Dorothy in Quotes

“A lot of people knew Dorothy as a very tough game player; others knew her as a tough newspaper woman. When she went after a story, nothing could get in her way.”

“Wherever Dorothy Kilgallen goes fame precedes her, envy follows her and a crowd looks on. She is one of the communication marvels of the age.”

“People who did not know her totally misunderstood her. They thought she was a cold-hearted newspaper woman who would stop at nothing. That was cynical – attack, attack, attack. But Dorothy wasn’t any of these things, She was the softest, tenderest, most thoughtful, most loveable woman I have ever known.”

“She’s was good a reporter as ever came down the line.”

“She was a brilliant woman, quick-minded intelligent.”

“She is a modern up—to-the-minute woman reporter. With her versatile, sparkling writing and her ‘far-beyond-her-years’ perception and power of observation, she can cover everything from a baby shower to a sensational police court trial.”

“Dorothy’s daily arrivals at the little courtroom in Cleveland where Sam Sheppard was on trial were not unlike the arrival at home plate of Mickey Mantle with the bases filled.”

“Kilgallen is an attractive woman with a delicate, moon-pale complexion, dark brunette hair, a knock-out hourglass figure and no inconsiderable bustline . . . she [is] a scrupulously coiffed model of respectable high fashion style, her deportment and appearance bespoke of 400’s traditional veil-and-white sensibility with an added twist of enviably tasteful, up-to-date chic. She exudes class, grace and noble distinction. Dorothy is, viewed from the proper angle, quite a dish.”

“In Los Angeles, busy Dorothy Kilgallen sometimes attracted more attention than the trial. She posed for pictures with the defendant, signed scores of autographs for admirers, and received an orchid from an unidentified California Judge. Yet, for all that, her copy, rattled off on an electric typewriter in her hotel room, provided the best coverage of the Finch-Tregoff trial.”

“Dorothy Kilgallen arrived [at the Ruby trial] yesterday and stopped the show. Judge Joe B. Brown, one of her fans, gallantly granted (yea, insisted) on an interview in his chambers. Melvin Belli, of San Francisco, and Joe Tonahill, of Jasper, Texas, took her to lunch at a nearby seafood house named Vincent’s — whose oysters Belli declared are the best this side of his native city’s Fisherman’s Wharf.”

[Kilgallen] was “just about the biggest female celebrity around . . . she was Miss New York.”

[Kilgallen] “was a very powerful woman—people don’t have any idea of the contacts and power she had . . . Dorothy had favors she could call in from people all over the world.”

“Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the great reporters of our time. Her coverage of trials were journalistic masterpieces. She was a star and gave glamour and glitter to the world of journalism.”

“One of the greatest women who ever lived.”

“[Dorothy] was never one of the boys. She was always very much a dame. She could be quite grand when the mood or the necessity was on her. Or she could sit down with the boys and drink a little whisky . . . she did her job on this earth and, by God, whatever she had to do she did as well as anybody ever did.” Famed journalist Dominick Dunne wrote, “ . . . she projected an aura of glamour with her magnificent evening dresses and jewels . . . She had wit, power, and a mean streak . . . Everybody read her, and a lot of people were afraid of her.”