Arthur Buchwald (Born, October 20, 1925 – January 17, 2007) was an American humorist best known for his column in The Washington Post. At the height of his popularity, it was published nationwide as a syndicated column in more than 500 newspapers. His column focused on political satire and commentary.
Buchwald had first started writing as a paid journalist in Paris after World War II, where he wrote a column on restaurants and nightclubs, "Paris After Dark", for the Paris Herald Tribune, which later became the International Herald Tribune.[2] He was part of a large American expatriate community in those years. After his return to the United States in 1962, he continued to publish his columns and books for the rest of his life. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for Outstanding Commentary, and in 1991 was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, in addition to other awards.
Early life
Buchwald was born in New York City in 1925, to an Austrian-Hungarian Jewish immigrant family. He was the son of Joseph Buchwald, a curtain manufacturer, and Helen (Klineberger). His mother suffered from depression and was later committed to a mental hospital, where she lived for 35 years. Buchwald was the youngest of four children, with three older sisters: Alice, Edith, and Doris. When the family business failed at the start of the Great Depression, Buchwald's father put the boy in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City, as he could not care for him. Buchwald was soon placed in foster homes, and lived in several, including a Queens boarding house for sick children (he had rickets because of poor nutrition). It was operated by Seventh-day Adventists. He stayed in the foster home until he was 5.
Buchwald was eventually reunited with his father and sisters; the family settled in Hollis, a residential community in Queens. Buchwald did not graduate from Forest Hills High School, and ran away from home at age 17.
He wanted to join the United States Marine Corps during World War II but was too young to join without parental or legal guardian consent. He bribed a drunk with half a pint of whiskey to sign as his legal guardian. From October 1942 to October 1945, Buchwald served with the Marines as part of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing. He spent two years in the Pacific Theater and was discharged from the service as a sergeant. He said of his time in the Marines, "In the Marines, they don't have much use for humorists, they beat my brains in."
Journalism
On his return, Buchwald enrolled at the University
of Southern California in Los Angeles on the G.I.
Bill, despite not having graduated from high school. At USC he
became managing editor of the campus magazine Wampus; he also
wrote a column for the college newspaper, the Daily
Trojan. The university permitted him to continue his studies
after learning he had not graduated from high school, but deemed him
ineligible for a degree. After establishing his national reputation
and winning the Pulitzer Prize, he was invited as a commencement
speaker in 1993 and received an honorary doctorate from the
university.
In 1949, Buchwald left USC and bought a one-way ticket to Paris.
He got a job as a correspondent for Variety
in Paris. In January 1950, he took a sample column to the offices of
the European
edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Titled "Paris
After Dark", it was filled with scraps of offbeat information
about Parisian nightlife.
Buchwald was hired and joined the editorial staff as a restaurant and
nightclub reviewer. His column caught on quickly, and in 1951
Buchwald started another column, "Mostly About People".
They were fused into one under the title "Europe's Lighter
Side". Buchwald's columns soon began to attract readers on both
sides of the Atlantic.
In postwar Paris, Buchwald met many American expatriate writers,
going about with Janet
Flanner, E.B.
White, Allen
Ginsberg, Gregory
Corso, and Thornton
Wilder. He also had brief encounters with the artist Pablo
Picasso, writer Ernest
Hemingway, directors Orson
Welles and Mike
Todd, actress Audrey
Hepburn, and attorney Roy
Cohn.
In
November 1952, Buchwald wrote a column in which he attempted to
explain the Thanksgiving
holiday to the French, using garbled French translations such as
"Kilometres Deboutish" for Myles
Standish; Buchwald considered it his favorite column.
He published it every Thanksgiving during his lifetime.
Buchwald enjoyed the notoriety
he received when U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower's press secretary, James
Hagerty, took seriously a spoof
press conference report claiming that reporters asked questions about
the president's breakfast habits. After Hagerty called his own
conference to denounce the article as "unadulterated rot",
Buchwald famously retorted, "Hagerty is wrong. I write
adulterated rot."
On August 24, 1959, Time
magazine, in reviewing the history of the European edition of The
Herald Tribune, reported that Buchwald's column had achieved an
"institutional quality".
While in Paris, Buchwald became the only correspondent to
substantively interview famous American singer Elvis
Presley, who had entered the U.S. Army. They met at the Prince de
Galles Hotel, where the soon-to-be Sergeant Presley was staying
during a week-end off from his army stint in Germany. Presley's
impromptu performances at the piano at Le
Lido nightclub, as well as his singing for the showgirls after
most of the customers had left, became legendary after Buchwald
included it in his memoir, I'll Always Have Paris (1995).
Buchwald returned to the United States in 1962. He wrote as a
columnist for The
Washington Post, frequently commenting on the political
scene. When once asked where he got his ideas, he said simply that he
read the newspaper every day. He could not make up the absurd
situations that were reported. His column was syndicated
by Tribune
Media Services. His column appeared in more than 550 newspapers
at its height. He also wrote memoirs and other books, a total of more
than 30 in his lifetime. He also contributed fumetti
to Marvel
Comics' Crazy
Magazine, which tore apart statistics regarding 1970s campus
life.
Marriage and
family
During his time
in Paris, Buchwald met Ann McGarry, and they married. She was an
Irish-American apprentice couturier
from Pennsylvania. After returning to the United States, they later
adopted three children. They lived in Washington, D.C., where he
wrote for The Washington Post. They spent most summers at
their house in Vineyard
Haven on Martha's
Vineyard. After 40 years of marriage, the couple separated, and
then decided to get a divorce.
However, before the divorce proceedings could start, Ann was
diagnosed with lung cancer, and passed away in 1994.
Film
Buchwald had a cameo in Alfred
Hitchcock's To
Catch a Thief (1955). Near the beginning of the movie, an
issue of the Paris
Herald Tribune is shown in close-up to highlight a column,
bylined by Buchwald, about jewel thefts on the French Riviera, which
sets up the plot.
He contributed to the English dialogue
of Jacques
Tati's Playtime.[10]
Buchwald also had a cameo role in a 1972 episode, "Moving
Target", of the TV series Mannix.
He is shown in Frederick
Wiseman's 1983 film The Store delivering a tribute to
Stanley
Marcus, the store's owner.
In 1988, Buchwald and partner Alain
Bernheim filed suit against Paramount
Pictures in a controversy over the Eddie
Murphy film Coming
to America. In the Buchwald
v. Paramount lawsuit, Buchwald claimed Paramount had stolen
his script treatment. He won, was awarded damages, and accepted a
settlement from Paramount. The case was the subject of a 1992 book,
Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount.
Criticism
In Buchwald's later years, his detractors characterized the column as
hackneyed, tiresome and not funny. Political analyst Norman
Ornstein in 1991 said he thought Buchwald's column was more
popular "outside the Beltway";
others disagreed.
Roy Bode, editor of the
Dallas
Times Herald, said that when his paper canceled Buchwald's
column in 1989, the editors did not receive a single letter of
protest. By contrast, when the paper cancelled the comic
strip Zippy
the Pinhead, so many readers complained that the editors were
compelled to bring it back.
In September 2005, Timothy
Noah wrote in Slate,
"Yes, Buchwald still writes his column. No, it hasn't been funny
for some time."
Illness and death
Buchwald underwent
hospitalization twice for mental disorders: once in 1963 for severe
depression.
In 1987, he was hospitalized for what was then diagnosed as an
extreme episode of bipolar
disorder, which he had probably had for years. He publicly
recounted these experiences in 1999.
In 2000, at age 74, Buchwald suffered a
stroke. He was hospitalized for more than two months. On February 16,
2006, the Associated
Press reported that Buchwald had had a leg amputated
below the knee and was staying at Washington Home and Hospice. The amputation was reportedly necessary because of poor circulation
in the leg, resulting from diabetes.
Buchwald invited radio talk show
presenter Diane
Rehm to interview him. During the show, which aired on February
24, 2006, he revealed his decision to discontinue hemodialysis,
which had previously been initiated to treat kidney
failure, another result of his having diabetes
mellitus. He described his decision as his "last hurrah",
stating that, "If you have to go, the way you go is a big deal."
He reported that he was "very happy with his choices" and
was eating at McDonald's
on a regular basis.
Buchwald was later interviewed by Miles
O'Brien of CNN,
in a segment aired on March 31, 2006. Buchwald discussed his living
will, which documented his wishes not to be revived if he fell
into a coma. As of the date of that interview, Buchwald was still
writing a periodic column. In the interview, he described a dream in
which he was waiting to take his "final plane ride".
Buchwald was interviewed by Fox
News' Chris
Wallace for a segment on May 14, 2006's edition of Fox
News Sunday.
In June 2006, Buchwald left the hospice.
He was again interviewed by Rehm and reported that his kidney was
working. He said that he "blesses him every morning. Some people
bless their hearts, I bless my kidney."
He reported that he was looking forward to getting a new leg and
visiting Martha's
Vineyard. In July 2006, Buchwald returned to his summer home in
Tisbury
on Martha's Vineyard. While there, he completed a book titled Too
Soon to Say Goodbye, about the five months he spent in the
hospice. Eulogies
that were prepared by his friends, colleagues, and family members and
were never delivered (or not delivered until later) are included in
the book.
On November 3, 2006, television news
reporter Kyra
Phillips interviewed Buchwald for CNN.
Phillips had known Buchwald since 1989, when she had first
interviewed him. On November 22, 2006, Buchwald was again featured on
Rehm's show. He described himself as a "poster boy for hospices
– because I lived."
In December 2006, in his final
interview, he told nurse/writer Terry Ratner that he was also a
poster boy for nurses. The article, "The 'Art' of Saying
Goodbye", appeared in the January 2007 issues of Nursing
Spectrum and NurseWeek,
national nursing publications.
Buchwald died
of kidney failure on January 17, 2007, at his son Joel's home in
Washington, D.C. The next day the website of The
New York Times posted a video obituary
in which Buchwald said: "Hi. I'm Art Buchwald, and I just
died."
Awards
Books
Buchwald published numerous anthologies and collections of his
columns, as well as memoirs.
Paris After Dark
(Imprimerie du Centre 1950. Also published by Herald Tribune,
European Ed., S. A., 1953)
Art Buchwald's Paris (Lion
Library, 1956)
I Chose Caviar (Victor
Gollancz, 1957)
The Brave Coward (Harper,
1957)
More Caviar (Victor
Gollancz, 1958)
A Gift from the Boys
(Harper, 1958)
Don't Forget to Write
(World Pub. Co., 1960)
How Much is that in Dollars?
(World Pub. Co., 1961)
Is it Safe to Drink the Water?
(PBK Crest Books, 1963)
I Chose Capitol Punishment
(World Pub. Co., 1963)
... and Then I Told the
President: The Secret Papers of Art Buchwald (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1965)
Son of the Great Society
(Putnam, 1966)
Have
I Ever Lied to You?. New York: Putnam's Sons. 1968 – via
Internet Archive.
The Establishment is Alive and
Well in Washington (Putnam, 1969)
Counting Sheep; The Log and the
Complete Play: Sheep on the Runway (Putnam, 1970)
Oh, to be a Swinger
(Vintage, 1970)
Getting High in Government
Circles (Putnam, 1971)
I Never Danced at the White
House (Putnam, 1973)
"I Am Not a Crook"
(Putnam, 1974)
The Bollo Caper: A Fable for
Children of All Ages (Doubleday, 1974)
Irving's Delight: At Last! a
Cat Story for the Whole Family! (McKay, 1975)
Washington Is Leaking
(Putnam, 1976)
Down
the Seine and Up the Potomac. New York: Putnam's Sons. 1977 –
via Internet
Archive.
Best Cartoons of the World
Miller Collection (Brown University) (Atlas World Press Review,
1978)
Art Buchwald by Leonard Probst,
transcript of an interview conducted by Leonard Probst, March 31 and
April 1, 1978. (American Jewish Committee, Oral History Library,
1978)
The Buchwald Stops Here
(Putnam, 1979)
Seems Like Yesterday Ann
Buchwald interrupted by Art Buchwald (Putnam, 1980)
Laid Back in Washington
(Putnam, 1981)
While Reagan Slept (Putnam,
1983)
You Ask, Buchwald Answers
(Listen & Learn U.S.A.!, 1983)
The Official Bank-Haters'
Handbook also by Joel D. Joseph (Natl Pr Books, 1984)
"You Can
Fool All of the People All the Time" (Putnam, 1985)
I Think I Don't Remember
(Putnam, 1987)
Whose Rose Garden Is It Anyway?
(Putnam, 1989)
Lighten Up, George (Putnam,
1991)
Leaving Home: A Memoir
(Putnam, 1994)
I'll Always Have Paris: A
Memoir (Putnam, 1995)
Stella in Heaven: Almost a
Novel (Putnam, 2000)
We'll
Laugh Again. New York: Putnam's Sons. 2002. ISBN
– via Internet
Archive.
Beating Around the Bush (Seven Stories, 2005)
Autobiography
