What's Whose Line?

"It's absolutely hysterical," exclaimed Dorothy Kilgallen. "Imagine two papers writing me up at the same time. I can hardly wait for the Christian Science Monitor to jump into the act." Last week the New York Post began a less-than-loving series about Dorothy, star of the Hearst empire, as headline reporter, gos sip columnist ("Voice of Broadway"), television personality (What's My Line?), radio chatterist (Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick] and homemaker (a husband, three children and a 22-room Manhattan town house). That same day Dorothy's own New York Journal-American began a two-part story about her. As between the Post and the JA, who compete for afternoon subway readers, the Kilgallen story lines were predictably at odds: the Post saw her as a snooty sort of celebrity's celebrity, the J-A as a dedicated reporter's reporter.

Feeling No Pain. To the Post, Dorothy was a "colossus of gainful employment," daily parading in fame and trailed by envy. At the very start of its first article the Post lifted an eyebrow at the fact that Reporter Kilgallen covered New York's 1957 welcome to Queen Elizabeth from "the lonely splendor" of a limousine in the official procession up Broadway. (Says Dorothy: "What's wrong with that? I rented a limousine, and some darling generals and police captains were nice enough to let my car swing into line with the procession.") "At 47," said the Post, ungallantly adding a year to Dorothy's age, "Dorothy Kilgallen is sitting on the horns of a moral dilemma and feeling no pain." The dilemma: the conflict between the lady of manners and the brittle gossip. Continued the Post: "She is secure enough to have exclaimed once: 'I'm getting a little fed up with Albert Schweitzer,' a natural caption that ever since has been in search of a cartoon." Dorothy,' wrote the Post's five-member reporting team, is so busy being a celebrity that she rarely sees her husband, Broadway Producer Dick Kollmar: "[Dick] and Dorothy go their separate ways for the most part . . . They do meet regularly for the breakfast show . . . in which the commercials sometimes provide the only note of harmony." (Replies Dorothy: "How ridiculous. Why, Dick and I were at the Colony and the Copa last night, and we were at El Morocco two nights ago.")

Describing the "Voice of Broadway" as "an unindexed catalogue of malice, reportage, and odd bits of misinformation," the Post said: "[The 'Voice'] goes in for the blind item, the sick item, and the vengeance item . . . Yet it has never succeeded in making or breaking any performer or public figure. Nor has Kilgallen herself ever become a figure of influence or intrigue, except among pressagents, who fear her as they fear almost anyone who can type."

Handling the Knocks. What the Post seemed to find lacking in Dorothy Kilgallen as a journalist the J-A more than made up for. Dorothy's paper was rich in organ notes, calling her "one of the great newspaper people of her era" with the ability to make friends with the " 'little' people as well as the famous." Dorothy, said the JA, is a woman who works "a 20-hour day with the enthusiasm you find only in great newspapermen . . . With her magnificent talents and a keen sense of humor, she handles the inevitable knocks which always come when you are on top with the style of the big leaguer."

At the Journal-American, all hands denied that the paper's Kilgallen takeout had any particular relationship to the Post series; the timing was just coincidence. As for Dorothy, she professed to be undisturbed by the Posteye view: "They want to make me out a monster, but it won't kill me."

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