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Heywood Broun

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Heywood Broun
Heywood Broun (c. 1935)
Born
Heywood Campbell Broun Jr.

(1888-12-07)December 7, 1888
Brooklyn, New York, US
DiedDecember 18, 1939(1939-12-18) (aged 51)
New York City, US
Alma materHarvard University
Occupation(s)Journalist, sportswriter, columnist
Political partySocialist
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1917; div. 1933)​
Maria Dooley
​
(m. 1935)​
ChildrenHeywood Hale Broun
AwardsJ. G. Taylor Spink Award (1970)

Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (/ˈbruːn/; December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, later known as The Newspaper Guild and now as The NewsGuild-CWA. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and his championing of the underdog. He believed that journalists could help right wrongs, especially social ills.

Career

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Broun was born in Brooklyn, the third of four children born to Heywood C. Broun and Henrietta Marie (née Brose) Broun.

Broun attended Harvard University, but did not earn a degree. He began his professional career writing baseball stories in the sports section of the New York Morning Telegraph. Broun worked at the New York Tribune from 1912 to 1921, rising to drama critic. He started working in 1921 for the New York World. While at the World, he started writing his syndicated column, It Seems to Me. In 1928, Broun moved to the Scripps-Howard newspapers, including the New York World-Telegram. Broun's column was published in the World-Telegram until Scripps-Howard abruptly decided not to renew his contract. He was then picked up by the New York Post. Broun's only column appeared in that paper two days before his death.

As a drama critic, in 1917 Broun wrote about actor Geoffrey C. Stein in the controversial play The Awakening of Spring: "[...] Geoffrey Stein gave a ludicrously inadequate performance in the important role of Melchior. It was easily the worst performance we have ever seen on any stage."[1] Stein sued the New York Tribune and Broun for libel; but in light of the judge's jury instructions, Broun and the Tribune won the case.[2] A few weeks later, he had to review a production with Stein in the cast. His only mention of the actor was in the last sentence of his column: "We did not think Geoffrey Stein was up to his usual standards."[3][4]

Broun coined the statement "Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else". It is used widely, often in arguments about documentation and history.[5] From 1927 to 1937, Broun wrote a regular column, titled "It Seems to Heywood Broun", for the magazine The Nation. His column included criticism of another employer, the New York World, who fired Broun as a result. Broun later left The Nation for the rival The New Republic.[6]

In 1930, Broun unsuccessfully ran for the U.S.Congress, as a Socialist. A slogan of Broun's was "I'd rather be right than Roosevelt."

In 1933, along with New York Evening Post Editor Joseph Cookman, John Eddy of The New York Times and Allen Raymond of the New York Herald Tribune, Broun helped to found The Newspaper Guild.

Beginning February 8, 1933, Broun starred in a radio program, The Red Star of Broadway, on WOR in Newark, New Jersey. Broun was featured as "The Man About Town of Broadway." Sponsored by Macy's, the program also included musicians and minstrels.[7] In 1938, Broun helped found the weekly tabloid Connecticut Nutmeg, soon renamed Broun's Nutmeg.[8]

Personal life

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In 1915, Broun met Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova and they quickly became engaged. She broke off the relationship to rejoin the Ballets Russes in 1916.[9] On June 7, 1917, Broun married writer-editor Ruth Hale, a feminist who later co-founded the Lucy Stone League. At their wedding, the columnist Franklin P. Adams characterized the usually easygoing Broun and the more strident Hale as "the clinging oak and the sturdy vine."[10] The couple had one son, broadcaster Heywood Hale Broun.

Along with his friends (the critic Alexander Woollcott, writer Dorothy Parker and humorist Robert Benchley), Broun was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table from 1919 to 1929. His usually disheveled appearance led to him being likened to "an unmade bed." He was also close friends with the Marx Brothers, and attended their show The Cocoanuts more than 20 times. Broun joked that his tombstone would read, "killed by getting in the way of some scene shifters at a Marx Brothers show."

In November 1933, Ruth Hale divorced Broun. In 1935, he married a widowed chorus girl named Maria Incoronata Fruscella Dooley (stage name Connie Madison).[8] Seven months before his death in 1939, Broun, who had been an agnostic,[11] converted to Roman Catholicism following discussions with then Reverend Fulton Sheen[12] and Reverend Edward Patrick Dowling,[13]

Broun died of pneumonia, at age 51, in New York City. More than 3,000 mourners attended his funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. Attendees included New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, actor-director George M. Cohan, playwright-director George S. Kaufman, New York World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, columnist Walter Winchell and actress Tallulah Bankhead. Broun is buried in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York.

Legacy

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ Broun, Heywood (March 31, 1917). "In the Play World - Injunction Needed for Poor Production of Gloomy Play by Wedekind". New York Tribune. p. 13. Retrieved September 13, 2021.
  2. ^ "Critic Upheld in Actor's Suit Charging Libel". New York Tribune. February 15, 1919. p. 13. Retrieved September 13, 2021.
  3. ^ Broun, Heywood (April 9, 1919). ""A Good Bad Woman" at the Harris; Matinee of "Shakuntula"". New York Tribune. p. 11. Retrieved July 8, 2022.
  4. ^ Broun, Heywood (March 1924). "Two on the Aisle". The Cosmopolitan. Vol. LXXVI, no. 5. p. 69. Retrieved September 13, 2021.
  5. ^ Sitting on the World, New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1924
  6. ^ vanden Heuvel, Katrina, ed. (1990). The Nation: 1865-1990. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. p. 102. ISBN 1560250011.
  7. ^ "Macy's New Show" (PDF). Broadcasting. February 15, 1933. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  8. ^ a b Gale, Robert L. An F. Scott Fitzgerald Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998, p. 49
  9. ^ Mackrell, Judith (October 17, 2013). Bloomsbury ballerina : Lydia Lopokova, imperial dancer and Mrs John Maynard Keynes. Orion. ISBN 978-1-78022-708-5. OCLC 893656800.
  10. ^ Broun, Heywood Hale. Whose Little Boy Are You?: A Memoir of the Broun Family. St. Martin's Press, 1983. p. 6
  11. ^ Feinberg, Louis. The Satirist. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 157.
  12. ^ "Bishop Fulton Sheen: The First "Televangelist"". Time. April 14, 1952. Archived from the original on August 25, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2011.
  13. ^ Amiri, Rachel (February 16, 2021). "Is Conversion Ever a Phone Call Away?". Where Peter Is. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  14. ^ "Heywood Broun Award | The NewsGuild - TNG-CWA". December 21, 2017. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  15. ^ Heywood Broun, Baseball Writers' Award from Baseball Hall of Fame
  16. ^ Internet Movie Database entry for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
  17. ^ "The It Girl", IMDb, Z: The Beginning of Everything, retrieved September 6, 2022
  18. ^ Donnelly, Erin (January 28, 2017). "R29 Binge Club: "Z: The Beginning Of Everything" Episodes 1-10 Recap". www.refinery29.com. Retrieved September 6, 2022.

Works

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  • The A.E.F. (1918)
  • Our Army at the Front (1918)
  • The 51st Dragon (1919)
  • Seeing Things at Night (1921)
  • The Boy Grew Older (1922)
  • Pieces of Hate (1922)
  • The Sun Field (1923)
  • Sitting On The World (1924)
  • Gandle Follows His Nose (1926)
  • Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (with Margaret Leech) (1927)
  • Christians Only: A Study in Prejudice (1931)
  • It Seems to Me (1935) —Collection of columns
  • Collected Edition (1941) —Collection of columns

Further reading

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  • Everett F. Bleiler, The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 1948; pg. 62.
  • Robert E. Drennan, The Algonquin Wits. [1968] Secaucus, NJ: Citadell Press, 1985.
  • John L. Lewis et al., Heywood Broun: As He Seemed to Us. New York: Random House/Newspaper Guild of New York, 1940.
  • Christopher Phelps, "Heywood Broun, Benjamin Stolberg, and the Politics of American Labor Journalism in the 1920s and 1930s," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, vol. 15, no. 1 (March 2018), pp. 25–51.
  • The New York Times, "3,000 Mourn Broun at St. Patrick's Mass", December 21, 1939, pg. 23.
  • The New York Times, "Newspaper Guild Begins to Function", November 16, 1933.
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