There ought to be a Dorothy Kilgallen biopic

Dorothy Kilgallen would be an excellent choice for a brief Netflix series.

Claire Foy could do a good job -- very little prosthetic would be needed to give her the "quince face."

[quote]As the woman herself, it would have to be someone who would be willing to act as slim and polished rather than beautiful and sexy: Scarlett Johansson? Rachel McAdams? Jennifer Lawrence? Kate Winslet? Rebecca Ferguson? Romola Garai? Carey Mulligan?

Sorry -- all of those actresses have chins, thus rendering them ineligible.

As long as they get Mila Kunis to play me

"The Reporter who Knew too much" was the best book on the Kennedy asassination.

Don't hold your breath. Dorothy Kilgallen was a fascinating person but has largely been forgotten. I doubt that there will ever be a biopic about her.

She died in 1965 at age 52.

Emily Blunt?

R2 makes the best point about successfully recreating Dorothy. Her distinctive yet unfortunate looks are a really strong, influencing aspect of who she was, what she did, and how she pursued her personal life. It would be really challenging to find an actress who can master her persona, pull off the correct prosthetic look, and capture her drive successfully. Unfortunately, as R5 points out, there’s not enough current cultural memory of Dorothy to drive the funding of production of a biopic.

Someone from Broadway. Someone without movie star looks.

Her story is interesting enough - reporter, TV personality, attended the coronation, was insulted by Sinatra, big ol’ drunk who caroused with Joan Crawford, was found dead after digging dirt on the Kennedy assassination - without her being a “name”.

It would need to be an actress who is not a great beauty and would wear prosthetics: Elizabeth Miss, Brie Larson, Lily Rabe, Katherine Waterston...

Where's her chin?

Well there is currently a bio of Lee Israel, who wrote the first bio of DK: Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

She's who I first thought of when I saw the pic at OP, r7. I've never heard of Dorothy Kilgallen before this thread.

Dorothy Kilgallen's son Richard 'Dickie' Kollmar Jr. has a blog which I stumbled onto by chance while searching for something else and he had some fascinating stories to tell about growing up in a wealthy New York City upper west side building with his parents and sister and brother. As I remember he only had two stories but they each were long and detailed and it wasn't until almost the end of the second one that he mentioned his mother was Dorothy Kilgallen. Until then I had no idea who he was...just that his stories of growing up in New York in the 1950s was compelling reading. He didn't say much about her and never went into much about her being famous. This blog was about his experiences as a kid. One story he told was about how when he was 14 and walking alone to somewhere he wanted to go (kids did that all the time in the 1950s) he was suddenly accosted by a big, young Latino thug who demanded all his money. Dickie said he didn't have any on him and the thug was about to leave when he stopped, looked Dickie up and down and said "I'm gonna take you back to my place and have my way with you." Needless to say Dickie was frozen in terror as the thug grabbed his arm and neck and started forcing him to swiftly walk away with him. Somehow Dickie managed to break free of the thug's grasp and ran fast as he could down the sidewalk and across the street to a cop he saw and went and told the cop what had happened to him and the cop didn't believe him and basically told him to get lost! (The thug had taken off by then and was gone.) Dickie was shaking from the trauma of what just happened but he walked back home to his parent's luxury building and said he never told anyone what happened until writing about it now in this blog. I remember the other story Dickie told was about his very first time having sex with a girl, when he was 15. The problem is, I want to post a link to his blog but it was a year or so ago when I read it and I have searched through hundreds of my bookmarks and I can't find it anywhere. Maybe I didn't save it, I don't know. I thought I did. But I can't remember the name of the blog...I wish I could. It had an unusual name. He wrote all this years ago..it looked like he had not written anything new in years. But he did talk a little about his Mom dying at home and how they had to come and get him at school and the headmaster had to tell him the bad news. I wish I could find that blog again! It did not have his name in the title.

Great story, r14! I hope you find the link.

How about Rooney Mara for DK?

With the same satanists who murdered her controlling all media in the USA, a true biography is not likely.

[quote] Erna

Cunt

[quote] Erna

Fetid shit eating Nazi cunt!

Clare Foy and Rooney Mara are excellent choices. My first thought was Christina Ricci.

Her husband was a closeted gay and her lover a closeted bisexual.

Remember when she was going around saying Arlene was innocent, and Arlene was all like, 'Shit up bitch, you're just drawing more attention to it.'

That isn't when I said "shit", r20.

Mary r17=anger issues!

Elizabeth Banks as Arlene!

She was murdered by the mob with the cooperation of Hoover who hated her.

No more Christina Ricci. In anything. Ever.

Is there a less annoying, version of Jim Parsons who can play John Daly?

Anyone is less annoyiing.

R21 a treasure!

Hugh Grant as John Daly

No, Richard E. Grant as John Daly.

I've had that thought many times--about what a great story Dorothy Kilgallen's life would make. (Just read Lee Israel's biography!) Hollywood is always wailing about being "starved" for good material....well, Hollywood, CHECK THIS OUT.

PS Would DL posters please the fuck stop talking about her chin??? Can't we get beyond this, my darlings?

[quote]Don't hold your breath. Dorothy Kilgallen was a fascinating person but has largely been forgotten. I doubt that there will ever be a biopic about her.

There are constantly new, successful biopics—either major motion pictures or on streaming platforms—about fascinating people who are by now considered “forgotten” or completely unknown to most people. All it takes to get such a project greenlit is a compelling story and available talent. They don’t conduct polls to find out what if anything the idiots of 2018 know about so-and-so. If they did, no biopics or movies “based on real events” would ever get made.

The Lee Israel movie is a good example, but there are countless others.

R14 Are you sure it was Richard Jr. and not Kerry?

What can be learned about the success of the Lee Israel bio-pic is that it's a great story that really requires no previous knowledge of Lee Israel. It's not a celeb bio at all.

If a Kilgallen bio were to succeed, the story would also have to be focused on a particular moment in time of Dorothy's life (obviously the last year or 2) and be interesting enough to bring in an audience unfamiliar with her. Not a "then she did this and then she did that" old fashioned Hollywood bio.

But it would require a major star signing on and going the full transformation to look unlike herself, as McCarthy has done with Israel.

Though several of the actresses mentioned above are intriguing choices, they're not going to attract big audiences. Why not Nicole Kidman? She has the requisite "steely fragility" and won an Oscar for wearing a prosthetic schnozz.

And Aaron Sorkin should write the screenplay.

R32 Oh...wow, you are so right! I was wrong - the blog I was remembering was not written by "Dickie" Kollmar but by his younger brother Kerry Kollmar. Sorry. My memory played tricks on me. And as I said in my post I never could remember the name of the blog or find a link to it, so thank you for providing a link to it. I wanted to save that. This guy has had one of the most interesting lives of any celebrities' kids I've read about. From his writings he sounds like a nice guy. Anyway, I seemed to remember his stories right but forgot his name. Glad to have that blog back. I'm wondering: How did you find it?

If it's a Sorkin-level biopic and a Rooney Mara or an Emily Blunt could be cast, and then fill up the supporting roles with Meryl Streep and people from Marvel films.

I am probably the only person alive who preferred Douglas McGrath's witty, messy INFAMOUS to Bennett Miller's ponderous CAPOTE so I would want him to direct it.

There is a new follow up to the book "The Reporter Who Knew Too Much". Mark Shaw. "Denial of Justice."

Thanks, r36. Is it out?

I think a limited series on Killgallen would better than a biopic. Maybe six episodes or so.

@R34, I'm R32. I was googling Richard after I read your comment and couldn't find anything so I decided to google Kerry and found his blog. Call it dumb luck.

Cynthia Nixon would be perfect.

Oh that’s a good one, r40.

Cynthia Nixon could never summon the required perverse flirty quality of Dorothy Kilgallen.

If Linda Cardellini was a bit older she could play Kilgallen.

I hope any future biopic includes the incident on the game show when Kilgallen short circuited. A classic moment from the golden age of television.

R14 the Kollmars always lived on the East Side. A 16-room apartment at 640 Park Avenue, then 45 East 68th Street where she died.

I've been watching old episodes of What's My Line for the past few months and now I'm hooked. The show lasted for so long because of the show's consistency over the years, and due to John Charles Daly, Dorothy, Arlene and Bennett. I recently saw the episode that followed Dorothy's death and Kitty Carlyle sat in for her that week. After watching so many episodes (probably close to 200 by now) I've noticed that Dorothy was a little high-strung. She didn't like being put off and not heard and she seems to like having it her own way. She dressed very proper and almost girly with bows in her hair. It would be an actor's dream to play someone with her distinct personality and drive. I like the idea of focusing the story around the time just before her death. And not too much time on WML or her column except to frame who she was and the contrast between being a panel show member and an investigative reporter. Definitely not a biopic, but rather a suspense/thriller.

Big Kilgallen fan here, and I've searched and searched the internet but never found a filmed interview with Dorothy. The only appearances I can find are those on WML.

Does anyone know if anything else exists?

Bennett Cerf didn’t like her - speaks of her dismissively in his recorded oral history interview.

A limited series that focuses on the last couple of years of her life but hopefully not one that goes overboard with conspiracy theories . I think Julianne Moors could play her. She's a great actress and very femine. I can't see either of the Mara. Girls being believable as girly fifties lady dressed in the fashions if they era. Didn't she also cover the De Sam Sheppard murder trial?

[quote] Her distinctive yet unfortunate looks are a really strong, influencing aspect of who she was, what she did, and how she pursued her personal life

She was no great beauty but she wasn't close to "unfortunate looking."

[quote]She died in 1965 at age 52.

She died that year but she started dying in 1958. I watched all of "What's My Line," and that was the year Dorothy peaked and started to have "health" problems.

Lee Israel was so incredibly homophobic in her bio of Tallulah Bankhead, basically saying Tallu was abused by gay hangers-on at the end of her life, but also lots of other jabs about gays throughout. Bleah.

I have absolutely no say in this and of course it doesn't matter one bit, but I'd hate to see a movie made of Lee Israel's bio of Kilgallen, simply because I don't like Lee Israel being successful in anything.

The Lee Israel bio of Dorothy suffers greatly because she didn't have the cooperation of her children and most of her colleagues. It was written in 1979 so Bennett Cerf had already died (in 1971) but Arlene Francis and WML producer Mark Goodson were both still around to comment. But they chose not to, which is a shame.

I can see a Dorothy Kilgallen biopic being made as a Netflix or Amazon or Hulu short series. Possibly Matthew Weiner as a producer and showrunner comes to mind, as he did such a great job with Mad Men, which takes place during the same era as the Kilgallen story. Another Amazon current production which really captures the look and feel of 1950s New York is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Whoever created and produces that show I could see doing a Kilgallen bio. Of course there would still be the question of who would be the best actors for the main roles but with solid, high quality production values and great writing, I think it could be done. Look at how well cast Mad Men and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel were. Good actors are out there - a smart, savvy casting director could find them.

It's happening! It's happening!

A movie, not a TV show. Now who the fuck are The Dowdle Brothers?

I preferred Infamous, too, R35. It's a lot sexier, with Daniel Craig as Perry Smith, and there's that arresting scene at the start when the singer performing Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love? suffers a blank-out and can't continue--as if to draw our attention to the many obscure facets of love.

Dorothy Kilgallen weirdness at 1:41. Mini-stroke? MK Ultra?

The demon drink, r56.

R55 = Blythe Danner.

Isn't it Blythe Danner's daughter, rather? I seem to remember her in that moment.

Must I explain, R59? R55 = Blythe Danner because he/she was raving about the moment in the movie that featured Blythe's daughter (without naming her), and Blythe is the only person who has anything positive to say about her daughter these days. It was the usual DL attempt to be witty. Sorry it failed with you.

[quote]Now who the fuck are The Dowdle Brothers?

Obviously Dataloungers.

Who saw WACO?

Yes, OP. Has “Box Office Smash” written all over it. Elder gays will be lines up AROUND THE BLOCK. Watch out, Marvel!

Nearly 3,000 people attended her funeral in November of 1965. Another 1,500 stood outside the UES church. WML? moderator John Daly was one of the pallbearers. Among the many celebrities at the funeral Mass, Joan Crawford, Ed Sullivan, Betty White, etc.

Timothee Chalamet....like Dorothy, he lacks a chin. The resemblance is uncanny.

Rooney