RICHARD'S WOMANIZING MADE DOROTHY VULNERABLE TO JOHNNIE RAY

Notes and Excerpts:

By 1950 Dorothy Kilgallen and husband Richard Kollmar were settled in the good life, a life that many could only dream of.  They had rich friends to visit and enjoy. They took vacations to Latin America, the islands of Greece, Rome and Paris. They went to church on Sunday and then to exclusive clubs like The Stork, bringing along the children. Their two children were enrolled in private schools and had a governess.

As a couple they were broadcasting a show together on the radio,  Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick, which brought in enough money for them to live in a sixteen room Park Avenue apartment with a lavish interior. They threw great parties, especially for New Years Eve and their wedding anniversaries, that included dancing to orchestras and costume balls. They appeared to be a perfect couple, still had a good time, still had so much in common. 

And as a Catholic, Dorothy believed in forever marriage.

However:

'Richard's whoring was common knowledge among the cognoscenti in New York - as commonly known as Dorothy's fidelity.  He brought his women to some parties given by Charlotte Manson, who was now a successful radio actress. "He would call me to tell me about his newest," Charlotte Manson recalled. "He would all of a sudden appear at my apartment with them.  It was unforgivable." (page 198)

"Edgar Hatfield arranged the financial settlements for his old school chum when pregnancies resulted.  A famous stripteaser was one of the several women whom Richard inconvenienced.  Hatfield thundered, "The least you can do is take some kind of precautions!"

"I can't be bothered," Richard replied...' (page 199)

(Though Dorothy is thought to have never complained, at least one old friend got a desperate call from her.  The couple began to live separate lives.)

Dorothy's journalism career was such that millions read her Voice of Broadway column as syndicated through the Hearst organization. She was not always kind to those she didn't like so a sometimes critical voice was apparent in what she wrote, and sometimes stars were nice to her just to maintain a good word. 

'...In 1952, however, emerged, at the dawning of the corseted Eisenhower years, a twenty-five year old farm boy named Johnnie Ray. Johnnie had been singing professionally for seven years when his record, "Cry," flip side "The Little White Cloud That Cried," jumped onto the charts and sold two million copies for Columbia, making it the second biggest hit in the company's history.  With a hearing aid protruding from one ear, the deafness resulting from an accident at a Boy Scout jamboree back in Oregon, he looked like a pale, anguished El Greco saint. There was a Kol Nidre choke in his voice, and a demented, revivalist abandon in his performance.  He jumped, wept, thumped, whispered, knelt, and contorted in a way that no white performer had done before.' (page 221-222)

'It was Dorothy, in fact, who was astonished by her own response to the young singer as she witnessed his performance for the first time. (At the Copacabana, New York City.) (page 222)

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Just an end note that on page 148 it's noted that Richard co-produced a Broadway play with his then partner Alfred Bloomingdale.  At the time Alfred, who's Mistress Vicki Morgan was the Mistress of the month in March 2016. VICKI MORGAN :  MONEY MAD MISTRESS OF ALFRED BLOOMINGDALE :  WAS SHE REALLY SO "BAD" WHEN SHE STUCK BY HIM ON HIS DEATHBED? was only twenty-eight grandson of the founder of the famous Bloomingdale's department store. However, the work on the show was actually the doing of RIchard, as Alfred seems to have been a passive partner or investor. I also want to mention that Richard was not a career failure overall, that he worked in a speculative business.  It's just that his wife, Dorothy Kilgallen's career was so outstanding comparatively.