If You Knew Suzy (Knickerbocker)

The ghost of Suzy Knickerbocker (Aileen Mehle, 1918-2016) seems to hover over this cultural moment, especially for those who love to binge streaming TV series. There are echoes of her life and work in Palm Royale, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, and even Bridgerton. I didn’t discover her until recently, when I came across her as a panelist on an old episode of What’s My Line?She was a presence in New York culture until quite recently; I’m not sure how it’s taken me so long to become aware of her, as opposed to, say, Rona Barrett, Liz Smith, or Cindy Adams, but what the hell, in the end we’re all just tumbleweeds anyway.

She was a single mom living in Palm Beach in the early 1950s when she was hired by the The Miami Daily News to write a society gossip column under the byline “Suzy”. In 1957 she brought her act to the New York Mirror with a column that was nationally syndicated, moving to the Journal-American in 1963 when the Mirror folded in the catastrophic newspaper strike that year. At that stage she merged her own byline with that of the previous columnist Igor Cassini, who went under “Knickerbocker” (a symbolic moniker traces its origins all the way back to Washington Irving). In 1966 the Journal-American also crashed as the result of a second strike. She then moved on to the Daily News, which had swallowed the Mirror. It was a tumultuous time for newspapers.

And during this period she was briefly a TV star. Suzy was a panelist on five episodes ofTo Tell the Truth in 1964, and 11 episodes of What’s My Line? starting in early 1966 (the immediate aftermath of the death of What’s My Line? regular Dorothy Kilgallen). She also played herself on an episode of Batman. Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball was also during this period. Suzy’s coverage filled two pages, dubbing the author “host of the year”, though in other times, in other context, she called him “The Tiny Terror”.

Later Suzy would take her act to the New York Post. She left the daily grind in 1985, becoming a regular contributor to Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Architectural Digest for another two decades. In 1988 there was a minor scandal when she was accused of having fabricated some of her columns (I’m not sure what the point of that was, for by that time she had ceased to be a columnist). Suzy retired in 2005 at the age of 87. Her last interview was just before her death over a decade later; it was part of this terrific profile of her in Vanity Fair which came out a few months later.

For more on show biz history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.