:Louis Sobol
{{short description|American journalist}}
Louis Sobol (August 10, 1896 – February 9, 1986) was a journalist, Broadway gossip columnist, and radio host.{{r|hanscom}} Sobol wrote for Hearst newspapers for forty years, and was considered one of the country's most popular columnists.{{r|heir}} Sobol wrote about celebrities during the years when well-known columnists themselves became celebrities.{{r|hanscom}}
Early life
Sobol was born in New Haven, Connecticut.{{r|newsday}} He attended Crosby High School and was the chairman of the Dramatic Club, business manager of the school paper, and manager of the baseball team.{{r|days|p=136–138}} While still in high school, Sobol worked as a reporter for the Waterbury Republican.{{r|days|p=163}}
Career
Sobol continued to work on the Republican after high school, then left the Republican to work for the Bridgeport Standard.{{r|days|p=187}} He served in the Army during World War I.{{r|days|p=105}} After the war, Sobol returned to Connecticut where he became acting city editor on the New London Day{{r|days|p=204}} and was an occasional contributor to Variety.{{r|long|p=385}} He then moved to New York{{r|days|p=77}} where he worked for the Famous Features Syndicate, ghost-writing first-person stories which appeared in the New York Evening Graphic and New York Journal on behalf of clients, among them "Daddy" and Peaches Browning and Queen Marie of Romania.{{r|days|p=199–200}}
On May 31, 1929, Sobol took over Your Broadway and Mine column from Walter Winchell for the New York Evening Graphic.{{r|long|p=14}} He added a second column, Snapshots at Random, in October, 1929.{{r|long|p=26}} Sobol resigned from the Graphic in 1931, taking his column to New York Evening Journal{{r|long|p=37–38}} and renaming it The Voice of Broadway.{{r|nysc}} The column was later called New York Cavalcade.{{r|newsday}} Sobol's radio shows included the Borden Show and Ludwig Baumann Show on WOR, the Lucky Strike Hour on WEAF, and daily broadcasts for the American Broadcasting network.{{r|long|p=206}}
During 1932, Sobol performed in a vaudeville revival at the Palace Theatre{{r|long|p=195}}{{r|slide}} In 1933, he hosted a series of short films called "Louis Sobol shorts".{{r|sois}} In 1938, Sobol was given a luncheon to recognize his work for the New York and Brooklyn Federations of Jewish Charities.{{r|nyt}}
Sobol published two memoirs and a novel. His novel Six Lost Women was recommended by the reviewer in The New York Times for "the sentimental reader".{{r|six}} Sobol's book Some Days Were Happy is a memoir of his youth and early career.{{r|robbins}} His memoir The Longest Street, which Maurice Zolotow described as "the longest Broadway column ever written" and "a truthful rendering of a certain way of life at a certain period in New York history",{{r|zol}} describes the people he met and wrote about, the parties they all attended, and what it was like to go from being a small town journalist to a chronicler of Broadway, New York City, and Hollywood.{{r|long}} Sobol wrote one play, The High Hatters,{{r|shelby}} which received disappointing reviews.{{r|long|p=15–16}}
Sobol played himself in the 1947 film Copacabana.{{r|tvg}} In 1953, he was called "one of the nation's most popular columnists"; at that time, his New York Cavalcade column had a combined readership between 10 and 14,000,000, being syndicated throughout the country.{{r|cabot}} In 1962, Sobol was honored as "Man of the Year" by the March of Dimes.{{r|long|p=362}} Columnist Dan Lewis described Sobol as "a monumental influence in the world of show business".{{r|lewis}} Sobol retired from journalism in 1967.{{r|newsday}} Jim Bishop called Sobol "the most beloved" of the Broadway columnists.{{r|bishop}}
Personal life
Sobol married Leah Helen Cantor in 1919. They had one daughter. Leah died at age 51 in 1948.{{r|leah}} Sobol then married Peggy Strohl, a publicist, at City Hall in Santa Barbara, California on July 29, 1950.{{r|marries}}
Sobol died at Roosevelt Hospital{{r|obitnyt}} on February 9, 1986, at age 90.{{r|hanscom}}
References
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Category:American broadcast news analysts
Category:American male journalists
Category:American radio personalities
Category:American gossip columnists