Alden Whitman

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Alden Whitman
1968 photo of Alden Whitman in New York Times newsroom
Whitman in New York Times newsroom, 1968
Born(1913-10-27)October 27, 1913
New Albany, Nova Scotia, Canada
DiedSeptember 4, 1990(1990-09-04) (aged 76)
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Alma materHarvard University
Occupation
  • Journalist
  • obituarist
  • book reviewer
  • activist
Years active1935–1988
EmployerThe New York Times (1951—1976)
Known forPioneered the writing of biographical obituaries
Criminal charge(s)Contempt of Congress
Criminal penaltyProbation
Spouse(s)
  • Dorothy McLaughlin
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1933; div. 1939)​
  • Helen Kaposey
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1939; div. 1960)​
  • Joan McCracken
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1960; his death 1990)​
Children4
AwardsGeorge Polk Career Award (1979)

Alden Rogers Whitman (October 27, 1913 – September 4, 1990) was an American journalist who served as chief obituary writer for The New York Times from 1964 to 1976. In that role, he pioneered a more vivid, biographical approach to obituaries based on interviews with notables in advance of their deaths. Whitman was also the target of a McCarthy-era investigation into Communists in the press. Under questioning by the U.S. Senate in 1956, he acknowledged prior Communist affiliation but refused to name other party members. The ensuing eight-year legal battle over contempt of Congress ended with all charges dismissed.

Early journalism and Communism[]

Whitman was born in New Albany, Nova Scotia in 1913 and raised from age two in his mother's native Connecticut. He showed early interest in journalism, writing for the local Bridgeport Post-Telegram during high school.[1] Activism, another lifelong theme, became evident in college. Whitman began his Harvard studies as a member of the Socialist Club, edged leftward to the Communist-led National Student League,[2][a] and wrote his senior thesis on "Strategies and tactics of the Communist Party in the United States."[4] After graduating in 1934, he returned to Connecticut, took a job at the Bridgeport Herald and, in 1935, joined the Communist Party.[5]

Decades later, in his obituary for former U.S. Communist Party leader Earl Browder, Whitman looked back at the period of his own involvement in the party:

The zenith of Communist influence in the United States occurred in the years from 1930 to 1946, when ... Mr. Browder's party, laying claim to native radicalism, attained a membership of 100,000 and, through a network of friendly organizations, exerted a considerable effect on American affairs.[6][b]

Whitman, an illustration of this phenomenon, had ventured into Communism as a "native" radical contending with the Great Depression. Between 1938 and 1941, he lived in New York City and worked within the "network of friendly organizations." Internally, the party conceived of this as a "United" or "Popular Front" embracing multiple, home-grown leftist constituencies. Later, the House Un-American Activities Committee would label all of the organizations "Communist fronts"[8] and call Whitman to account.

As he testified to Congress, Whitman began at the National Committee for People's Rights, a labor advocacy group, in the spring of 1938; then wrote a book touting the early American roots of the labor movement for International Publishers; raised money on behalf of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy; served as press agent at Films for Democracy, which aimed to produce leftist movies with Hollywood appeal; and edited copy for Soviet news agency TASS. With the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of August 1939, the Communist Party turned against the war, and Whitman followed suit, joining the New York Peace Committee. Finally, he worked at the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born, a legal defense group for immigrants.[9][10]

In January 1942, soon after the U.S. entered World War II, Whitman resumed local journalism, first with Buffalo Evening News, then, in 1943, as copy editor at the New York Herald Tribune. Alongside some ten other Communists at the Tribune, Whitman worked behind the scenes, as he recalled, "doing what good Communists were expected to do—to be active in building the union," in their case, the Newspaper Guild.[11]

In 1946, the Communist Party expelled Browder and repudiated the coalition strategy. That year, Whitman stopped contributing to the party newspaper, The Daily Worker, as he had done pseudonymously since 1939.[12][13] In 1948, anti-Communists within the Newspaper Guild pushed Whitman out of his organizing role.[14] At that time, he left the party altogether.[15][16]

Whitman continued at the Tribune until 1951, when he took his copy editing talents to its chief competitor, The New York Times.[17] "Whitman left entirely of his own volition," according to Tribune colleague Richard Kluger, "but his politics had plainly endangered him."[18]

Senate investigation[]

Months after Joseph McCarthy's political downfall and nearly a decade after the investigation of Communists in Hollywood, Congress turned its attention to the press, particularly The New York Times. In July 1955 and January 1956, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee summoned 34 alleged Communists as witnesses, 18 of them with past or present ties to the Times, Whitman among them.[19] FBI files, released much later, had identified Whitman as a Communist in 1941 and, based on reports from an undercover informant, characterized him as an influential member of the party as late as 1953.[20]

The fallout was immediate. Upon receiving a subpoena, Whitman was stripped of supervisory responsibilities and demoted to his original copy editing position, or, as he put it "bumped all the way back to the rim."[21][22][23] Lawyers at the Times warned all witnesses that hiding behind the Fifth Amendment was cause for dismissal.[24][25]

Under public questioning in the Senate, Whitman acknowledged prior Communist affiliation but denied any seditious intent and refused, on First Amendment grounds, to name any colleagues as party members. "The investigative process," read his statement, "like the legislative power to which it is an adjunct" must not impinge on the "beliefs, associations, and activities of individuals connected with the press."[26][20] Fellow journalists Seymour Peck, Robert Shelton, and William Price responded similarly. All four were cited for contempt of Congress. Whitman was convicted in 1957. The conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1962 on narrow technical grounds, and Whitman was re-indicted and re-convicted by the Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy. Finally, in 1964, the department moved to dismiss the case, which was formally dropped on November 29, 1965.[27][28][29]

In his book on the investigation, Edward Alwood argues that Whitman ran down the clock on McCarthyism. Had he and the other journalists convicted of contempt staged the same defense years earlier "they would have faced the more severe punishment meted out to the Hollywood Ten, who had raised similar issues."[30] In the event, Whitman retained his job and his freedom, but was "exhausted by the strain" of sustaining a legal defense with a rotating crew of volunteers, intermittent support from the American Civil Liberties Union and none from the Newspaper Guild.[29]

Obituaries[]

Whitman remained at the Times, albeit with few bylines,[31] throughout the McCarthyist ordeal. Colleague David Halberstam suggested Whitman was effectively "blacklisted" and, like "a plant trying to grow through concrete," had to find a neglected gap in the newsroom in order to write freely.[32] Whitman's break came late in 1964 when the contempt case headed towards dismissal and editors tried him out at the historically unglamorous, apolitical and byline-free obituary desk. During his eleven years as the desk's chief writer, Whitman penned obituaries of some 400 notables—Ho Chi Minh,[33] Pablo Picasso,[34] Helen Keller,[35] Haile Selassie,[36] J. Robert Oppenheimer,[37] and many more. In almost every case, Whitman drafted the obituary well in advance and periodically revised it until the subject's death.[38] By 1967, obituaries began to carry his byline.[39][40][c]

Reviewers recognized Whitman as "theoretician and executor" of a "revolution" in obituaries.[42] He replaced the traditional litany of names and dates with biographical essays that conveyed the "flavor" of a person, engaged their specific, sometimes "abstruse," expertise, and placed them in the sweep of history.[43] Whitman called the results "many-sided";[44] Halberstam, emphasizing the long advance preparation, saw Whitman as a "jewel cutter";[45] Gay Talese, in a 1966 profile of Whitman, highlighted the roving curiosity of his "marvelous, magpie mind."[46] Whitman's opening sentence on J. B. S. Haldane demonstrates the mix of perspectives:

Facially Professor Haldane resembled Rudyard Kipling; epigrammatically he took after George Bernard Shaw; politically he followed Karl Marx; but in science he was indubitably John Burdon Sanderson Haldane.[47]

To inform his work, Whitman deployed the primary tool of other journalists, namely, the interview. "In all the history of journalism, including the caves," Sidney Zion wrote in an obituary of Whitman himself, "nobody ever thought to draw the future dead into their own obituaries."[48] Whitman conducted his first obituary-focused interview with former U.S. president Harry Truman in 1966 at the recommendation of Times managing editor and Truman son-in-law Clifton Daniel.[49] This amiable encounter became Whitman's model: "semistructured conversation," as he put it, "sub specie aeternitatis."[50][51][d] The interviews were a rarity, though, done for "no more than ten percent"[54] of his obituaries.[e] Their object wasn't more material—his famous subjects already offered plenty—so much as sharper focus, "a glimpse of the inner person."[50] Consider, for example, Alexander Kerensky, briefly leader of a new Russian revolutionary government before Lenin and the Bolsheviks ran him into exile. "For the remainder of his life," according to Whitman, Kerensky "passed his time in fulminations." The lone, brief quote drawn from their interview illustrates this: "[Kerensky] expressed a nostalgic desire to return to his native land if the authorities 'will not silence me.'"[57]

Whitman was also the first journalist to write about Donald Trump and put the future president's words in print. In 1973, Whitman interviewed the 26-year-old Donald alongside his 67-year-old father, Fred, to prepare for the latter's death. While the obituary waited until 1999, the interview resulted in a contemporaneous profile of the duo. There, Whitman, with his attention to legacy, portrayed Fred Trump as an accomplished real estate "alchem[ist]" who, in a final act, was turning his building and marketing skills on his son by propping him up in Manhattan and touting his own, as-yet-unproven powers of alchemy. "Everything he touches turns to gold," Whitman quoted Fred,[58] introducing a phrase that would echo through the 2016 election.[59][60]

While Whitman was resigned to the conventional wealth-and-fame criteria for inclusion on the obituary page,[61] he championed a broader oral history beyond. He served as special advisor to the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research[62] and wrote book reviews to promote oral histories and oral autobiographies, especially those that gave voice to the illiterate, oppressed or ignored.[f] Speaking to the Oral History Association in 1974, Whitman said:

To understand ourselves as people, I believe we must know so much more than we do now about the lives and thoughts of those groups that comprise the multitude, people, to use a nasty phrase, in the 'subcultures'—the Black, the poor, the Hispanics, the women, the Chicanos. We need to know about their beliefs, their attitudes, their games, their work-lives, their flashpoints, their self-images, their aspirations.[65]

Whitman retired from the Times in 1976, but his byline continued to appear on scattered obituaries through 1981. The last, on insurance mogul James S. Kemper, began, "He was very rich."[66][67]

Later years[]

Upon retiring from the Times, Whitman picked up the pace of his book reviews, focusing on biography, memoir and history. He contributed regularly to Newsday, Harper's Bookletter, and The Chronicle of Higher Education's short-lived Books & Arts, and appeared in such newspapers as the Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times as well as The New York Times itself.[17][68] As David Halberstam remarked, "He kept going. I mean, it was quite an heroic career."[32]

In the 1980s Whitman suffered a debilitating stroke which left him blind. His wife, Joan, hired several Long Island University college students to come to their home in Southampton, New York, to engage in a daily ritual of reading Whitman stories from major newspapers and weekly magazines.[67]

Bibliography[]

Books[]

Selected obituaries[]

Honors[]

1979: George Polk Awards (Career Award)

Notes[]

  1. ^ According to Alwood (2007), Whitman participated in the Young Communist League during college. This is possible, but there are few signs of the Young Communist League at Harvard at the time. By contrast, the National Student League arrived conspicuously in April 1932, consistent with the timing of Whitman's conversion.[3]
  2. ^ Contemporary scholarship generally affirms Whitman's statement, if in more muted terms. Peak membership is estimated at 75,000 in 1947, with 33,000 in the New York City area.[7] Also, as Whitman acknowledged elsewhere in the Browder obituary, the period was not without hiccups, notably when the party "broke overnight with President Roosevelt's foreign policy upon the signing of the Soviet‐German pact in 1939."[6]
  3. ^ Given Whitman's past, and the reason he had struggled to gain a byline in the first place, the choice of Bullitt,[41] who made a name for himself negotiating with Lenin, has editorial significance.
  4. ^ Whitman was not so fond of the actual Truman obituary.[52] Several months after its publication, he wrote a playful-yet-serious manifesto for Newsweek, entitled "Truth in Death." Here, Whitman complained that obituaries, his own, presumably, included, had lent an "odor of sanctity" to Truman who was, in fact, "a narrow man" and "one of the willing architects of a malefic foreign policy that brought death to thousands in Korea and that involved us in a fruitless cold war." Truman was but one "victim" of such embalming, Whitman recognized. "Perhaps," he concluded, "the generation of the 1970s will be willing to accept the notion of clothing the deceased in the same garb he wore in life, gravy stains and all."[53]
  5. ^ Because of his innovation, it's often assumed that Whitman interviewed everyone he wrote about. (In her book on obituarists, Marilyn Johnson claims Whitman "cultivated [this] mystique."[55]) The New York Times obituary of Whitman falsely credited him with interviewing people he himself denied interviewing, such as Albert Schweitzer, Helen Keller, Ho Chi Minh, John L. Lewis, Joseph P. Kennedy, Mies van der Rohe, Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso.[17][56] Picasso, for one, refused the invitation. Nonetheless, his obituary is among the longest and, thanks to passages from his lovers' memoirs, most intimate.[34]
  6. ^ Among other reviews, Whitman lauded All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Rosengarten, 1974) as an "autobiograph[y] of surpassing greatness"[63] and Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Hareven and Langenbach, 1979) as a "gripping human saga... [H]istory is best understood from the bottom up."[64]

References[]

  1. ^ McNally, Owen (June 12, 1980). "Obits Chronicle Cultural History". Hartford Courant. p. 58.
  2. ^ Harvard Class Album. Harvard College. 1934. p. 293. Harvard Socialist Club, 1930—1932; President, 1931; Liberal Club, 1930—1932; Co-founder National Student League, Harvard Unit
  3. ^ Dave, Eesha D.; DelReal, Jose A. (February 16, 2012). "The Kremlin on the Charles". The Harvard Crimson.
  4. ^ "Detailed description of Alden Whitman papers, 1935-1986". Prepared for the Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, New York.
  5. ^ Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws 1956, p. 1730.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Whitman, Alden (June 28, 1973c). "Earl Browder, Ex‐Communist Leader, Dies at 82". The New York Times.
  7. ^ "Communist Party membership by Districts 1922-1950 - Mapping American Social Movements". depts.washington.edu. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  8. ^ Committee on Un-American Activities, U. S. House of Representatives (December 18, 1948). Citations by Official Government Agencies of Organizations and Publications Found to be Communist or Communist Fronts. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  9. ^ Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws 1956, pp. 1743-53.
  10. ^ Gelb, Arthur (2003). City Room. Putnam. pp. 258, 259.
  11. ^ Kluger, Richard; Kluger, Phyllis (1986). The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune. Knopf. p. 476. ISBN 9780394508771.
  12. ^ Gelb 2003, p. 259.
  13. ^ Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
  14. ^ Whitman, Alden (December 1985). "Guns and Pencils". Bill of Rights Journal. XVIII: 17–18.
  15. ^ Whitman 1973c.
  16. ^ Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws 1956, p. 1731.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Alden Whitman Is Dead at 76; Made an Art of Times Obituaries". The New York Times. September 5, 1990.
  18. ^ Kluger & Kluger 1986, p. 477.
  19. ^ Johnson, Ralph H.; Altman, Michael (October 1, 1978). "Communists in the Press: A Senate Witch-Hunt of the 1950s Revisited". Journalism Quarterly. 55 (3): 487–8. doi:10.1177/107769907805500309. S2CID 144562789.
  20. ^ Jump up to: a b Alwood 2007, p. 116.
  21. ^ Victor S. Navasky (1980). Naming Names. Viking Press. p. 66. ISBN 9780670503933.
  22. ^ Sayre, Nora (1995). Previous Convictions: A Journey through the 1950s. Rutgers University Press. p. 253. ISBN 0813522315.
  23. ^ Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws 1956, pp. 1729,1730.
  24. ^ Johnson & Altman 1978, p. 489.
  25. ^ Caute, David (1978). The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780671226824. Whitman ... would have preferred to rely on the Fifth, but The Times's counsel, Louis M. Loeb, made it plain to him that dismissal would ensue.
  26. ^ Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws (1956), Strategy and Tactics of World Communism: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Eighty-Fourth Congress, Second Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 1733
  27. ^ "U.S. Drops Contempt Case Against a Times Newsman". The New York Times. November 30, 1965.
  28. ^ Johnson & Altman 1978, p. 490.
  29. ^ Jump up to: a b Alwood 2007, p. 136.
  30. ^ Alwood 2007, p. 137.
  31. ^ Whitman 1977a, p. 14: "The Times was not about to confer a byline on someone in contempt of Congress."
  32. ^ Jump up to: a b Halberstam, David (September 5, 1990). "In Memoriam: New York Times Obituary Writer Whitman". All Things Considered (Interview). Interviewed by Robert Siegel. NPR.
  33. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (September 4, 1968). "Ho Chi Minh Was Noted for Success in Blending Nationalism and Communism". The New York Times. Reprinted in The Obituary Book and Come to Judgment.
  34. ^ Jump up to: a b c Whitman, Alden (April 9, 1973b). "Protean and Prodigious, the Greatest Single Force in 70 Years of Art". The New York Times. Reprinted in Come to Judgment.
  35. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (June 2, 1968). "Triumph Out of Tragedy". The New York Times. Reprinted in The Obituary Book and Come to Judgment.
  36. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (August 28, 1975). "Haile Selassie of Ethiopia Dies at 83". The New York Times. Reprinted in Come to Judgment.
  37. ^ Jump up to: a b "J. Robert Oppenheimer, Atom Bomb Pioneer, Dies". The New York Times. February 19, 1967. Reprinted in The Obituary Book and Come to Judgment.
  38. ^ Whitman, Alden (1980a). Come to Judgment. New York: Viking Press. p. xiii. ISBN 067023169X.
  39. ^ Whitman, Alden (September 1977a). "Alden Whitman: 11 Years on the Death Watch". More. p. 15. I was an undercover obit writer for two years, officially, that is, until the Times broke precedent in January, 1967, by signing my piece on William C. Bullitt, the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. (The obit evoked a fan letter from Richard M. Nixon.)
  40. ^ Sayre 1995, p. 221.
  41. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (February 16, 1967). "Energetic Diplomat: William C. Bullitt, First U.S. Envoy to Soviet, Dies". The New York Times.
  42. ^ Dannhauser, Walter J. (September 1971). "The Obituary Book, by Alden Whitman". Commentary.
  43. ^ Whitman, Alden (1971). The Obituary Book. New York: Stein & Day. p. 31. ISBN 0812813545.
  44. ^ Whitman 1971, p. 9.
  45. ^ Halberstam 1990.
  46. ^ Talese 1966, p. 89.
  47. ^ Jump up to: a b "Prof. J.B.S. Haldane, 72, Dies; British Geneticist and Writer". The New York Times. December 2, 1964. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  48. ^ Sidney Zion (October 1, 1990). "Alden Whitman". The Nation. Reprinted in Trust your mother, but cut the cards (1993).
  49. ^ Whitman 1971, p. 10.
  50. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman 1974a.
  51. ^ Whitman, Alden (Autumn 1977). "The Reader Replies". The American Scholar. 46 (4): 554.
  52. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (December 27, 1972). "Harry S. Truman: Decisive President". The New York Times.
  53. ^ Whitman, Alden (March 12, 1973). "Truth in Death". Newsweek. p. 13.
  54. ^ Whitman 1980a, p. xiii.
  55. ^ Marilyn Johnson (2006). The Dead Beat. Harper. p. 47. ISBN 9780061850363.
  56. ^ Whitman 1971.
  57. ^ Jump up to: a b Whitman, Alden (June 12, 1970). "Alexander Kerensky dies here at 89". The New York Times. p. 26. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  58. ^ Whitman, Alden (January 28, 1973a). "A Builder Looks Back—and Moves Forward". The New York Times.
  59. ^ Bump, Philip (July 30, 2015). "The rise of Donald J. Trump — as told in the pages of the New York Times". The Washington Post.
  60. ^ Giampia, Nick (February 18, 2016). "Eric Trump: Everything My Father Touches Turns to Gold". Fox Business.
  61. ^ Whitman 1971, pp. 8,9.
  62. ^ "Oral History Aide Named". The New York Times. April 6, 1971.
  63. ^ Whitman, Alden (November 9, 1974b). "An American Homer's Story". The New York Times.
  64. ^ Whitman, Alden (February 4, 1979). "Industrialization as gripping human saga". Los Angeles Times.
  65. ^ Whitman, Alden (September 13, 1974a). Speech to Oral History Association (Speech). University of North Texas Libraries.
  66. ^ Whitman, Alden (September 19, 1981). "Shirt-sleeves Executive". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 6, 2019.
  67. ^ Jump up to: a b "Alden Whitman, N.Y. Times Obituarist, Dies". The Washington Post. September 6, 1990. Retrieved July 14, 2015.
  68. ^ Heise, Kenan (September 7, 1990). "A. Whitman; did obituaries for N.Y. Times". Chicago Tribune.
  69. ^ "Albert Schweitzer, 90, Dies at His Hospital". The New York Times. September 6, 1965. Reprinted in The Obituary Book and Come to Judgment.
  70. ^ "Alice Toklas, 89, is Dead in Paris". The New York Times. March 8, 1967. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  71. ^ Whitman, Alden (December 26, 1977). "Chaplin's Little Tramp, an Everyman Trying to Gild Cage of Life, Enthralled World". The New York Times. Reprinted in Come to Judgment.
  72. ^ Whitman, Alden (December 26, 1977). "The Life of Chiang Kai‐shek: A Leader Who Was Thrust Aside by Revolution". The New York Times. Reprinted in Come to Judgment.
  73. ^ "Elizabeth Arden Is Dead at 81; Made Beauty a Global Business". The New York Times. October 19, 1966. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  74. ^ Whitman, Alden (June 6, 1980b). "Henry Miller, 88, Dies in California". The New York Times.
  75. ^ "Le Corbusier, Pioneering Architect, Is Dead". The New York Times. August 28, 1965. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  76. ^ Whitman, Alden (November 16, 1978). "Margaret Mead Is Dead of Cancer at 76". The New York Times.
  77. ^ "T.S. Eliot, the Poet, is Dead in London at 76". The New York Times. January 5, 1965. Reprinted in The Obituary Book.
  78. ^ "Rebel With a Cause". The New York Times. November 26, 1968.
  79. ^ Whitman, Alden (July 5, 1977). "Vladimir Nabokov, Author of 'Lolita' And 'Ada', Is Dead". The New York Times.

Further reading[]

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