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Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was born on July 3, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois, United States, the daughter of James Lawrence Kilgallen, a newspaperman, and Mary Jane ("Mae") Ahern. Kilgallen and her protective Irish-Catholic family lived in Laramie, Wyoming, and Indianapolis, Indiana, before returning to Chicago when she was six. They moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1923.
Kilgallen attended public school and graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1930. Thereafter she studied at the College of New Rochelle (1930 - 1931).
Kilgallen took her first job at William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. Her father, she later said, "never suggested that I follow in his footsteps. But the footsteps were there, and what other way could I have gone?" By the time she was twenty, Kilgallen had a by-line familiar to Journal readers. She had a flair for particulars, coupled with a breathless innocence reinforced by the persistent rumor that she was "convent bred. " Following in the Hearst sob sister tradition, murders became her speciality. After covering the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper of the son of Charles Lindbergh, Kilgallen, looking "exactly like Minnie Mouse, " raced around the world in 1936 on commercial airlines in a contest with two other reporters. She came in second, taking twenty-four days, but "finished first in acclaim and publicity" and instantly became a celebrity.
Sent to Hollywood to capitalize on her new renown, Kilgallen collaborated on a screenplay (Fly Away Baby, 1937) based on her recent race, wrote a gossip column, played a bit part in a film (Sinner Take All, 1936), but failed to impress the movie kingdom. When she was called back to New York in 1937, she concentrated on social occasions and began participating in news events. While single-handedly covering the coronation of George VI for her paper, Kilgallen became for her readers part of the ceremony. Her tendency to mingle with the people she wrote about became more pronounced in 1938 when she took over the syndicated gossip column "The Voice of Broadway, " in the Journal-American (the two papers had merged in July 1937).
Becoming a personality in her own right, she promoted her friends and "discoveries, " while lacing celebrity gossip with "odd tidbits of inconsequential information, " "dark hints of international espionage, " and shockingly malicious comments. Kilgallen, who had intense feeling for popular music, mingled easily with black musicians at a time when society was still largely segregated. She was among the first to entertain cafe musicians with established society and show people.
In 1945 she and her husband Richard Tompkins Kollmar began "Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick, " a radio program in which they detailed their glamorous lives, criticized small-town America, preached right-of-center political views, and praised their sponsors' products. Their three children often joined them on this popular show, which continued until 1963.
In 1950 the Columbia Broadcasting System picked her for "What's My Line?" --a television program on which panelists guessed the occupations of guests. Kilgallen, an avid, intensely competitive player of parlor games, was a superb choice. Witty, combative, often tactless, and always determined to win, she remained on the show the rest of her life. While helping it capture 10 million weekly viewers, she doubled (raising to 146 by 1965) the number of newspapers carrying her "Voice of Broadway" column.
Kilgallen died in her Manhattan home from a combination of barbiturates and alcohol, and since neither was ingested in massive quantity, her death was termed accidental. The Journal-American, according her a courtesy she had often denied others, said little about the circumstances of her death. Kilgallen died in her prime. Ten thousand people filed past her casket and crowds stopped traffic outside St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church, where James Kilgallen wept aloud for his "little girl. "
Kilgallen was slim and of medium height with a high forehead, small chin, and ready smile. She had dark curly hair, blue eyes, and a Dresden-doll complexion. She nearly always wore or carried white gloves, which emphasized her femininity in a predominantly masculine trade. She was called "a newspaperman in a $500 dress. " Four times she was included among the world's ten best-dressed women. While covering Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, Kilgallen wore a dress nearly as elaborate as the queen's and reported Elizabeth's 1957 visit to the United States from a limousine that became part of the queen's procession. This caused a disgruntled fellow newspaperwoman to remark, "There goes the queen covering the queen. " During the Khrushchevs' 1959 visit, Kilgallen outraged many Americans when, amidst a barrage of derogatory comments, she likened Nina Khrushchev's suit to "a home-made slip cover on a sofa. "
Some people admired Kilgallen and others detested her, but nearly everyone read her. She had tremendous energy and the "eagerness of a cub reporter. " She befriended many obscure people; frequently they were Irish--policemen, washroom attendants, court officials, jury members, and even accused criminals. They in turn were fiercely loyal to her and sometimes gave her information for stories.
On April 6, 1940, Kilgallen married Richard Tompkins Kollmar, an actor whose ancestor Daniel D. Tompkins had been governor of New York and vice-president of the United States. They had three children.
