Leonard Lyons was an American newspaper columnist. He started his career as a lawyer and then became a columnist for the New York Post.
Background
Leonard Lyons was born Leonard Sucher on September 10, 1906 in New York City, New York, United States, one of four children of Bronna Harnick and Moses Leib Sucher, a worker in the garment industry. His father had immigrated to New York from Romania in 1896 after the death of his wife, and by 1897 he had saved enough money to send for his three children and his sister-in-law, Bronna Harnick, whom he married on her arrival in the United States. By the time Lyons was eight years old, his father had died, and financial need necessitated that the older children leave school and go to work in the sweatshops. His mother opened a candy stand on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
Education
An excellent student, Lyons attended public school where he won an award for his drawing ability. He also sang in the synagogue choir. He went on to the High School of Commerce, night school at the City College of New York, and St. John's University Law School. In 1928, Lyons passed the New York bar examination.
Career
At the start of his career Lyons worked for the law firm of Armstrong, Keith, and Kern. In 1930 he set up his own law practice In 1930 he set up his own law practice. At the same year he began work at the Jewish Daily Forward, where the editor of the English-language section of the paper renamed the young reporter Leonard Lyons (Lyons being an anglicization of Leonard's father's middle name, Leib). Lyons eventually assumed the new name in his personal as well as his professional life.
He was hired in 1934 by the New York Post to write a daily column about Manhattan night life. "The Lyons Den, " as the daily piece came to be known, was an enormous success. Chatty and lightweight, the column quoted celebrities more often than it talked about them. In effect, Lyons became the mouthpiece of Broadway characters, and he was soon the most famous gossip columnist in the nation's largest city. A New Yorker profile published in 1945 characterized him as a table-hopping journalist who avoided cruel gossip in favor of anecdotes about celebrities desirous of being in the limelight. Lyons later related that he became a columnist because he wrote detailed letters to a girl named Sylvia Schonberger, who told him that he ought to be with a newspaper and who became later his wife.
Achievements
Leonard Lyons was a famous for his newspaper column “The Lyons Den” from 1934 to 1974, and knew all the celebrities of the era—from Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill. "The Lyons Den" was syndicated to more than one hundred newspapers with a total circulation of 15 million, appearing every day but Sunday for forty years. It appeared for the last time on May 20, 1974.
Personality
A slight, dark-haired man, Lyons had an unusual daily routine: On a typical day Lyons had breakfast with his family at about 6 A. M. , before going to sleep until noon. Then he began his daily rounds of the trendy restaurants. By 1 P. M. he might be at Sardi's in the theater district, then move on to other restaurants frequented by celebrities, usually stopping by the Algonquin Hotel on Forty-fourth Street to visit with the literary notables at its famed round table. By 3 P. M. he was heading toward his office at the New York Post on South Street, where he began work on his column. He allegedly maintained an extensive filing system with obscure details about the people who appeared in his column. At about 6 P. M. Lyons returned to his apartment on Central Park West for a nap before heading out for the evening. By 7:30 P. M. he was off again, often to a Broadway opening and then to such elegant spots as La Côte Basque, "21, " and the Russian Tea Room. Lyons did not like alcohol and tended to drink coffee when he sat down at people's tables.
Connections
Leonard Lyons met Sylvia Schonberger when he was twenty-two. They were married in November 1934 and had four children.
