Dorothy in Quotes

People who knew Dorothy

Quotes About Dorothy Kilgallen

Customer Testimonails

Kilgallen was the greatest female writer in the world.

Ernest Hemingway
Customer Testimonails

Kilgallen was the most powerful female voice in America

New York Post Daily News 1960
Customer Testimonails

She was a very bright and very good reporter of criminal cases. The best there was.

Famed attorney F. Lee Bailey

“A lot of people knew Dorothy as a very tough game player; others knew her as a tough newspaper woman. When she went after a story, nothing could get in her way.”

Random House co-founder and What’s My Line? panelist Bennett Cerf

“Wherever Dorothy Kilgallen goes fame precedes her, envy follows her and a crowd looks on. She is one of the communication marvels of the age.”

New York Post Daily Magazine 1960

“People who did not know her totally misunderstood her. They thought she was a cold-hearted newspaper woman who would stop at nothing. That was cynical – attack, attack, attack. But Dorothy wasn’t any of these things, She was the softest, tenderest, most thoughtful, most loveable woman I have ever known.”

Singer Johnnie Ray

“She’s was good a reporter as ever came down the line.”

Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr.

“She was a brilliant woman, quick-minded intelligent.”

Actor Steve Allen

“She is a modern up—to-the-minute woman reporter. With her versatile, sparkling writing and her ‘far-beyond-her-years’ perception and power of observation, she can cover everything from a baby shower to a sensational police court trial.”

New York Journal-American

“Dorothy’s daily arrivals at the little courtroom in Cleveland where Sam Sheppard was on trial were not unlike the arrival at home plate of Mickey Mantle with the bases filled.”

Celebrated syndicated columnist Bob Considine

“Kilgallen is an attractive woman with a delicate, moon-pale complexion, dark brunette hair, a knock-out hourglass figure and no inconsiderable bustline . . . she [is] a scrupulously coiffed model of respectable high fashion style, her deportment and appearance bespoke of 400’s traditional veil-and-white sensibility with an added twist of enviably tasteful, up-to-date chic. She exudes class, grace and noble distinction. Dorothy is, viewed from the proper angle, quite a dish.”

New York Post

“In Los Angeles, busy Dorothy Kilgallen sometimes attracted more attention than the trial. She posed for pictures with the defendant, signed scores of autographs for admirers, and received an orchid from an unidentified California Judge. Yet, for all that, her copy, rattled off on an electric typewriter in her hotel room, provided the best coverage of the Finch-Tregoff trial.”

Time magazine

“Dorothy Kilgallen arrived [at the Ruby trial] yesterday and stopped the show. Judge Joe B. Brown, one of her fans, gallantly granted (yea, insisted) on an interview in his chambers. Melvin Belli, of San Francisco, and Joe Tonahill, of Jasper, Texas, took her to lunch at a nearby seafood house named Vincent’s — whose oysters Belli declared are the best this side of his native city’s Fisherman’s Wharf.”

Famed syndicated columnist Bob Considine

[Kilgallen] was “just about the biggest female celebrity around . . . she was Miss New York.”

Sherman Billingsley, a Frank Costello associate and a former bootlegger who was the founder of New York City’s Stork Club

[Kilgallen] “was a very powerful woman—people don’t have any idea of the contacts and power she had . . . Dorothy had favors she could call in from people all over the world.”

CBS Producer Marlon Swing

“Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the great reporters of our time. Her coverage of trials were journalistic masterpieces. She was a star and gave glamour and glitter to the world of journalism.”

Film Producer David Merrick

“One of the greatest women who ever lived.”

Actress Joan Crawford

“[Dorothy] was never one of the boys. She was always very much a dame. She could be quite grand when the mood or the necessity was on her. Or she could sit down with the boys and drink a little whisky . . . she did her job on this earth and, by God, whatever she had to do she did as well as anybody ever did.” Famed journalist Dominick Dunne wrote, “ . . . she projected an aura of glamour with her magnificent evening dresses and jewels . . . She had wit, power, and a mean streak . . . Everybody read her, and a lot of people were afraid of her.”

Bill Slocum, New York Journal-American