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Chicago, IL, January 18, 2007 —Art Buchwald: Author, Syndicated Columnist Art Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, best-selling author and longtime political satirist, died Wednesday in Washington, D.C., of kidney failure. He had been living with his son, Joel Buchwald, and was receiving care from Community Hospice of Washington. A statement issued by his family said he died comfortably with family members at his bedside. Buchwald, 81, had published a book, "Too Soon to Say Goodbye" (Random House), in November about his experience after checking into a hospice last year with kidney failure. Other ailments had resulted in the amputation of one of his legs below the knee. Early in 2006, he discontinued dialysis, suspended his syndicated newspaper column and assumed he would die shortly in the hospice. Instead, Buchwald made a remarkable comeback, resumed his syndicated newspaper column and held court in the hospice to numerous celebrities, politicians and other well-wishers. Dubbing himself "The Man Who Wouldn't Die," Buchwald eventually moved out of the hospice and back to his summer home on Martha's Vineyard. His newspaper columns about his near-death experience and his book attracted international interest. Buchwald made numerous media appearances and was the subject of dozens of print stories in which he celebrated his reprieve, praised hospice care and - with trademark humor - mused on the meaning of life, death and the potential afterlife. In January, however, Buchwald's health problems worsened, and he once again suspended his column, which was syndicated to newspapers in the U.S. and abroad by Tribune Media Services. He moved back to Washington to live with his son and family. "It's a tremendous loss," said David D. Williams, president and CEO of TMS. "Very seldom does an individual come onto the journalism stage and perform at such a high level for such an extended period. "Art's commentaries graced the pages of newspapers around the world for more than fifty years," Williams added. "He was an original. We won't see his like again anytime soon." In November, the National Press Foundation had awarded Buchwald the W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism "for his grace, humor, astounding productivity and lifetime commitment to the craft." He was to have received the award in February at a dinner in Washington. Buchwald, son of a curtain manufacturer, was born in 1925 in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. He grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. At 17, he left home to join the U.S. Marine Corps and from 1942 to 1945 served with the Fourth Marine Air Wing in the Pacific, being discharged as a sergeant. On his return to civilian life, Buchwald enrolled at the University of Southern California to study liberal arts under the G.I. Bill. At USC he was managing editor of the campus magazine, Wampus; he wrote a column for the college newspaper, The Daily Trojan; and he contributed to a variety show called "No Love Atoll." In 1948 he left USC without taking his degree and, using the $250 check he had received as a war bonus, bought a one-way ticket to Paris. When his money ran out, Buchwald landed a job as a correspondent in the Paris bureau of Variety. In January of 1949, he took a sample column to the Paris offices of the European edition of The New York Herald Tribune. Titled "Paris After Dark," it was filled with scraps of offbeat information about the city's nightlife. Buchwald was hired and his man-about-town column quickly caught on with Herald Tribune readers. In 1951, he launched another column, "Mostly About People." The two later were fused into one under the title "Europe's Lighter Side." Buchwald's columns soon began appearing in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. Although Paris was usually his beat, he would go almost anywhere and do almost anything to gather raw material. He marched in a May Day parade in East Berlin, chased goats up and down mountains in Yugoslavia and journeyed to Turkey to deliver a firsthand impression of a Turkish bath. On one occasion he made a three-week trip across the Soviet Union in a limousine driven by a uniformed chauffeur. Buchwald returned to the United States in 1962. He has written more than 30 other books, including Leaving Home (Putnam, 1994); I'll Always Have Paris (Putnam, 1995); I Think I Don't Remember (Putnam, 1987); and Stella in Heaven: Almost a Novel (Putnam, 2000). He also wrote two books for children: The Bollo Caper (Putnam, 1983) and Irving's Delight (McKay Publishing Co., 1975). He was a popular figure on the lecture circuit and held court for many years in several of Washington's top restaurants, first at the Sans Souci and then at the Maison Blanche. Buchwald is also known for the Buchwald v. Paramount lawsuit which he and partner Alain Bernheim filed against Paramount Pictures in 1988. The suit grew out of a controversy over the Eddie Murphy movie "Coming to America." Buchwald claimed Paramount had stolen his script idea. He prevailed in court and was awarded damages. Buchwald aimed his trademark irreverence at a wide range of targets, and no politician or stuffed shirt was safe from his razor-sharp wit. His columns about his illness were typical. For instance, on the downside of leaving the hospice: "Things I didn't care about because I was going to die, I now had to care about. This included shaving in the morning, buying a new cell phone that works. . . . I also had to start worrying about Bush again." Earlier, before suspending his column the first time, he was still taking on politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, often making serious social points with his barbs. Reacting to news, for instance, that FEMA was evicting Hurricane Katrina victims from their hotel rooms, he retold the Christmas story in his column, imagining FEMA in charge of providing housing for Joseph and Mary. In response to the news of the CIA's alleged covert flights of prisoners to Europe and Asia in order to torture them there, he "interviewed" a fictitious spokesman for the agency, who assured the columnist: "'There is no such thing as torture in our flight book." "I said, 'How can you say that when you make the prisoners sit in the middle seat with no leg room? Don't you consider that torture?'" "He said, 'There is nothing in the Geneva Convention that says we are not permitted to have a prisoner of war fly coach.'" Buchwald was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982 and in 1986 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. "I love my work," he often said. "I wouldn't do anything else." In addition to his son, Buchwald is survived by two daughters, Jennifer Buchwald and Connie Buchwald Marks; two sisters, Edith Jaffe and Doris Kahme; and five grandchildren. A memorial service is being planned to take place in Washington, D.C. Interment will be on Martha's Vineyard in the Vineyard Haven Cemetery, where Buchwald's wife, Ann, is buried. Tribune Media Services Tribune Media Services (TMS) is a leading domestic and international provider of information and entertainment products for print, electronic and on-air media. It distributes television and movie listings and related editorial content under the TMS and Zap2it brands; syndicates and licenses comics, features and opinion columns; creates and syndicates a variety of online information products; licenses editorial content from national periodicals; and manages national advertising networks. Through its McClatchy-Tribune partnership, TMS also markets news, photos, graphics and multimedia content. Headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Glens Falls, N.Y., Dallas, Milwaukee, Amsterdam, London and Hong Kong, TMS is a subsidiary of Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB). For more information about TMS and its products and services, visit Tribune Media Services www.tms.tribune.com. |
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