Emmett Lee Ellmaker

Background

When Ellmaker was in his early teens his mother died, the candy store failed, and his father went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and moved to Philadelphia.

Education

Ellmaker attended West Philadelphia High School from 1910 to 1914. He attended high school irregularly and often submitted press clippings in lieu of regular class work.

He began his newspaper career in 1912 by getting other students to furnish him with the scores of Philadelphia high school ball games for the Philadelphia Press.

He soon became a two-cents-a-line police reporter for the paper and by his senior year was as much a newspaperman as a student.

Career

He also reported the Senate fight over the League of Nations and the presidential campaigns in 1920 (he predicted Warren G. Harding's nomination) and in 1924.

When Vare in 1924 wished to establish a Philadelphia paper, he asked Ellmaker to edit and publish it, and on March 31, 1925, Philadelphia's first and only successful tabloid, the Daily News, appeared.

In the 1930's Ellmaker also published Pictorial Review, Woman's World, Radio News, Amazing Stories, and Complete Detective.

After nearly dying in 1939 (from a carbuncle on the back of his neck) he abandoned magazines to concentrate on the Daily News.

After World War II Ellmaker and the newspaper won praise from the Youth Foundation for combating delinquency among black juveniles, from the American Legion for promoting veterans' welfare, from the Fourth Estate Square Club for exposing Communists in Philadelphia, and from J. Edgar Hoover for opposing the coddling of criminals.

Suffering from diabetes, Ellmaker gave up editing the Daily News in 1948 but remained its publisher and continued to write his daily column.

Information on Ellmaker and his career is contained in the morgue of the Philadelphia Daily News; see in particular the Daily News obituary, March 27, 1951.

Interviews with Lee Ellmaker, Jr. , and Myrtle Wolfe Ellmaker proved indispensable.

See also the New York Times obituary, March 28, 1951.

Achievements

• Despite other interests, Ellmaker, through close supervision and a daily column, made the Philadelphia Daily News his paper for a quarter of a century.

Religion

The Ellmaker family genealogy may be found in J. L. Ziegler, An Authentic History of Donegal Presbyterian Church (1902). ]

Politics

Vare, the undisputed Republican boss of South Philadelphia, took Ellmaker to Washington as his private secretary.

Ellmaker's tasks varied from arranging favors for Philadelphia politicians, through handling the requests of hundreds of destitute constituents for money, jobs, coal, or food, to organizing political campaigns and even a Philadelphia drive for Salvation Army charities.

Ellmaker mixed conservative Republican politics with the tabloid formula of convenience, lively style, scare headlines, sensational items, human-interest stories, scant news coverage, patriotism, civic progress, and local chauvinism.

Views

His intimate association with Vare, a leading spoilsman, and with an effective urban political machine led him to value loyalty and admire organization in politics, to commend the professional politician for promoting democracy, and to celebrate Vare as a humanitarian whose help for the poor and needy compared with the contributions of clergymen, physicians, and social workers.

Personality

During this same period Ellmaker, who was five feet, eight inches tall, reduced his weight from 320 to 240 pounds.

An excellent conversationalist, friendly, jovial, and on a first-name basis with his employees, Ellmaker was a forceful and energetic man who once, while trying to inspire his advertising salesmen, inadvertently shattered a glass desk top with his fist.

His enormous bulk enhanced his overwhelming presence, and his dark hair, combed straight back, emphasized his high forehead and pale complexion.

Connections

In 1918 Ellmaker joined the radio service of the United States Navy, and after World War I he returned to Washington, where he had met Myrtle Wolfe, a stenographer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, whom he married on September 15, 1921. They had two sons.

Father:

Ellmaker

Wife:

Myrtle Wolfe

Friend:

Bernard Samuel

Keeping the Daily News Republican to the core, he remained loyal to Vare and was an intimate friend of Bernard Samuel, the last of the Republican-machine mayors.