Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson was one of the most famous journalists of the 1930s & '40s, winning the sobriquet the "First Lady of American Journalism." In 1939, Time Magazine recognized her as being on par with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in terms of her political clout. Born on July 9, 1893 in Lancaster, New York, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1914, having studied economics and political science. She became committed to the cause of women's suffrage and after that was achieved with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, she went overseas as a journalist. She became a foreign correspondent for the "Philadelphia Public Ledger" newspaper and, in 1927, became the had of the Berlin bureau of the "New York Post", becoming the first woman to head a foreign news bureau for a major newspaper. She became the doyenne of female foreign journalists. Her career flourished in the 1930s, when she became one of the few female radio commentators. She first interviewed Adolf Hitler in 1931, then wrote a book, "I Met Hitler" (1932) claiming he would never come to power (Hitler became German Chancellor in January 1933). In 1934, her articles heralding the dangers of the man she once dismissed caused her to become the first women journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany. She began writing her "On the Record" column for the "New York Tribune", the paper-of-record for America's Eastern WASP Establishment, in 1936. The thrice-weekly column was syndicated by the Tribune and, by June 1939, was carried by 196 newspapers, giving Thompson a readership of 7,555,000 readers. That same year, the National Broadcasting Co. hired Thompson her as a news commentator. In the years she was with NBC, her radio broadcasts were extremely popular. Appearing weekly on Monday at 9PM, she had 5.5 million listeners as of June 1939. In 1937, she began a monthly column for the "Ladies' Home Journal" on women's interest tropics such as child-raising and gardening. She kept writing the column up until her death 24 years later. Thompson made the cover of Time Magazine on June 12, 1939. Two and a half months later, she covered the Nazi invasion of Poland. Her journalism career continued until her death, though her influence waned after World War II. She was married three times. In 1928, she married the writer Sinclair Lewis, who two years later became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. They divorced in 1942. Dorothy Thompson died on January 30, 1961 in Lisbon, Portugal. She was 66 years old.