interviews & advisers
Museum of the City of New York
INTERVIEWS
Kurt Andersen is a cultural historian and author of both Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History and its new companion book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History. He provided insights on Winchell’s influence on modern media and his relationship to the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success.
Arnie Bernstein is a historical nonfiction writer whose books include Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn ad the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund. He provided insights regarding the German-American Bund and Winchell’s relationship to American Nazism.
Learn more about Arnie’s work
Learn more about Swastika Nation
Photo by Stephen McCarthy.
Nancy Gray was married to talk show host Barry Gray from 1986 until his death in 1996. They have one child together, Dora Grace. Winchell set out to destroy Gray's career in the early 1950s after once being his mentor.
Photo by Jason Longo.
Jim Klurfeld, the former editorial page editor of Newsday, is the son of Herman Klurfeld, Winchell’s ghostwriter for 27 years. In 1970 he was part of the Newsday investigative team which received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He is currently a visiting professor of journalism at Stony Brook University.
Learn more about Jim’s work
Read Herman’s firsthand biography of Winchell
Photo by Jason Longo.
ADVISERS
Daniel Czitrom is Professor of History on the Ford Foundation at Mount Holyoke College, focusing on the history of media and of New York City. He is author most recently of New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era.
Learn more about Daniel’s work
Learn more about New York Exposed
Photo by Stephen McCarthy.
Thomas Doherty is a professor of American studies at Brandeis University and the author of Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018) and Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century (2020).
Learn more about Little Lindy is Kidnapped
Learn more about Show Trial
Photo by Stephen McCarthy.
Susan Douglas is a scholar of American media at the University of Michigan, with a focus on historical media and the relationship between gender and media. She is the author of Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, and the co-author of Celebrity: A History of Fame.
Learn more about Susan’s work
Learn more about Listening In
Learn more about Celebrity
Photo by Stephen McCarthy.
Neal Gabler is the author of Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity, considered the definitive biography of Walter Winchell. His most recent book, the Ted Kennedy biography Catching the Wind, is due out in October 2020.
Learn more about Winchell
Learn more about Catching the Wind
Photo by Jason Longo.
Daniel Greene is the curator of Americans and the Holocaust, a groundbreaking exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum which examines the major cultural forces that influenced Americans’ responses to Nazism in the 1930s and 40s. Daniel is currently President of the Newberry Library and an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University.
Jane Rhodes is a professor and head of Black Studies at University of Illinois Chicago, with a focus on race and gender in mass media and the history of Black press. She is the author of Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century and Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon.
Betty Houchin Winfield is a Professor Emeritus of political communication and mass media history at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She has authored four books, including the award-winning FDR and the News Media.
Learn more about Betty’s work
Learn more about FDR and the News Media
Photo by Stephen McCarthy.