE NEWS Frederick, Maryland Monday, May 23, 1966

Tranquilizer Guns May Be Institutional Aid[/bold]

ATLANTIC CITY, N J. (AP) A team of Georgia psychiatrists has disclosed plans to appraise possible use of tranquilizer guns for subduing violent mental patients and criminals. Such guns, shooting darts tipped with a tranquilizing drug, have been used to catch wild animals. The psychiatrists said the guns might be effective in capturing deranged or gun-toting criminals. The report to the 122nd annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, was presented by Dr. John B. Griffin of Emory University School of Medicine at Atlanta. It was coauthored by two other Emory psychiatrists and by Dr. C. D. Warren, assistant medical director, Georgia State Prison, Reidsville. Pointing to situations in which police have to meet force with force, the report said "When a patient is armed with a weapon, the problem is compounded, and the use of guns (conventional firearms) to restrain the patient often results in death." They said dart guns used to capture wild animals and stray dogs suspected of having rabies include a pistol with a 20-yard range and a rifle with a 35-yard range. Drugs employed to immobilize the animals include fast-acting nicotine and barbiturates. The doctors said the New York City Police Department has conducted preliminary studies on possible use of such guns. But they added that, to their knowledge, such a dart gun has been used only once on a human.

Why do I suddenly picture a wild-eyed Dorothy, brandishing a loaded pistol, being put down with a dart gun?

[quote] Apparently, just a few weeks before her untimely death, Dorothy barged into a preview of the new musical SKYSCRAPER starring Julie Harris, and wrote an unfavorable review before the show opened.

What if Julie Harris had something to do with Dorothy's death?! Why would Kilgallen suddenly get an urge to write a theatre review. I think she knew something about Harris so she decided to confront her. Does the copy of that review still exist? There might be some helpful clues or secret codes in it. But unfortunately Julie died last year so we'll probably never know what kind of dirt Kilgallen had on her...Or will we!?

It's strange that miss Harris lived with a washed up soap opera actress Francesca James in the last years before her death. James took over the household, fired all the staff and alienated Harris from her family.

What if Francesca James figured out the connection between Harris and Kilgallen's mysterious death and blackmailed her?! I'd say Francesca James is now the last living person who might provide the missing link and solve the puzzle. She must know what Dorothy knew about Harris and if that secret had anything to do with JFK.

Here's a photo of Julie Harris in White House's Blue Room when she received KENNEDY's (!) center award (she's the first person from the left). She looks mighty comfortable in that pic, so I'm guessing she secretly visited the room before. Maybe she was having an affair with JFK and all that nonsense about Marilyn Monroe was just a cover-up. So it's possible that Kilgallen found out about their affair and confronted Julie about it so Julie threatened her. Kilgallen probably knew something would happen to her so she wrote that review and probably hid some clues in it, because she knew somehing would happen to her in a matter of weeks.

P.S. And don't forget the fact that Julie Harris won five Tony awards, more than any other actress. You must have a strong influence and some powerful people behind you to achieve something like that.

Who is the winner in the black dress? She looks like Swoosie Kurtz but I doubt that it is.

Great thread. I enjoyed all of the interesting posts.

Here's the Dorothy Kilgallen episode on "Mysteries & Scandals."

Lee Israel appears. Several new articles on Dorothy have appeared on the internet in the last few months, so interest is picking up.

I found out since posting r492 that the Emory University School of Medicine at Atlanta was a major site for the CIA MKULTRA program during the 1960s.

I also found out the nicotine patch was "invented" by a government psychopharmacologist who worked on the MKULTRA program. This nicotine and lysergic acid guru, Murray Jarvik, who was a UCLA professor, also did work for the US Army. A study of his nicotine research may reveal the reason for the presence of this substance in Dorothy's body.

Let me see if I got this right - Joan Crawford, Bette Davis ana Julie Harris are involved with Kilgallen and JFK's deaths?!

OMG, I love this thread.

r495: Per Wikipedia: Suzanne Farrell.

At one point -- and I think I read it on DL - Johnny Ray and Anderson Cooper's father were roommates way back.

I forgot to mention in r497 that in regards to UFOs, nicotine and sedative drugs have been found in mutilated cattle, as well as punctures that appear to have been made by plunger syringe darts. The cattle mutilation phenomenon began in 1967, well within the CIA MKULTRA program timeframe. Here Operation Mockingbird meets MKULTRA, which involved both humans and animals, as the Oklahoma City Zoo episode illustrates.

Dorothy's son, Kerry Kollmar, now teaches self-defense for the blind. See link below:

[quote]Apparently, just a few weeks before her untimely death, Dorothy barged into a preview of the new musical SKYSCRAPER starring Julie Harris, and wrote an unfavorable review before the show opened.

Actually, she was motivated to write the premature pan of SKYSCRAPER because she paid what she felt was too high a price to attend a preview performance whose tickets were marked up for a charity fund-raiser. Her point was that it was unfair of producers to charge full price admission to a show while simultaneously asserting that they weren't officially "open" for business. Behind the scenes, everyone knew that SKYSCRAPER was a stinker and that Dorothy's hatchet job was on the money.

But the wrath of the theater community came down upon her. The overwhelming consensus was that shows needed to have a "work in progress" period that was not subject to formal criticism. Dorthy was roundly chastised by many public voices. She responded in typical fashion by reminding everyone that no one ever criticized her when she praised a show in print before it opened.

Then she died, which probably secretly satisfied many who knew her. She was a lady who played a cut-throat game. SKYSCRAPER opened to universal pans and limped to a close at a total loss. Julie Harris was a national treasure but she had no business doing musicals.

The funny thing is, Dorothy was sounding the alarm over a bad habit of producers in the late 60s. Shows were being kept in the unofficial "preview" state for longer and longer periods in order to sell tickets without submitting to box-office killing reviews. This practice peaked with DEAR WORLD which started NY previews on December 18, 1968 but did not open until February 6, 1969. Critics were beside themselves and threatening to review it anyway. It was the Spiderman of its era.

(Lansbury later said the version of DEAR WORLD they opened with in Boston was superior to the severely re-written one they hashed out in ten weeks of ever-changing previews between Boston and Broadway.)

Dorothy Mae would be so tickled to know that a thread on her has received over 500 posts nearly fifty years after her death.

I can't link it right now but if you want to see Dorothy at her absolute bitchiest on What's My Line?, check out her interactions with Arlene Dahl when Ms. Dahl appeared as the Mystery Guest publicizing Journey to the Center of the Earth c.1959.

It makes me very uncomfortable!

R504 She tells Arlene that she loved her performance and that she loved the movie so much she could watch it again in a minute.

Not exactly my idea of bitchy talk.

Except Dorothy says it in a rather insincere yet over-the-top manner that makes Arlene question the compliment and it just goes back and forth from there with many pregnant pauses in between. I'll have to find it on youtube and post it.

I killed Kilgallen. I was 27 and just out of the Army. I took a job as a hitter, not sure who my employer was but one of the agencies. Why they wanted her dead I have no idea, but what people don't know is there were many VIPs killed over the next few days at that time. I saw a ton of hitters pouring into Grand Central making there way to trains heading North up to Connecticut. I thought, wow, there are armies of hitters here (I knew quite a few of them) what's going on?

I was assigned Kilgalen and a Yale University professor a few blocks from her apartment. About Dorthy, I don't remember much except i was to give her a Mickey. She fell asleep before she could drink it so I had to emerge from hiding, wake her, force her to drink the drink and hold her till the shit kicked in. She was a tiny thing and struggled for a bit but the stuff was pretty deadly, she was gone fast. The next day there was a massive power outage around NY and Connecticut. The professor never came to his apartment so I was called off the case. There was a lot of weird UFO reports at that time, it was a strange time. I read about Kilgalen the next day on the train down to DC. I saw a fellow hitter on the train and he recognized me. He gave me a look, I knew what it meant, he was asking how many I killed, I signaled back just one and he swept four fingers across his forehead, then pointed to the guy next to him, showed three fingers. I have no clue what any of it was about. But there were a lot of dead, rich, white people in the Tri-state area that week. That's all I knew.

507 = Cass Sunstein

Wow, a new classic DL. Boy, and I was merely wondering what the story was on that well-spoken lady on WML?

snob

She was drunk or high for most of the show's run.