Brimming Kup

He was neither a polished writer nor a knowing crystal-gazer. But brawny Irving Kupcinet (pronounced CUP-senate) had proved, to the satisfaction of Marshall Field's Chicago Sun-Times, that one good local columnist will outsell all the syndicated canned goods on the market. "Kup's Column," a casually tossed salad of chitchat and nightclub gossip with a Leonard Lyons-like flavor, is easily the most widely read feature in Chicago.

This week, when its author returned from vacation, he had a new contract with the Sun-Times at $22,500 a year, a 50% raise. That made Irv Kupcinet Chicago's second best-paid columnist, next to Chicago Tribune's Sport Editor Arch Ward ($50,000 a year). Kup is taking on other chores too; he has two radio jobs and was dickering last week for two more.

Bad Shoulder. Thirteen years ago, Kup was a $32.50-a-week sportwriter on the Times. Son of a West Side bakery driver, he worked his way through Northwestern and the University of North Dakota, was a quarterback and college publicity man. His career as a pro footballer (with the Philadelphia Eagles) lasted only five games; a shoulder injury turned him into a sport reporter. In 1943 the Times let him try a column. Cracked Kup: "I spent all my time in nightclubs anyway."

Like all gossip columnists, Irv Kupcinet finds nightclubs exciting, and gets some of the excitement into his column. Every night, sportily dressed in a shirt with long Sinatra-style points (and with KUP loudly emblazoned on his handkerchief, tie clasp, cuff links and gold ring) he patrols such spots as Chez Paree and the Shangri-La, slapping backs, sipping coffee, soaking up column items. His red-haired wife tags along, often wearing a blouse stenciled with his columns. He haunts the Pump Room of the swank Ambassador East Hotel, a telephone plugged in at his table. Even at home, where he keeps five phones jingling, his privacy has a public atmosphere: he is redecorating the dining room as a miniature Pump Room, doing over his den to resemble a bamboo-walled nightclub.

Cloudy Crystal. At 36, Kup is still the stage-struck footballer who loves to meet celebrities. Ruggedly built (6 ft. 1 1/2in., 215 lbs.) for a rugged 16-hour-a-day job, he is hearty and likable, though newsmen wince when he calls them "buddy-boy." (He calls Gable "Clarkie.") Once he proudly noted in his column that his seven-year-old daughter has a standard answer to kids who ask what her father does: "He writes the best damn column in town, and if I don't say so, they twist my arm."

The extraverted, sometimes ungrammatical column that Kup's pub-crawling distils is blended with many predictions, on the usual columnist's theory that some are bound to come true. (About 50% do.) But it is written without malice or fakery.

Already running in the Los Angeles Daily News (with Chicago paragraphs cut out), it starts next month in Rio de Janeiro's English-language Brazil Herald. "They don't even cut out the Chicago items," says baffled Irv Kupcinet. "Must like the stuff. I can't think of another goddam reason for running me in Brazil."

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