Biography for
Dorothy Kilgallen More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

3 July 1913, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Date of Death

8 November 1965, New York, USA

Birth Name

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen

Nickname

Dolly Mae

Mini Biography

Dorothy Kilgallen was the daughter of James Kilgallen, a colorful and popular newspaperman. She followed her father into the newspaper business and made her early reputation as a crime reporter (a novelty for women in those days) and for her participation in an around-the-world race. Although she came in second, her fame (she was the only woman in the race) and her subsequent book about the race, "Girl Around the World", established her as a presence in the newspaper world (the book was the basis of the movie Fly Away Baby (1937)). She become a powerful and influential Broadway columnist, and with husband Richard Kollmar hosted a long-running morning radio chat show, "Breakfast With Dick and Dorothy." Her private life was less successful, however, and included a disastrous affair with singer Johnnie Ray and problems with substance abuse, mainly alcohol. Nevertheless, all of America came to know and admire her through the TV quiz show "What's My Line?" (1950). She took the game more seriously than her more light-hearted colleagues did, however, and it always bothered her that she was never as popular with the show's viewers as her fellow panelists were.

Kilgallen wasn't just a "gossip" columnist, however; her reporting about accused wife-killer Samuel Sheppard (his case was the basis for the TV series "The Fugitive" (1963)) was crucial in securing a new trial for him. She was also a vocal critic of the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and she secured an exclusive interview with Jack Ruby, the killer of alleged presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Kilgallen claimed to have important new information on the murder of JFK, but her discoveries, if any, will never be known -- she died under mysterious circumstances (suicide or an accidental overdose according to some, murder according to others) soon after the announcement and the notebooks containing the information she was about to publish disappeared. They were never seen again.

IMDb Mini Biography By: BPEACE98@AOL.COM

Spouse

Richard Kollmar

(6 April 1940 - 8 November 1965) (her death) 3 children

Trivia

Death was caused by combination of alcohol and barbiturates, although the medical examiner typed "circumstances undetermined" underneath it.

Published Jack Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission in the New York Journal American before the report was released to President Lyndon Johnson or to the public. Other newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Antonio Light, printed the testimony under Kilgallen's byline.

Her gossip column called the Voice of Broadway made her enemies in the entertainment business, notably Frank Sinatra, who went out of his way to cut her down in his Las Vegas shows. Although his daughter Nancy Sinatra criticized Kilgallen in a posthumous book on the singer, Nancy was willing to appear as a mystery guest on "What's My Line?" (1950) while he was feuding with the columnist. The two women shook hands on the air but did not say anything to each other.

After the initial telecast of "What's My Line?" (1950), the Goodson Todman company decided that Dorothy was mirthless, combative, competitive and tactless, but much too good to drop from the show. According to officials of Goodson Todman Productions who were interviewed in the mid 1970s by her biographer Lee Israel, the warm and witty Arlene Francis was brought in on the second program to lighten things up and the balance became perfect. Francis claimed in her autobiography, however, that she had been scheduled to appear on the first telecast but had to back out for reasons she no longer could recall.

Was the inspiration for the somewhat-less-than-ethical columnist character "Daisy Kilgranite" on "The Flintstones" (1960).

Besides Frank Sinatra, she also feuded with Jack Paar and Arthur Godfrey. Her feud with Paar was based on his support of Fidel Castro and Kilgallen, a staunch anti-communist, criticized him for it.

Sister of Eleanor Kilgallen, who was a powerful casting agent and talent scout in the entertainment business for several decades. Eleanor played an important part in the rise to fame of James Dean, Kim Cattrall and other actors she spotted in New York.

Appeared weekly on 'What's My Line?' throughout her third pregnancy, right up until the week before her delivery. The mores of the 1950s prohibited pregnant women appearing on TV, despite Lucille Ball's groundbreaking 1952 appearances on 'I Love Lucy' while pregnant with her second child. What enabled Dorothy to appear on 'What's My Line?' throughout her entire pregnancy was that the long desk at which the panelists sat was high enough to cover her gravid condition. Dorothy missed the March 21, 1954 telecast, as she was in LeRoy Sanitarium, a private hospital in Manhattan, having given birth two days earlier to her third child and second son, Kerry Ardan Kollmar. Her two older children went on the air as special guests that night.

There was a fire in Dorothy's Manhattan apartment on the morning of December 15, 1953. The fireman who extinguished the fire, Harold Gold, was later a contestant on the November 14, 1954 telecast of 'What's My Line?" Dorothy did not recognize him.

Often credited as the first journalist to break the story that John F. Kennedy was having an affair with Marilyn Monroe. Actually, the Voice of Broadway column that reached New Yorkers on Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962 said only that the actress has "proven vastly alluring to a handsome gentleman who's a bigger name than Joe DiMaggio was in his heydey." Monroe died that Saturday night or Sunday morning before other newspapers could publish this edition of the Voice of Broadway. So all that happened was New Yorkers speculated about the identity of the very famous "handsome gentleman.".

Mother of Richard 'Dickie' Kollmar Jr..

She suffered insomnia, and regularly took sleeping pills.