Background

Lait was born in New York City, the son of Leon Lait and Anna Rosenthal Lait. At the age of twelve he moved with his family to Chicago.

Education

He attended Lewis Institute (later consolidated with Armour Institute of Technology to form the Illinois Institute of Technology) on an athletic scholarship. He graduated in 1901.

Career

For a brief time Lait supported himself as a professional baseball catcher, probably in the minor leagues, and bicycle rider. On March 6, 1903, he entered the newspaper business as a volunteer reporter for the Chicago American, a daily founded three years before by William Randolph Hearst. "I seemed to behave, " Lait recalled, "as if I were born for that calling. "

His boldness soon won him a place on the paid staff, and he gained almost instant fame by exposing vote frauds in the city's eighteenth ward, thereby sending the ward leader, John J. Brennan, to jail. Lait's editor, Moses Koenigsberg, wrote later that Lait, at twenty years of age, had "proved a courage and resourcefulness matched by few veterans. " In this same period Lait is said to have appeared on the rostrum in the Illinois state senate and demanded a poll of the senators on a voting-machine bill before he was hustled out.

In the following years he worked for a time in the Chicago office of the theatrical agent William Morris and wrote sketches for vaudeville performers. In 1914, Oliver Morosco produced Lait's first play, Help Wanted, which was a success at the time but made no permanent impact. The same can be said for the rest of his fiction, which included numerous novels, plays, and motion-picture stories.

Lait returned to journalism and to the Hearst organization in 1915. One of his first responsibilities was to produce a daily novelette for the Chicago Herald. In 1921 he became an editor at the Hearst King Features Syndicate with his former boss, Moses Koenigsberg, and in 1932 he was placed in charge of the new Sunday magazine of the New York Mirror. He resumed a reportorial role in July 1934 with an exclusive story for the International News Service on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's attempted capture and killing of the gangster John Dillinger in Chicago.

In 1936, on the death of Arthur Brisbane, Lait was named editor-in-chief of the Mirror, a post he held until his retirement. Lait attained his greatest notoriety late in life when he collaborated with a Mirror columnist, Lee Mortimer, on a series of books purporting to show the seamy side of American cities. New York Confidential appeared in 1948 and was followed by Chicago Confidential (1950), Washington Confidential (1951), and U. S. A. Confidential (1952). The pattern in each book was the same--a portrayal of vice, organized crime, corrupt politics, and other forms of depravity, based largely, Lait conceded, on information bought from such sources as cab drivers and chauffeurs. Reviewers attacked the books as inaccurate, biased, and bigoted; nevertheless Lait and Mortimer claimed sales totaling seven million copies. A train of controversy and nuisance litigation followed the publication of each Confidential volume. Lait complained in 1949: "We were howled at by Communists, intellectuals, goody-goodies, transmission-belt operators, and the Negro press. "

Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine sued Lait and Mortimer for $1 million in 1952 because they had charged that she was under the influence of left-wing journalists. The same year the Neiman-Marcus department store of Dallas and its employees filed suits totaling $7. 4 million because sales clerks had been portrayed as prostitutes in U. S. A. Confidential, and Lait and Mortimer sued the New York Post and members of its staff for $3 million in response to a critical series of articles; in 1953 they sued the publishers, printers, and distributors of U. S. A. Confidential for attempting to suppress the book to placate local censors and police. Troubled by a circulatory ailment, Lait left the Mirror in June 1952. He died in Beverly Hills, California.

Achievements

• Lait became renowned during his 50-year career in journalism as one of the leading newspapermen of the first half of the 20th century. During his tenure as editor, the New York Daily Mirror gained the second highest circulation of any U. S. newspaper. He became also famouse of his series of "Confidential" books.

Works

More photos

• book

  • U.S.A. confidential

    (A sampling of chapter titles says it best: "Women Confien...)

  • Beef, Iron and Wine (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Beef, Iron and Wine And Lait not only sees ...)

  • Chicago Confidential

    (Chicago is the hurly-burly, rough-and-tumble, guns-and-gi...)

  • All the Funny Folks

    (The Wonder Tale Of How The Comic Strip Characters Live An...)

  • Gus the Bus and Evelyn, the exquisite checker 1917 Hardcover

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 363. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of...)

  • New York Confidential

    (Fiction paperback)

  • Put on the spot,
  • Will Rogers Wit and Wisdom
  • The Practical Guide To Successful Writing
  • Washington Confidential

Views

Quotations: He once said, "Fiction is a cinch, automatic. I just set the screw in my head for 2, 800 words, and out it comes. Not only do I not rewrite, I don't read them. "

Connections

On March 6, 1906, Lait married a school friend, Laura Belle Leusch. They had three children.

Father:

Leon Lait

Mother:

Anna Rosenthal Lait

Spouse:

Laura Belle Leusch