Herman Klurfeld, 90, ‘Winchell’s Number 1 Ghost’

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Herman Klurfeld, who died Monday at 90, was Walter Winchell’s longtime secret assistant writer, a position Klurfeld liked to call “assistant king of the world.”

Winchell, at the height of his popularity between the 1930s and the 1950s, had a seven-day-a-week column that appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers, as well as a popular Sunday radiocast.

Hired by Winchell in 1936 when he was just 20, Klurfeld gradually took over writing large portions of Winchell’s output, including the radio show, for which he labored to write slick “lasties,” the final line that Winchell was convinced would be the average listener’s strongest memory.

“There’s nothing ex-er than an ex-big shot,” one lasty went. “History will prove December 7, 1941, as the day Japan committed hari-kiri,” was another.

Klurfeld liked to tell interviewers that he was proudest of having steered Winchell into an early crusade against Nazism.

Much of Klurfield’s work was the routine mention of starlets, essays on news of the day, and reviews of Broadway shows. “For about 10 years I … had a front-row seat for every show and everyone knew I was the most powerful person in the theater,” Klurfeld told the Daily News’s Jack Matthews in 2002. Later, though, he tired of the theater and sent his wife, the former Jeanette Garfield, in his stead along with a neighbor friend.”They would go and tell me about them and I would write the reviews. That’s how I made ‘Helzapoppin” a big hit. They loved it.”

Klurfeld grew up in the Bronx, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and spoke only Yiddish until he learned English in the first grade. Convalescing from a lung abscess during his senior year at Evander Childs High Scholl, he began writing gags in the style of radio comedians. Eventually, he began selling items to the Broadway columnist at the New York Post, Leonard Lyons. His first: “Girls used to dress like Mother Hubbard. Now they dress like a cupboard.”

After supporting himself by pushing racks in the garment district, Klurfeld eventually got hired to generate items for a press agent, which is how he came to Winchell’s attention. “You have a way with words, kid,” Winchell told Klurfeld at their first meeting. “Do you want to become a writer? Some of my contributors have become gag writers for some of the top clowns on radio.”

Two weeks later, Winchell hired Klurfeld, and then took him to lunch at his regular haunt, the Stork Club. Another guest that day was Tallulah Bankhead. “She said, ‘Good to know you, Herman, go f— yourself,'” Klurfeld recalled. Her date, the gangster Bugsy Siegel, just giggled.

The dialogue snapped almost as nicely as the lines in “Sweet Smell of Success,” the 1957 Burt Lancaster film based on Winchell that starred Tony Curtis as the slimy press agent who is tempted by the columnist’s offer to become his ghostwriter. “Match me, Stanley,” Lancaster says, demanding a light.

Klurfeld, along with Winchell’s loyal secretary, Rose Bigman, became an integral part of Winchell’s writing machine. He would write between two and four columns a week, although Winchell edited everything. Their shared Yiddish background added to their similarity of voice.

When World War II ended, Winchell became close to F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover and later to the crusading anticommunist senator, Joseph McCarthy. He hosted both men at the Stork Club, with Klurfeld often in tow.

In early 1952, the then-liberal New York Post kicked off a 25-part diatribe against Winchell. In one of the series, Klurfeld’s photo appeared on the front page along with the headline “Winchell’s Number 1 Ghost.” Klurfeld responded with a 30-column series excoriating the Post, but the episode wounded Winchell, whose popularity was on the wane anyhow. Klurfeld stayed with him until 1965, when Winchell abruptly let him go.

Klurfeld went on to write other books, including “Behind the Lines,” a profile of the investigative Washington, D.C., reporter Drew Pearson. Announcing the book in his own column, “Washington Merry Go Round” in 1968, Pearson called Klurfeld “a journalist with a reputation for sizzling inside stories.”

Klurfeld eventually retired to Boca Raton, Fla., and was gratified when his role in the Winchell story became a central theme of a 1998 HBO movie, “Winchell,” starring Stanley Tucci as Winchell and Paul Giamatti as Klurfeld.

In a 1976 memoir, “Winchell: His Life and Times,” Klurfeld wrote, “Time and time again he (WW) assured me, ‘Don’t worry, kid, as long as I have it, you’ll have it.’ After 27 years he fired me through his secretary, without notice or severance pay.”

Still, a residue of gratitude remained, and the memoir was a mainly affectionate portrait of a man whom much of the rest of America was remembering with less relish.

On his answering machine, Klurfeld kept a trademark Winchell line, the opening to his radio show: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press!” Klurfeld may even have written it himself.

Herman Klurfeld

Born in 1916 in the Bronx; died December 18 at his home in Boca Raton, Fla.; survived by his son, James Klurfeld, editorial page editor of Newsday, and daughter, Elaine Berkowitz, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.


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