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| Actress Merle Oberon and Walter Winchell at Manhattan's Stork Club |
“It had traditionally been the function of society to set an
example for Americans; not only power but decorum had emanated from the Old
Guard,” wrote biographer Neal Gabler in Winchell:
Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity. “But what was one to make of
this new mélange of show folk and socialites mixing at nightclubs? What were
they teaching the unfortunates of this country during the Depression?”
“The Old Guard had maintained its power partly through the
mystification of its own isolation and privacy; one was powerful enough, secure
enough, not to need or want attention, unless it was that of one’s social
equals. Café society was predicated on something else entirely. Here power was
really a function not of wealth or breeding or talent or connections but of
publicity. ‘Publi-ciety’ Cleveland Armory called it, where the object was to be
seen and known, where the object was to be famous.
“The ones who could bestow fame, particularly upon
individuals who hadn’t done anything
to deserve it, were the press...
“In a very real sense, then, social authority in the early
thirties had been turned on its head; now it derived from the media, or as
Walter put it, ‘Social position is now more a matter of press than prestige.’
And since the king of the media in the thirties was Walter Winchell, café
society was in many ways a function of him.”
“On its face it seemed absurd that a nation racked by
unemployment should care about a band of swells whose deepest concern was
whether they rated a column mention. (Walter thought it ridiculous too
constantly scolded the idle rich while continuing, hypocritically, to feed their
publicity habit).
“Yet people did care, and they read about café society as if
it were an exciting new social drama to replace the now-shuttered bawdy farce
of twenties Broadway. If Broadway had been an imaginative landscape coruscating
with images of hot freedom, café society was an imaginative world shimmering
with glamour, just as so many Depression-era movies did.
“For most Americans, ‘café society’ immediately triggered
images of women in smart gowns and men in satin-collared tuxedos, of tiered
nightclubs undulating in the music of swell bands, of cocktails and cigarettes,
of cool talk and enervated elegance, all of which made café society one of
those repositories of dreams at a time when reality seemed treacherous.”
In other words, Winchell midwifed the direct spiritual ancestors
of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
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