Louis Sobol

Louis Sobol (August 10, 1896 – February 9, 1986) was a journalist, Broadway gossip columnist, and radio host.^[1] Sobol wrote for Hearst newspapers for forty years, and was considered one of the country's most popular columnists.^[2] Sobol wrote about celebrities during the years when well-known columnists themselves became celebrities.^[1]

Early life

Sobol was born in New Haven, Connecticut.^[3] He attended Crosby High School and was the chairman of the Dramatic Club, business manager of the school paper, and manager of the baseball team.^{[4]: 136–138} While still in high school, Sobol worked as a reporter for the Waterbury Republican.^[4]: 163

Career

Sobol continued to work on the Republican after high school, then left the Republican to work for the Bridgeport Standard.^[4]: 187 He served in the Army during World War I.^[4]: 105 After the war, Sobol returned to Connecticut where he became acting city editor on the New London Day^[4]: 204 and was an occasional contributor to Variety.^[5]: 385 He then moved to New York^[4]: 77 where he worked for the Famous Features Syndicate, ghost-writing first-person stories which appeared in the New York Evening Graphic and New York Journal on behalf of clients, among them "Daddy" and Peaches Browning and Queen Marie of Romania.^{[4]: 199–200}

On May 31, 1929, Sobol took over Your Broadway and Mine column from Walter Winchell for the New York Evening Graphic.^[5]: 14 He added a second column, Snapshots at Random, in October, 1929.^[5]: 26 Sobol resigned from the Graphic in 1931, taking his column to New York Evening Journal^{[5]: 37–38} and renaming it The Voice of Broadway.^[6] The column was later called New York Cavalcade.^[3] Sobol's radio shows included the Borden Show and Ludwig Baumann Show on WOR, the Lucky Strike Hour on WEAF, and daily broadcasts for the American Broadcasting network.^[5]: 206

During 1932, Sobol performed in a vaudeville revival at the Palace Theatre^{[5]: 195 [7]} In 1933, he hosted a series of short films called "Louis Sobol shorts".^[8] In 1938, Sobol was given a luncheon to recognize his work for the New York and Brooklyn Federations of Jewish Charities.^[9]

Sobol published two memoirs and a novel. His novel Six Lost Women was recommended by the reviewer in The New York Times for "the sentimental reader".^[10] Sobol's book Some Days Were Happy is a memoir of his youth and early career.^[11] His memoir The Longest Street, which Maurice Zolotow described as "the longest Broadway column ever written" and "a truthful rendering of a certain way of life at a certain period in New York history",^[12] describes the people he met and wrote about, the parties they all attended, and what it was like to go from being a small town journalist to a chronicler of Broadway, New York City, and Hollywood.^[5] Sobol wrote one play, The High Hatters,^[13] which received disappointing reviews.^{[5]: 15–16}

Sobol played himself in the 1947 film Copacabana.^[14] In 1953, he was called "one of the nation's most popular columnists"; at that time, his New York Cavalcade column had a combined readership between 10 and 14,000,000, being syndicated throughout the country.^[15] In 1962, Sobol was honored as "Man of the Year" by the March of Dimes.^[5]: 362 Columnist Dan Lewis described Sobol as "a monumental influence in the world of show business".^[16] Sobol retired from journalism in 1967.^[3] Jim Bishop called Sobol "the most beloved" of the Broadway columnists.^[17]

Personal life

Sobol married Leah Helen Cantor in 1919. They had one daughter. Leah died at age 51 in 1948.^[18] Sobol then married Peggy Strohl, a publicist, at City Hall in Santa Barbara, California on July 29, 1950.^[19]

Sobol died at Roosevelt Hospital^[20] on February 9, 1986, at age 90.^[1]