Deadline Artists—Scandals, Tragedies & Triumphs

More of America's Greatest Newspaper Columns

John Avlon, Jesse Angelo, Errol Louis

• Publisher: ABRAMS Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781468304039
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

An anthology of newspaper columns from the 19th century to the present—"engaging eyewitness pieces [that] elicit admiration, wonder and gasps of surprise" ( Kirkus Reviews ). Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns drew together some of the finest examples of America's greatest unsung literary form: the newspaper column. In this new Deadline Artists collection, some of America's greatest journalists take on the stories of scandal, tragedy, triumph, and tribute that have defined the spirit of their age. This is history written in the present tense, offering high drama and enduring wisdom. Walk with Jack London in the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake or grieve with Walt Whitman over the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Watch as Watergate unfolds, sex scandals explode, the Twin Towers collapse, and winning home runs capture the thrill of a comeback capped with a World Series victory. Contributors include: Jack London, H.L. Mencken, Dorothy Thompson, Richard Wright, Damon Runyon, Shirley Povich, Murray Kempton, Mike Ryoko, Ruben Salazar, Mary McGrory, Mike Barnicle, Molly Ivins, Pete Hamill, Carl Hiaasen, Nicholas Kristof, Leonard Pitts, Steve Lopez, Peggy Noonan, and Mitch Albom.

SCANDALS

Scandal is human frailty writ large. Greed, lust, anger—they are universal and timeless impulses, fundamental to human nature, the basis of religions and legal codes. But an act that might simply cause tut-tutting in the local pews can become quite another matter when amplified by the mass media.

Scandals emerging from one person’s actions—a philandering politician or a bent ballplayer—can be amusing, dispiriting, shocking or sad. Sometimes those scandals are just isolated stories that resonate with the public. Sometimes they can become the symbol of an age, or a larger societal problem.

But there are other scandals that are rooted in entire societies, or the actions of nations and armies. Those can become history.

Scandal and newspapers have had a symbiotic relationship from the very beginning. Some of the earliest circulated printed works that can be considered newspapers were lurid accounts of hangings from England in the 1600s. They would often lay out the details of a heinous crime, report on the scaffold speech of the accused, dwell on the gory particulars of the death itself, and finish with a nice moral lesson.

There is a direct line from those pamphlets to the fabulous Maurine Dallas Watkins columns on two murderesses for the Chicago Tribune included in this volume. Those columns tell of two promiscuous Jazz Age women, Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan, who became famous after they killed their lovers amid seedy circumstances and too much gin. Watkins would turn the two unrelated but similar tales into a play that explored the idea of the celebrity criminal, which became a movie and the musical Chicago.

The one and only Nellie Bly kicks off this volume with her famous investigation into the Blackwell’s Island insane asylum. Her revelations shocked New York and led to immediate reforms—and made her one of the most famous women of her age.

Stanford White is rightfully remembered as one of the premiere beaux arts architects who created some of New York’s iconic masterpieces—but in his day, he was much more famous for being shot to death by Harry Kendall Thaw after having an affair with Thaw’s wife. It led to the so-called Trial of the Century—and Irvin S. Cobb’s New York World account from that trial remains a great read that shows why all of New York was obsessed with the case.

Needless to say, this was hardly the last Trial of the Century. The trials and crimes of Al Capone, the Black Sox, the Scopes trial, Watergate, Bernie Goetz, and O. J. Simpson are all here—reported by the likes of Damon Runyon, H. L. Mencken, Mary McGrory, Pete Hamill, and Carl Hiaasen.

John Dillinger, dubbed the “ace bad man of the world,” goes down in a hail of bullets, as does Mata Hari, but in very different circumstances.

Michael Kelly sarcastically destroys Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinksy defense—and at the same time delivers a stinging portrait of the man himself. Nora Ephron’s self-deprecating account of her time as an intern in the Kennedy White House is hysterical—and a perfect indictment of a bygone era of chauvinism and lechery.

The reason we love to read about scandals is because they ultimately reassure us of our own decency. Most of us work hard, play by the rules, and do our best to get ahead—so we are constantly delighted to learn that our suspicions were right all along about the politician who cheated the system or the televangelist caught with his pants down. Their very public human failings make us more proud of our own private victories.

—JESSE ANGELO

Ten Days in the Mad House

NELLIE BLY—New York World—10/9/1887

[Twenty-three year old Nellie Bly, posing as a Cuban immigrant named Nellie Moreno, had herself admitted into the Blackwell’s Island insane asylum as a way of exposing its abuses. This is the last of a series subsequently published in the New York World that led to landmark public health reforms.]

The day Pauline Moser was brought to the asylum we heard the most horrible screams, and an Irish girl, only partly dressed, came staggering like a drunken person up the hall, yelling, “Hurrah! Three cheers! I have killed the divil! Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer,” and so on, over and over again. Then she would pull a handful of hair out, while she exultingly cried, “How I deceived the divils. They always said God made hell, but he didn’t.” Pauline helped the girl to make the place hideous by singing the most horrible songs.

After the Irish girl had been there an hour or so, Dr. Dent came in, and as he walked down the hall, Miss Grupe whispered to the demented girl, “Here is the devil coming, go for him.” Surprised that she would give a mad woman such instructions, I fully expected to see the frenzied creature rush at the doctor. Luckily she did not, but commenced to repeat her refrain of “Oh, Lucifer.” After the doctor left, Miss Grupe again tried to excite the woman by saying the pictured minstrel on the wall was the devil, and the poor creature began to scream, “You divil, I’ll give it to you,” so that two nurses had to sit on her to keep her down. The attendants seemed to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst.

I always made a point of telling the doctors I was sane and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity the more they doubted it.

“What are you doctors here for?” I asked one, whose name I cannot recall.

“To take care of the patients and test their sanity,” he replied.

“Very well,” I said. “There are sixteen doctors on this island, and excepting two, I have never seen them pay any attention to the patients. How can a doctor judge a woman’s sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.” “Try every test on me,” I have urged others, “and tell me am I sane or insane? Try my pulse, my heart, my eyes; ask me to stretch out my arm, to work my fingers, as Dr. Field did at Bellevue, and then tell me if I am sane.” They would not heed me, for they thought I raved.

Again I said to one, “You have no right to keep sane people here. I am sane, have always been so and I must insist on a thorough examination or be released. Several of the women here are also sane. Why can’t they be free?”

“They are insane,” was the reply, “and suffering from delusions.”

After a long talk with Dr. Ingram, he said, “I will transfer you to a quieter ward.” An hour later Miss Grady called me into the hall, and, after calling me all the vile and profane names a woman could ever remember, she told me that it was a lucky thing for my “hide” that I was transferred, or else she would pay me for remembering so well to tell Dr. Ingram everything. “You d—n hussy, you forget all about yourself, but you never forget anything to tell the doctor.” After calling Miss Neville, whom Dr. Ingram also kindly transferred, Miss Grady took us to the hall above, No. 7.

In hall 7 there are Mrs. Kroener, Miss Fitzpatrick, Miss Finney, and Miss Hart. I did not see as cruel treatment as downstairs, but I heard them make ugly remarks and threats, twist the fingers and slap the faces of the unruly patients. The night nurse, Conway I believe her name is, is very cross. In hall 7, if any of the patients possessed any modesty, they soon lost it. Every one was compelled to undress in the hall before their own door, and to fold their clothes and leave them there until morning. I asked to undress in my room, but Miss Conway told me if she ever caught me at such a trick she would give me cause not to want to repeat it.

The first doctor I saw here—Dr. Caldwell—chucked me under the chin, and as I was tired of refusing to tell where my home was, I would only speak to him in Spanish.

Hall 7 looks rather nice to a casual visitor. It is hung with cheap pictures and has a piano, which is presided over by Miss Mattie Morgan, who formerly was in a music store in this city. She has been training several of the patients to sing, with some show of success. The artiste of the hall is Under, pronounced Wanda, a Polish girl. She is a gifted pianist when she chooses to display her ability. The most difficult music she reads at a glance, and her touch and expression are perfect.

On Sunday the quieter patients, whose names have been handed in by the attendants during the week, are allowed to go to church. A small Catholic chapel is on the island, and other services are also held.

A “commissioner” came one day, and made the rounds with Dr. Dent. In the basement they found half the nurses gone to dinner, leaving the other half in charge of us, as was always done. Immediately orders were given to bring the nurses back to their duties until after the patients had finished eating. Some of the patients wanted to speak about their having no salt, but were prevented.

The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out. I had intended to have myself committed to the violent wards, the Lodge and Retreat, but when I got the testimony of two sane women and could give it, I decided not to risk my health—and hair—so I did not get violent.

I had, toward the last, been shut off from all visitors, and so when the lawyer, Peter A. Hendricks, came and told me that friends of mine were willing to take charge of me if I would rather be with them than in the asylum, I was only too glad to give my consent. I asked him to send me something to eat immediately on his arrival in the city, and then I waited anxiously for my release.

It came sooner than I had hoped. I was out “in line” taking a walk, and had just gotten interested in a poor woman who had fainted away while the nurses were trying to compel her to walk. “Good-bye; I am going home,” I called to Pauline Moser, as she went past with a woman on either side of her. Sadly I said farewell to all I knew as I passed them on my way to freedom and life, while they were left behind to a fate worse than death. “Adios,” I murmured to the Mexican woman. I kissed my fingers to her, and so I left my companions of Hall 7.

I had looked forward so eagerly to leaving the horrible place, yet when my release came and I knew that God’s sunlight was to be free for me again, there was a certain pain in leaving. For ten days I had been one of them. Foolishly enough, it seemed intensely selfish to leave them to their sufferings. I felt a Quixotic desire to help them by sympathy and presence. But only for a moment. The bars were down and freedom was sweeter to me than ever.

Soon I was crossing the river and nearing New York. Once again I was a free girl after ten days in the mad-house on Blackwell’s Island.

A Woman Tells: Seduction Led to Murder

IRVIN S. Cobb—New York World—2/7/1907

[In this courtroom dispatch, Irvin Cobb captured the testimony of onetime showgirl Evelyn Thaw, whose husband, Harry Thaw, shot the celebrated architect Stanford White at a nightclub on the roof of Madison Square Garden in a belated attempt to defend his wife’s honor. According to witnesses, Thaw stood over White’s body after firing and said: “You deserved this. You have ruined my wife.” This excerpt details White’s initial drugged seduction of Evelyn when she was sixteen.]

A pale, slim little woman on the witness stand this afternoon laid bare the horrors of a life such as few women have led, in her effort to save Harry Thaw from the electric chair. The woman was his wife. For nearly two hours during the morning session and for an equal length of time in the afternoon she traced her history from childhood.

Men and women wept as this life-story was unfolded, sometimes artlessly, sometimes with thrilling dramatic force and fervor.

Harry Thaw sobbed unrestrainedly as his wife half-whispered the story of her degradation when she was a slip of fifteen. It was a public rending of a woman’s soul, but a powerful argument to substantiate the claim of the defense that brooding over the wrongs his girl wife had suffered shifted the mental balance of Harry Thaw.

The news that Evelyn Thaw was on the witness stand spread over the city during the morning session and the fragmentary reports of her testimony aroused intense interest. While the court was resting at noon a crowd of probably 10,000 persons gathered around and inside the Criminal Courts Building.

There were riotous scenes as the tide of humanity beat against the immovable police lines. A few slipped through—a sufficient number to fill th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also By the Same Authors
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• SCANDALS
• TRAGEDIES
• TRIUMPHS
• ABOUT THE COLUMNISTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PERMISSIONS
• ABOUT THE EDITORS