Beau Broadway (Bo Broadway)

The New York (NY) Morning Telegraph column written by “Beau Broadway” was Broadway’s first and longest-running gossip column, from 1908 until the newspaper ended publication in 1972. Many different writers contributed to “Beau Broadway,” and the style and subjects (not always Broadway) varied considerably. Frank J. Price (who died in 1939) and Arthur James (who died in 1946) were both credited for writing the first “Beau Broadway” columns.
 
The “Beau Broadway” column was titled “The Town in Review” and usually was published on the top left side of the front page of the Morning Telegraph.
   
American newspaper gossip columnist Walter Winchell (1897-1972) was unhappy with his contract with the Evening Graphic and wrote the “Beau Broadway” columns on Sundays in 1928 and 1929, until he left the Graphic and started on the New York (NY) Daily Mirror in June 1929. “Your Broadway, Beau, and You Can Have It” by Ring Lardner (1885-1933)—a parody of a Winchell-penned “Beau Broadway” column—was published in the Morning Telegraph on January 22, 1929.
   
Joseph Van Raalte (the pen name of Graham L. Garth) was one of the writers of the “Beau Broadway” column. Van Raalte then became a syndicated newspaper columnist, naming his column “Bo Broadway,” from May 14, 1926 to December 5, 1931.
       
There was a 1928 silent movie titled Beau Broadway. The drama was about boxing, not the Morning Telegraph newspaper.
   
The Morning Telegraph also used the pseudonym “Beau Belmont,” who wrote about horse racing. The Morning Telegraph was called the “Morntelly” and the “Broadway Bible,” and the newspaper along with a cigarette was called a “chorus girl’s breakfast.”
     
       
Wikipedia: Beau Broadway
Beau Broadway is a lost 1928 American drama silent film directed by Malcolm St. Clair and written by F. Hugh Herbert, George O’Hara and Ralph Spence. The film stars Lew Cody, Aileen Pringle, Sue Carol, Hugh Trevor and Heinie Conklin. The film was released on August 15, 1928, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
       
6 March 1908, Atchison (KS) Champion, “The Central Branch Again,” pg. 2, col. 3:
Beau Broadway in the New York Morning Telegraph.
 
19 December 1908, The Enquirer (Cincinnati, OH), pg. 16, col. 1:   
“Beau Broadway,” in this morning’s Telegraph says: (...)
 
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23 June 1917, The Editor & Publisher (New York, NY), pg. 17, col. 3:
Walter Hurt, who used to do Beau Broadway on the New York Morning Telegraph and who was recently editor of the Scoop in Chicago, is starting a new weekly called the Paladin, in St. Louis.
 
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20 September 1918, Reedy’s Mirror (St. Louis, MO), pg. 466, col. 2:
The chorus girls’ breakfast is a copy of the Morning Telegraph and a cigarette. New York’s cafe population swears by the paper. (...) “The Town in Review” column, signed Beau Broadway, is the sharpest, spiciest collection of paragraphs you’ll find anywhere. Those paragraphs are tabloid editorials worth more than the formal wordy expatiations of the “leading” dailies.
 
24 October 1926, Sunday American-Statesman (Austin, TX), “What No Parsnips!” by O. O. McIntyre, pg. 4, col. 5:
Leo Marsh has fallen heir to the managing editorship of the Morning Telegraph and also writes its front page column signed “Beau Broadway.” Marsh succeeded the late Rennald Wolf as dramatic critic on the Telegraph and filled his shoes ably. he is one of the most popular scribblers along the Big Rue and is the husband of Helen Rockwell, also a talented writer.
 
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Plain Talk
Volume 4
1929
Pg. 58:     
Al Greason sat in his corner folding papers into minute, long strips, endlessly and without reason. Often he wrote the witty “Beau Broadway” section on page one. In fact, we all took a shot at it now and then.
     
25 September 1929, Variety (New York, NY), “Literati,” pg. 68, col. 3:
Van Raalte’s Column
New syndicated commentator on New York is Joe Van Raalte. Joe, who used to conduct the “Beau Broadway” column on the “Morning Telegraph,” calls his new column “Bo Broadway,” which probably means that Joe has gotten tough since. The column is syndicated by the Central Press Association to around 200 papers, with the list growing.
     
19 February 1931, Daily News (New York, NY), pg. 29, col. 1:
Beau Broadway: The Daily Story from Real Life
By AUBREY WISBERG.
 
15 June 1931, Akron (OH) Beacon Journal, “New York Day by Day” by O. O. McIntyre, pg. 4, col. 4:
The Morning Telegraph gave birth to what is now the Broadway column. On its first page sparked a double columned ember of sophistications penned by “Beau Broadway”—a pseudonym used by many different writers on the staff. it was supposed to reflect top flight gossip of its day.
 
21 August 1936, Jasper (IN) Herald, “Square Shootin’” by S. E. Stemle, pg. 4, col. 4:
Several years ago there ran in the Louisville TIMES and about two hundred other newspapers a feature headed, “Bo Broadway.” It was written by Joseph van Raalte, a gentleman who seemd to know his way around and had been places and seen things. More recently, several books by him (including “Vice Squad”) have been made into movies. But what I’m getting around to is this: van Raalte, whose real name is Graham L. Garth, decided about a year ago that he preferred the quiet of a farm in Indiana to the roar of the man-made canyons in New York, and bought a farm near Cuzco.
 
6 November 1936, New York (NY) Times, “Leo Marsh Dead; Dramatic Editor,” pg. 25, col. 5:
On The Morning Telegraph, he conducted the column, “Beau Broadway,” a predecessor of the modern Broadway gossip columns. His success in this post led to his appointment as dramatic critic and city editor of The Morning Telegraph.
     
24 May 1938, Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), “On Broadway” by Walter Winchell, pg. 10, col. 6:
Various talented scribblers took a whirl at doing “Beau Broadway,” so it was rarely the same day after day. There used to be a tale that the last one out of the car barn (where it was published) was stuck with the col’m…And this is news and a confession at the same time…We wrote “Beau Broadway” anonymously on Sunday for two years—guess when!
 
4 August 1939, Jasper (IN) Herald, “Home of Late Author Destroyed by Flames,” pg. 5, col. 4:
Mrs. Garth is the widow of the late columnist and author, Graham L. Garth, who died about two years ago. Mr. Garth, who formerly wrote a column entitled “Bo Broadway” under the pen name of Joseph Van Raalte, retired several years ago, whereupon he and his wife moved to the farm, which is about six miles north of Haysville, and built the home.
 
7 October 1939, New York (NY) Times, “Frank J. Price, 79, Writer and Editor (...) First ‘Beau Broadway’ for The Morning Telegraph,” pg. 17, col. 5:
Since his retirement in 1924 as editorial and special writer for The New York Morning Telegraph, where, under the name of Beau Broadway, he started “The Town in Review,” one of the first Broadway columns, he had spent most of his time on his farm at Lackawaxen, Pike County, Pa.
(The article states that Price was Sunday editor of the New York Telegraph from 1902 to 1908, left the newspaper, and then returned to the Morning Telegraph from 1914 to 1924.—ed.)
 
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Collected Edition of Heywood Broun
Compiled by Heywood Hale Broun
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company
1941
Pg. 3:
The first item which I ever wrote for print was a contribution to the first-page column of the paper which was signed Beau Broadway. It was accepted and run at the top of the column.
   
24 May 1946, New York (NY) Times, “Arthur James, 68, A Newspaper Man; Former City Editor of Morning Telegraph Here Dies,” pg. 19, col. 3:
Mr. James had been city editor of The Morning Telegraph in New York and originated the column called “Beau Broadway.”
 
21 August 1946, Variety (New York, NY), “Channing Pollock Dies on L.I. at 66,” pg. 60, col. 2:
During the heyday of their career Pollock and the late Renhold Wolf, the “Beau Broadway” columnist for the N. Y. Morning Telegraph, were inseparables.
     
21 January 1949, Asbury Park (NJ) Evening Press (The Evening News), “Pitching In a Pinch” by John Wheeler, pg. 8, col. 5:
When Walter Winchell first started his column on the old New York Graphic, he was unhappy about a contract he had signed and which he couldn’t break. Just about this time Joe Moore, formerly general manager of the Hearst papers, bought the New York Morning Telegraph and tried to convert it into a daily something like the New Yorker magazine.  Thru me a meeting was arranged between Messrs. Moor and Winchell, and a deal was made for a Sunday column at $100 a week under the name of Beau Broadway. Mr. Broadway then joined the Telegraph stable of celebrities which included Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, Gene Fowler, etc., continuing on the Graphic as Walter Winchell.
 
To make it look good the author of the Sunday Telegraph column would pan Winchell good every week, making nasty cracks and criticizing him as a writer and newspaperman. As far as I know Winchell continued to be the masked marvel until he stopped this weekly column when he went to the New York Mirror.
 
11 July 1950, The Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY), “On Broadway” by Walter Winchell, pg. 7, col. 5:
Wallace Sullivan, once “Beau Broadway” for the Morning Telegraph, is in a coast sanitarium. Breakdown.
 
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Ring Lardner:
A Biography
By Donald Elder
Garden City, NY: Doubleday
1956
Pg. ?:
... society, and Walter Winchell contributed a Broadway gossip column under the pseudonym “Beau Broadway.” Ring wrote a parody of this, called “‘Your Broadway, Beau, and You Can Have It.”
       
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The Young Man from Denver
By Will Fowler
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
1962
Pop had hired Walter Winchell to write a column, Beau Broadway, anonymously, as Winchell sat out a contract with the Graphic just before he was to go to work for Hearst for a lot more money.
     
9 October 1967, Indianapolis (IN) Star, “Broadway and Elsewhere” by Walter Winchell, pg. 25, col. 2:
The Morntelly’s Beau Broadway column in the latter 1920s was conducted by One Guess for two years.
(“One Guess” means Walter Winchell.—ed.)
   
10 September 1968, Daily News (New York, NY), pg. 86, col. 2:
IRVING HOFFMAN
Irving Hoffman, 60, Broadway and Hollywood columnist and public relations man for several major corporations, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. Hoffman’s columns, including “Beau Broadway,” appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, the Morning Telegraph and the New York Journal-American.
   
5 November 1969, New York (NY) Times, “Whitney Bolton, Drama Reviewer: Morning Telegraph’s Critic and Columnist Dies,” pg. 47, col. 3:
He (Whitney Bolton—ed.) wrote a column of theatrical anecdotes under the title Beau Broadway.
 
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Winchell
By Bob Thomas
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
1971
Pg. 55:
Gene Fowler, who was serving as editor of the Morning Telegraph, hired Winchell to write another Broadway column, “Beau Broadway.” Obviously he couldn’t sign his name to the column while still working for the Graphic. “Beau Broadway” was so successful that Winchell was accused of imitating it when he eventually joined Hearst.
       
23 March 1973, New York (NY) Times, “David Alexander, Turf Writer, Dies: Editor of Morning Telegraph Was Author of Mysteries,” pg. 40, col. 3:
At the age of 26, Mr. Alexander became managing editor of The Morning Telegraph and wrote a column called Beau Broadway, which gave a career start to several journalists who later became famous, notably the late Walter Winchell.
 
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A Talent for Luck:
An Autobiography
By Helen Marion Strauss
New York, NY: Random House
1979
Pg. 59:
Informed, witty, he was a brilliant caricaturist, having illustrated Walter Winchell’s “Beau Broadway” column for the Morning Telegraph.
 
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The French and American history of Michael Garoutte and his descendants
By Ellan Douglas Thiesen
Salem, OR: E.D. Thiesen
1985
Pg. 102:
FRANK J. PRICE, b. March 8, 1860 Neosho, Mo., d. Oct. 5, 1939 Oceanport, New Jersey, (...) His “Town in Review” appeared in the New York Morning Telegraph under the name of Beau Broadway.
 
New York Morning Telegraph
OBITUARY
PUBLISHED IN: HISTORY ON JANUARY 23, 2007 AT 10:46 PM
(...)
When it carried Walter Winchell’s “Beau Broadway” column in the 1920s, the Telegraph was studied as closely as Variety at Broadway restaurants such as Sardi’s and Lindy’s.