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| Vol. 16 No. 29 | Tuesday
March 28, 2017 |
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Remembering Jimmy Breslin |
Jimmy Breslin died on Sunday, March 19. He was 88 years old. That name might mean nothing to you, but Jimmy was New York City’s greatest tabloid columnist reporter. Damon Runyun is another name you should know— together, they were the two best Gotham beat writers during the 20th century. In 1986, Breslin won a Pulitzer Prize for columns he wrote in the New York Daily News. I worked in the general vicinity of Jimmy Breslin—albeit, way down the line—at 231 W 41st Street in Manhattan. We were both employed at The New York Herald Tribune in the 1960s. Back then, the Trib was a sanctuary for some of the most creative newspaper people in the world. As a young copy boy earning all of 42 bucks a week, I got to run around serving some of the great writers. Young and always out of money, I supplemented my income placing bets on slips of paper for the staff that gambled on horse races and sports via the press room, where the book was operated. I often found myself in Bleecks, a saloon just downstairs on 40th Street, where writers bellied up to the bar in between columns. Thinking of Jimmy brings back memories of a time when New York City was failing and deep in debt. It was 1969, and someone floated the idea that Norman Mailer and Jimmy both run on the same ticket for Mayor. Two firebrands—both very short tempered and ready to throw fists if things got hot—had a nanosecond shelf life in politics, but the idea lasted long enough to generate a few columns, including one by Joe Flaherty published on April 4, 1969, in The Village Voice. It was headlined: “The Mailer-Breslin Ticket: Vote the Rascals In.” The setting is a meeting at Norman’s house with Flaherty, Mailer, Breslin, Pete Hamill, John Scanlon, and others. “The evening itself,” Flaherty writes, “besides the guest list -- wasn't very impressive. “Like all such evenings attended by polemicists, it resembled the building of the Tower of Babel. “Right winger Noel Parmenter wanted Mailer to run alone on the ticket; others wanted him to run with Jimmy Breslin in an attempt to appeal to the working class. “Another group was pushing for a Black Panther to run for comptroller, and still another wanted a woman on the ticket to run on the platform of female rights. “Along about now I was wishing that Carmine DeSapio (a notorious clubhouse politician) would enter the room and restore some decent totalitarian clubhouse order. “I left the meeting,” Flahery writes “with Breslin, Pete Hamill, and John Scanlon. “Breslin, walking toward the St. George Hotel to hail a cab to Queens, turned to us and shouted into the Brooklyn night: “‘You know something? “‘That bum is serious!’” Once upon a time, Jimmy wrote the lead story in the NYHT Second Section. Art Buchwald was the other Second Section lead writer that alternated with Jimmy in the Trib. But Art was Washington political and Jimmy was New York street and neighborhoods, writing in powerful terms about people you never heard about: the every man. His columns were like short novels you simply could not put down. Jimmy was always about the forgotten working class person who he described in vivid and powerful, even hysterical terms. Want to read a book that will make you laugh the kind of guffaws that are therapeutic? Get Jimmy’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Here’s a taste: “Kid Sally Palumbo has been a loyal servant to the Brooklyn Mafia for years. His specialty is murder, and he is so skilled at it that he has gotten the attention of Mafia boss Papa Baccala. But unfortunately for Kid Sally, murder pays poorly. He wants to make real dough, to get respect, and to be able to tell his colleagues where to sit when they eat dinner. In short, he wants to be boss. The job would be his for the taking—if only Kid Sally weren’t a Grade A moron. “To keep Sally from stirring up trouble, Baccala tosses him an easy assignment: Organize a bicycle race through Brooklyn, and keep the profits. Kid Sally bungles it, setting off a turf war that quickly engulfs the borough. The dimwitted mobsters are masters in the art of murder, and they are about to put on a show,” Breslin wrote. Writer Tom Robbins told a revealing Breslin story that occurred during the time after President Kennedy was killed in 1963, when Jimmy was in Washington. While everybody else was milling around the White House looking for a quote, Jimmy looked the other way and went out to Arlington National Cemetery and wrote a story about the man who dug the slain President’s grave. Clifton Pollard told Jimmy digging John F. Kennedy’s grave both honored and humbled him. The story made history. Today, Tom Robbins is an investigative reporter in residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He wrote this lovely homage in New Yorker Magazine: “On the day in November, 2004, that he decided to stop writing his three columns a week for Newsday, I was in Cleveland in a drenching downpour watching voters line up outside polling places to cast ballots for John Kerry or George W. Bush. “Breslin called to ask how things looked. “‘Not good if you were a Democrat,’ I said. “When he casually mentioned that he was finally done with newspapers—he returned, in 2011, for a short stint at the Daily News—the dank, dismal day grew darker. “‘What will you do?’ I asked. “‘Write!’ he screamed through the phone. “‘I still have to make a living, don’t I?’” Geoffrey |
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