In the world of peephole journalism, there is no more beautiful relationship than that between Columnist Walter Winchell and Sherman Billingsley, owner of Manhattan's famed Stork Club. Oklahoman Billingsley dates the beginning of his club's fabulous success from the day Winchell first came in and pronounced it "the New Yorkiest place in town." Since then Winchell has always had his own table there, and uses the Stork as his night office. There, he has planned many of the crusades which have gradually promoted him in his own esteem from gossip reporter to the foremost champion of human rights. But last week the Champ was screaming as shrilly as the kind of drunken blonde that Billingsley never, never allows in his club. Walter had been accused of ignoring an act of "discrimination" * that was made no more than a table-hopper's hop from his Cub Room table.
No Crabrneat. The discriminee was tall, tan Josephine Baker, the sleek Negro singer who first achieved fame in Paris by entertaining while clad only in a girdle of bananas. Miss Baker and some friends (Roger Rico, current male lead in South Pacific, Mrs. Rico and Mrs. Bessie Buchanan, an old friend of Miss Baker's) had sat down in the Cub Room, where they were served a round of drinks. Then Miss Baker ordered a crabmeat cocktail, a steak and a bottle of wine. One hour later, according to friends, nothing had been served, and the waiters were playing a rotary defense. Josephine, who has made something of a specialty of creating incidents since her return to the U.S. last spring, reacted with practiced dispatch. She stormed into the night to find Walter White, executive secretary of the-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to whom her companions delivered the shattering charge: Winchell had been there and seen it all, and never lifted a finger to help.
White promptly fired off a telegram to Winchell, demanding an explanation. The row was fanned busily by the New York Post, which often vies with Winchell as the foremost champion of human rights. Then Fighter Sugar Ray Robinson weighed in. Sugar Ray said he would regretfully quit Winchell's Damon Runyon Memorial Fund unless Billingsley, also on the fund committee, "cleared up the situation immediately." Josephine Baker had given the fund the $20,000 proceeds of a Los Angeles appearance and Sugar Ray had just returned from a $60,000 benefit for it in Boston. Said Sugar Ray: "I can't tell you how it makes me feel being a member of a committee fighting cancer, and you have a cancer right there in your own committee."
"I Am Appalled." Winchell began to explain. He insisted that he had left the Stork Club before the Baker incident occurred. Cried Winchell: "I am appalled at the agony and embarrassment caused Josephine Baker and her friends at the Stork Club. But I am equally appalled at their efforts to involve me in an incident in which I had no part." As a clincher, he added a letter from Walter White himself, doubting that Winchell "would be a party to any insult to human dignity."
But next day, White indignantly cried foul. He had given the letter to Winchell only with the understanding that Winchell would repudiate Billingsley and his "anti-Negro, anti-Jewish, antilabor, pro-snob attitude." Snapped White: he hadn't.