Jimmy Bresling - # 154

Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer-Winning New York Journalist and Author, Dies at 88

Rumbled reporter and columnist lived a life as outsized as the characters he depicted and exposed in print

 

He was number 154 on the list.

Jimmy Breslin, the Pulitzer-winning reporter and columnist whose life was as outsized as the New York City characters he depicted and exposed in print, died Sunday at the age of 88.

He died in his Manhattan home from complications from pneumonia, according to the New York Daily News.

The Queens native — who never shook his accent from that borough — became a fixture of big-city journalism, primarily for the New York Daily News, by championing the little guy.

He also was the source of both scoops and controversy through the years. In the summer of 1977, he reported on letters he received from “Son of Sam” serial killer, David Berkowitz. After getting a late night call in 1980 about John Lennon’s murder, he located the police officers who had responded to the call and got their account into the next day’s paper.

He also exposed one of the city’s worst corruption scandals in the ’80s, and was pulled from a car during riots in Brooklyn in the 1990s and stripped to his underwear.

In 1986, he won both the Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the George Polk Award for metropolitan reporting.

Breslin became a best-selling author and, at one point in 1969, mounted a high-profile and curious bid for public office, running for city council president on a ticket with fellow author Norman Mailer as the mayoral candidate. They both lost — badly.

But it was a rare setback for a writer who had a knack for finding an angle on stories that others might miss. His first major success in that regard came in 1963 when he was sent to cover the funeral of John F. Kennedy and wrote about the man who dug the late president’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery, Clifton Pollard.

Breslin was married twice. His first marriage, to Rosemary Dattolico, ended with her death in 1981. They had six children together: sons Kevin, James, Patrick, and Christopher, and daughters Rosemary and Kelly. His daughter Rosemary died June 14, 2004, from a rare blood disease, and his daughter Kelly, 44, died on April 21, 2009, four days after suffering from cardiac arrhythmia in a New York City restaurant. From 1982 until his death in 2017, Breslin had been married to former New York City Council member Ronnie Eldridge.

Shortly before his death, Breslin was interviewed with Pete Hamill for the 2019 HBO documentary Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists.

In May 1990, after fellow Newsday columnist Ji-Yeon Yuh described one of his articles as sexist, Breslin heatedly retorted with racial and sexual invective. Asian American and anti-hate groups forcefully decried Breslin's outburst. Breslin appeared on The Howard Stern Show to banter about his outburst and Koreans in general. Following this controversial radio broadcast, Newsday managing editor Anthony Marro suspended Breslin for two weeks, who then apologized.

Author and former FBI agent Robert K. Ressler has stated that Breslin "baited Berkowitz and irresponsibly contributed to the continuation of his murders" by trying to sell sensationalist newspapers. In Ressler's book Whoever Fights Monsters, Ressler condemns Breslin and the media for their involvement in encouraging serial killers by directing their activity with printed conjectures.

In return for his "relentless columns on police misbehavior", the local patrolmen's union bought protest ads in his own newspaper.

Breslin began working for the Long Island Press as a copy boy in the 1940s. After leaving college, he became a columnist. His early columns were attributed to politicians and ordinary people that he chatted with in various watering holes near Queens Borough Hall. Breslin was a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, the Daily News, the New York Journal American, Newsday, The Daily Beast, the National Police Gazette and other venues. When the Sunday supplement of the Tribune was reworked into New York magazine by editor Clay Felker in 1962, Breslin appeared in the new edition, which became "the hottest Sunday read in town."

One of his best known columns was published the day after John F. Kennedy's funeral and focused on the man who had dug the president's grave. The column is indicative of Breslin's style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered "newsworthy" affect the "common man". Breslin's public profile in the 1960s as a regular guy led to a brief stint as a TV pitchman for Piels Beer, including a bar room commercial wherein he intoned in his deep voice: "Piels—it's a good drinkin' beer!"

In 1969, Breslin ran for president of the New York City Council in tandem with Norman Mailer, who was seeking election as mayor, on the unsuccessful independent 51st State ticket advocating secession of the city from the rest of the state. A memorable quote of his from the experience: "I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed." The ticket was referred to as "Vote the Rascals In".

Breslin's career as an investigative journalist led him to cultivate ties with various Mafia and criminal elements in the city, not always with positive results. In 1970, he was viciously attacked and brutally beaten at The Suite, a restaurant then owned by Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill. The attack was carried out by Irish mobster Jimmy Burke, who objected to an article Breslin had written involving another member of the Lucchese family, Paul Vario. Breslin suffered a major concussion, a minor concussion, three broken fingers, a fractured rib, a broken nose and nosebleeding, but survived the ordeal without any permanent injury. He filed a police report claiming Burke attacked him, but no charges were filed.

In 1971, Breslin spoke at Harvard's Class Day. Two years later, on September 6, 1973, he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson alongside Glen Campbell, Don Rickles and Dom DeLuise.