Leonard Lyons SIGNED Memo July 7, 1947 to Rose Bigman The Mirror NYC “Girl Friday” (Walter Winchell’s Secretary) Used Condition. Free First Class Mail.

On Leonard Lyons Memo Sheet

4” x 6” Inside Plastic Postcard Case

Leonard Lyons (born Leonard Sucher; 10 September 1906 – 7 October 1976) was an American newspaper columnist.

Sucher was born in New York City. He grew up in a large family of Jewish immigrants from the town of Horodenka in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father Moses, a tailor, died when he was six. His mother sold cigarettes and candy on the Lower East Side. He graduated from the High School of Commerce, where his classmates included Lou Gehrig. He graduated from the City College of New York and was in the first class of graduates from St. John’s University School of Law. He was admitted to the New York State bar in 1929, and practiced law for five years.

As a side activity, Leonard Sucher began a weekly column for the English-language page of the Jewish Daily Forward, called “East of Broadway”. He applied for a post as a Broadway columnist with the New York Post, and won the job. The editor of the Post gave Sucher an alternative last name, Lyons, for professional use, and thus he became “Leonard Lyons”, an alliterative name reminiscent of Walter Winchell, another noted newspaper columnist of the day. Lyons’ first column appeared May 20, 1934, under the banner of “The Lyons Den”, a name devised by Walter Winchell. Lyons worked on “The Lyons Den” 6 days per week, producing as many columns per week, covering theater, movies, politics and art, a total of approximately 12,000 columns.

He travelled the world and sent back daily columns, sometimes giving his column to New York-bound travelers with a request they contact the paper upon arrival. He avoided writing about scandal in his column, and thus earned the trust of the many figures he met. One characterisation of his column was as follows:

Lyons … .never breaks a confidence, and except for a few personal feuds, notably with Walter Winchell and Bennett Cerf, never spits venom in his column.

The column became a New York institution, and was syndicated nationally first by King Features Syndicate. In 1941, the McNaught Syndicate took over syndication of the column. Lyons received an honorary degree from Wilberforce University and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

By 1974, the circulation of “The Lyons Den” had diminished to 18 columns, and Lyons retired with his last column on the exact 40th anniversary of the column, 20 May 1974. New York Mayor John V. Lindsay invited him to City Hall and presented him with a medal and a proclamation honoring him. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued another proclamation in his name.

Lyons and his wife Sylvia were married in November 1934. Their marriage lasted until Lyons’ death, and produced four sons: George, a stock broker, Warren, a theatrical producer and singing coach, Jeffrey, a film and theatre critic, and Douglas, a criminal defense attorney. Leonard Lyons’ grandson and Jeffrey Lyons’ son is the television personality Ben Lyons. Both Jeffrey Lyons and Ben Lyons have continued to use the name “The Lyons Den” in their respective media outlets for their work.

Rose Bigman, Walter Winchell’s formidable ”girl Friday” who worked seven days a week shielding the columnist from his enemies, fending off his friends and serving him with slavish devotion for more than three decades, died on Wednesday at the Village Nursing Home in Manhattan. She was 87 and had lived in Greenwich Village.

During the years when an estimated 50 million Americans, two thirds of the nation’s adult population, either read Winchell’s newspaper columns or listened to his Sunday night radio broadcasts, nobody hung on his words the way Rose Bigman did.

After all, she was the secretary to one of the most powerful men in America, and she savored her position as his gatekeeper, the woman who stood between him and the packs of press agents and others clamoring for his attention.

Not that it was easy being Winchell’s secretary. He was a demanding boss who flew into rages over the most trivial mistake and rarely had praise for a job well done. Yet for 35 years, beginning in the mid-1930’s, Miss Bigman, a small, nervous woman who was a whiz at typing, not only took his abuse, she rewarded him with unswerving loyalty.