Talk:Dorothy Kilgallen
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Having been born in 1951, I grew up with What's My Line? The photo displayed in the Dorothy Kilgallen entry is definitely NOT Dorothy Killgallen. I recognize the wholesome, blond, "girl-next-door," "Doris-Day-type" actress in the photo as being from that era, but cannot come up with her name. Compare her photo to these actual photos of Dorothy Kilgallen:
David L. Kutzler
There's some confusion here--the entry suggests that the Sheppard trial was early in her career, but it was in 1954--nearly 20 years after her career started in the 1930s. Can someone more knowledgeable correct this, please?
I corrected it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.81.203.13 (talk) 21:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] January 2, 2008 -- Please Don't Revert All The Edits Without Checking Sources
Here is a summary of the many edits I did today. By no means did I fix all the problems, such as many of the "citation needed" requests in this article. I fixed a few.
Most of my edit was changing dates of American newspaper articles from the British format to American. All the American papers cited in the entire article have their own Wikipedia articles, and I gave them all links.
Memo to the person who doubts that Arlene Francis said something as gramatically shaky as "I thought Dorothy was a marvelous journalist. When she covered something like the Sheppard trial. As opposed to her gossip column." Yes, she did say it. Check the source: a particular page in the Lee Israel biography of Kilgallen. Israel interviewed the woman in January of 1976. So I removed the questioning of that from the footnotes.
I fixed the run-on sentence about Kilgallen's sister Eleanor Kilgallen that used to be there in the "After death and legacy" chapter. Now you see two succinct sentences about her. Please say something here before removing them. Eleanor is relevant because she is discussed in a prominent magazine column on her sister's mystery from as recently as 2006. It's in Vanity Fair (magazine), and the writer is Dominick Dunne. That's in the footnote. Eleanor Kilgallen is alive today, but I omitted that fact from the article. The very first paragraph of the entire article claims that Eleanor was a casting agent who helped the careers of James Dean, Kim Cattrall and other actors. I added a footnote after Dean and one after Cattrall.
I added a short section titled "Hearst bylines" immediately after the "Sam Sheppard" section. I did it so that Arlene Francis' quote comparing Kilgallen's different types of reporting (murder trial vs. show business gossip) remains there for a good reason. Her quote transitions the reader to a short explanation of why Kilgallen and other Hearst Corporation writers did as many diverse stories as possible. It was because Hearst wanted them to so their star bylines would sell more papers. Louella Parsons -- you know what she was famous for, right ? -- reported on the attempted assassination of a politician in Italy in 1948. His name was Palmiro Togliatti, and he survived the attempt for a few decades, during which few American gossipers paid attention to him. His 1948 news item was hardly show business gossip, yet Hearst wanted Parsons to cover it. This puts Dorothy Kilgallen's diversity (jury selection vs. which entertainers act gay) in perspective.
In the "Death" section I changed a reference to Kilgallen's husband from "Richard" to "Richard Kollmar." They used different last names publicly. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 23:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Restoring information about Kilgallen's widower and sister
I dispute Wildhartlivie's removal of Kilgallen's widower's refusal to talk and her sister's refusal to talk. Both are mentioned earlier in the article. In fact, Kilgallen's sister Eleanor Kilgallen is referenced in the very first paragraph of the article. Their silence is important because readers might wonder what the family ever said about a possible murder. Dominick Dunne said publicly in 1996 that it could have been a murder, and I'm restoring that, too. Wildhartlivie, maybe you need to submit this article for dispute resolution. Dooyar (talk) 03:17, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Once again, you are trying to ascribe meaning to the absence of something. That is not possible. You can not know why these people didn't talk about Kilgallen's death, therefore to bring that up is to imply there is meaning in it. That is creating speculation and does not belong in a Wikipedia article.
- You wrote:
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When Kollmar died in early 1971 two days after fracturing his shoulder, he and Fogarty had been married for three-and-a-half years. Two published accounts of him in that late period do not reveal whether he knew anything about the assassination. He and Fogarty were close with her niece who has said she does not recall either of them expressing interest in the subject or speculating about what Kilgallen had known (even though the niece had been an acquaintance of Kilgallen's). The ophthalmologist has stated he recalls Anne Fogarty, who was "personable," visiting his office sometimes to discuss landlord/tenant issues, but he never met her husband, who evidently did not take care of the couple's business.
- The problems in this paragraph start with the mention of a fractured shoulder, which is irrelevant to Dorothy Kilgallen. Next you ascribe meaning to something not being in a book. Next you discuss the step-daughter of Kilgallen's widower, who is not relevant to the article. Then you mention what amounts to an anecdote from the person who rented an office from Kilgallen's widower and his wife years later. This is not an investigative piece, an essay on who knew what or who didn't or a platform for developing meaning. It's an encyclopedia and what you are adding is not encyclopedic.
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Fogarty, whose age is difficult to determine because of reports that vary by as much as ten years, died shortly after the publication of Lee Israel's book, to which she had not contributed. Information about Fogarty's work for Dorothy Kilgallen, including the original dresses for her last several episodes of What's My Line?, comes from Kilgallen's hairdresser, who knew many designers and Diana Vreeland.
- And all I can ask here is "so what??" Fogarty's age is even less relevant to the article than the fact that she designed dresses that Kilgallen wore. It's not encyclopedic.
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Another close relative of Kilgallen has refused to discuss her, according to crime writer Dominick Dunne. Appearing on Larry King Live on January 25, 2006, he answered a phone caller's query about Kilgallen by saying the columnist could have been murdered. Dunne added, "I doubt we would find anything this many years later," with which King, who said he had known Kilgallen, agreed. In the April 2006 edition of Vanity Fair (magazine), Dunne added that he asked Kilgallen's sister Eleanor about the mystery on two occasions after the columnist's death and before he left film and television production to become a crime writer. Eleanor Kilgallen, a casting agent who worked with him to book actors, "... made me feel like a skunk for asking," Dunne wrote, and she refused to answer.
- This is just more of the same "they won't talk about it. We think she was murdered, but those people who might know something won't talk to us." It doesn't mean anything in regard to fact. All of this just continues to give undue weight to this one factor, which, if there were statements by these people, or investigations with conclusions, then would be relevant. So the family didn't talk about it, that does not equal meaning. It's implying meaning and a conclusion from the absence of comment. That isn't encyclopedic.
- Finally, what good does it do to bring something to dispute resolution when you won't participate? I will put in a request for comments on this one, which will establish a consensus which will then need to be adhered to. Should we ask for an IP check of some of the contributors over the last 2-3 months as well? Please do not use edit summaries to direct comments at another editor. It's unacceptable. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Latest version
Bad grammar is also unacceptable. The article read as follows until the version I made a few minutes ago: "The column, which she wrote until her death in 1965. The column featured mostly ..." For the latest version I fixed that plus I added footnotes for the segment on the Sheppard murder. I left alone the sentence about Kilgallen's father Jimmy in "After death and legacy." It reads the same way it did before: "Jimmy Kilgallen worked until 1981, but the word in New York journalism circles was ... ." Nyannrunning (talk) 22:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
- There's a difference between bad grammar and editing errors when trying to clean up a mess. Please assume good faith and don't phrase things contentiously. Also Dooyar, when adding citations for television programs, you need to follow the format listed at Wikipedia:Citation_templates, which has one specific one, {{cite episode}}, which is outlined in more detail at Template:Cite episode. Wildhartlivie (talk) 07:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
