Winchell

In the 20's, the controversial New Yorker journalist Walter Winchell (Stanley Tucci) begins his career writing gossips about his acquaintances. He is hired by the New York Daily Mirror and using inside information from informers, he becomes the first American gossip columnist. He becomes successful and is invited to host a successful broadcast show in the radio. In the 30's, he attacks Adolf Hitler and befriends President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Christopher Plummer). After the World War II, Winchell attacks the communists and becomes a collaborator of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Winchell is not able to adapt his show to the audience of television and when McCarthy is censured by the Senate, Winchell becomes unpopular and his career virtually ends.

"Winchell" is a good HBO movie about the polemic columnist Walter Winchell, who was feared by the powerful and famous in the 30's and 40's. Along the years, Winchell hires a ghost-writer, Herman Kurfeld (Paul Giamatti), who admires him and has a lover, the showgirl Mary Louise "Dallas" Wayne (Glenne Headly) that likes him. Winchell is shown as a manipulative man that uses his personal dossier to force people to provide inside information for his column and his radio show; a man that neglects his family and has a wrong move supporting the McCarthyism and denouncing people. In the end, he pays a high price for his mistakes, and is forgotten by the public opinion He ends his life alone, without family or friends, and his son commits suicide. The last scene with his mentally disturbed daughter attending his funeral alone is one of the saddest conclusions of a film (and a life) that I have seen. Stanley Tucci gives one of his best performances in the role of Winchell. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Poder da Notícia" ("The Power of the News")

The pickings at the Video store have for me been slim. Slimmer in fact than the theatres. I did however rent WINCHELL an HBO movie starring Stanley Tucci in his Emmy Award winning performance as Walter Winchell the famous newspaper columnist and radio commentator of the 30's through the 60's. I did not know much more than that about WW, but after seeing this film I learned a great deal. HBO's attention to historical detail in costumes and art direction are superb. Stanley Tucci proves once again that he can't do a bad performance. Paul Giamatti as his head press agent is marvelous. This is an excellent rent.

Stanley Tucci is an amazing actor, and in this film we were only treated to a mere glimpse of his ability. The best performance, I think, was by Paul Giamatti as his long-suffering ghost writer. This film was engaging, and at times it was very much so. However, it tries to convey too much history and too much time in its hour and fifty minutes. I don't know, some movies manage to tell the story of someone's entire life and make it seem like a life is actually passing by. This one, however, seemed fragmented. They began to lose me with each large jump in the timeline. It was like a synopsis of his life--it left me wanting more because it only seemed to scratch the surface of the many events in his life (for example, when he went to Brazil during WWII).

"Winchell", a Tucci tour-de-force and docudrama, tells a somewhat biased story of Walter Winchell, renown gossip columnist of the 30's and 40's who rose to considerable influence and fame in the early days of radio as the most listened to reporter in America only to die in obscurity in 1972. An okay biography, this journeyman HBO flick does a good job of hitting the high points of Winchell's life but will have little value to those with no particular interest in the period or the man as he simply wasn't, by cinematic standards, that interesting.

Being a child of television. The legacy of Walter Winchell to me previously consisted of bits and pieces. ITEMS as it may.

This recent in a series of HBO bio-pics gives loving attention to Winchell, the man, his inventiveness, dedication and ultimately, his power. It seems complete enough in the spectrum with which we view the man. There is suggestion that his influence may have rivaled FDR himself, and he shows William Randolph Hearst to be no match mano-a-mano.

Paul Mazursky is perfectly suited to direct this and gives us everything we need on the screen. Stanley Tucci earns a well-deserved Golden Globe in the title role. Paul Giamatti is superb as Winchell's ghost, Klurfeld (who's book sourced this film), only Glenne Headley, who's work tends to be spotty at times, seems a bit overmatched as WINCHELL's southern-fried moll, Dallas.

I left with renewed respect, for the man.