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Louis Sobol (August 10, 1896 – February 9, 1986) was a journalist, Broadway gossip columnist, and radio host.[1] Sobol wrote for Hearst newspapers for forty years, and was considered one of the country's most popular columnists.[2] Sobol wrote about celebrities during the years when well-known columnists themselves became celebrities.[1]
Sobol was born in New Haven, Connecticut.[3] He attended Crosby High School and was the chairman of the Dramatic Club, business manager of the school paper, and manager of the baseball team.[4]: 136–138 While still in high school, Sobol worked as a reporter for the Waterbury Republican.[4]: 163
Sobol continued to work on the Republican after high school, then left the Republican to work for the Bridgeport Standard.[4]: 187 He served in the Army during World War I.[4]: 105 After the war, Sobol returned to Connecticut where he became acting city editor on the New London Day[4]: 204 and was an occasional contributor to Variety.[5]: 385 He then moved to New York[4]: 77 where he worked for the Famous Features Syndicate, ghost-writing first-person stories which appeared in the New York Evening Graphic and New York Journal on behalf of clients, among them "Daddy" and Peaches Browning and Queen Marie of Romania.[4]: 199–200
On May 31, 1929, Sobol took over Your Broadway and Mine column from Walter Winchell for the New York Evening Graphic.[5]: 14 He added a second column, Snapshots at Random, in October, 1929.[5]: 26 Sobol resigned from the Graphic in 1931, taking his column to New York Evening Journal[5]: 37–38 and renaming it The Voice of Broadway.[6] The column was later called New York Cavalcade.[3] Sobol's radio shows included the Borden Show and Ludwig Baumann Show on WOR, the Lucky Strike Hour on WEAF, and daily broadcasts for the American Broadcasting network.[5]: 206
During 1932, Sobol performed in a vaudeville revival at the Palace Theatre[5]: 195 [7] In 1933, he hosted a series of short films called "Louis Sobol shorts".[8] In 1938, Sobol was given a luncheon to recognize his work for the New York and Brooklyn Federations of Jewish Charities.[9]
Sobol published two memoirs and a novel. His novel Six Lost Women was recommended by the reviewer in The New York Times for "the sentimental reader".[10] Sobol's book Some Days Were Happy is a memoir of his youth and early career.[11] His memoir The Longest Street, which Maurice Zolotow described as "the longest Broadway column ever written" and "a truthful rendering of a certain way of life at a certain period in New York history",[12] describes the people he met and wrote about, the parties they all attended, and what it was like to go from being a small town journalist to a chronicler of Broadway, New York City, and Hollywood.[5] Sobol wrote one play, The High Hatters,[13] which received disappointing reviews.[5]: 15–16
Sobol played himself in the 1947 film Copacabana.[14] In 1953, he was called "one of the nation's most popular columnists"; at that time, his New York Cavalcade column had a combined readership between 10 and 14,000,000, being syndicated throughout the country.[15] In 1962, Sobol was honored as "Man of the Year" by the March of Dimes.[5]: 362 Columnist Dan Lewis described Sobol as "a monumental influence in the world of show business".[16] Sobol retired from journalism in 1967.[3] Jim Bishop called Sobol "the most beloved" of the Broadway columnists.[17]
Sobol married Leah Helen Cantor in 1919. They had one daughter. Leah died at age 51 in 1948.[18] Sobol then married Peggy Strohl, a publicist, at City Hall in Santa Barbara, California on July 29, 1950.[19]
Sobol died at Roosevelt Hospital[20] on February 9, 1986, at age 90.[1]