Irving Kupcinet, the son
of a truck driver, was born in North Lawndale on 31st July, 1912.
After graduating from the University of North Dakota he joined the
Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League. A serious shoulder
injury resulted in him giving up football and in 1935 became a sports
writer with the Chicago Times.
In 1948 Kupcinet was given
his own column for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Over the years, his column was distributed to more than 100 newspapers
around the world. In
1952 Kupcinet became a television talk show host on CBS. Five years
later he replaced Jack Parr on NBC’s America
After the Dark, which eventually became The
Tonight Show. He also appeared in two movies produced by
Otto Preminger, Anatomy of a Murder
(1959) and Advise and Consent
(1962). His daughter, Karyn
Kupcinet, became an actress and appeared in The
Ladies' Man (1961).
Irv Kupcinet knew Jack
Ruby
in Chicago in the 1940s. According to
W. Penn Jones Irv kept in contact with
Ruby and discovered that he was involved in a plot to assassinate
President John
F. Kennedy.
Jones argues that Irv passed this information on to his daughter Karyn.
In his book, Forgive My Grief,
Jones reports that "a few days before the assassination, Karyn
Kupcinet, 23, was trying to place a long distance telephone call from
the Los Angeles area. According to reports, the long distance operator
heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy
was going to be killed."
Karyn Kupcinet's body was
discovered on 30th November, 1963. Police estimated that she had been
dead for two days. The New
York Times reported that she had been strangled. Her actor boyfriend,
Andrew
Prine was the main suspect but he was never charged with the murder
and the crime remains unsolved.
Some researchers
claimed that there was a link between the death of Kupcinet and the
assassination of John
F. Kennedy.
It was argued that the conspirators were trying to frighten off Kupcinet
from telling what he knew. Kupcinet rejected this idea. He wrote in
the Chicago Sun-Times (9th November,
1992): "The
NBC Today Show on Friday carried a list of people who died
violently in 1963 shortly after the death of President John F. Kennedy
and may have had some link to the assassination. The first name on
the list was Karyn Kupcinet, my daughter. That is an atrocious outrage.
She did die violently in a Hollywood murder case still unsolved. That
same list was published in a book years ago with no justification
or verification. The book left the impression that some on the list
may have been killed to silence them because of knowledge of the assassination.
Nothing could be further from the truth in my daughter's case."
Irv Kupcinet died of pneumonia
in Chicago, Illinois, on 11th November,
2003.
Karyn Kupcinet.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Chicago Daily News (23rd November, 1963)
A telephone company
executive said that 20 minutes before President Kennedy was assassinated
a woman caller was overheard whispering:
"The President is
going to be killed."
Ray Sheehan, manger of
the Oxnard division of General Telephone Co., said the caller "stumbled
into our operator's circuits," perhaps by misdialing.
Sheehan said the woman
"seemed to be a little bit disturbed." Besides predicting
the President's death, he said, she "mumbled several incoherent
things."
(2)
New York Times (1st December, 1963)
Her body was found
on its side, with flecks of blood on her face and a pillow. There
were no notes or any indications of suicide, officers said... She
had apparently been dead two or three days, sheriffs investigators
said. Friends discovered her body when they came to her apartment...
When her body was found, the apartment door was unlocked and the television
set was on but turned down, according to the friends, Mark Goddard,
actor, and his wife, Marcia. A bowl of cigarettes and a coffeepot
had been knocked to the floor and a lamp turned over, they said.
(3)
W.
Penn Jones,
Forgive
My Grief (1966)
A few days before
the assassination, Karyn Kupcinet, 23, was trying to place a long
distance telephone call from the Los Angeles area. According to reports,
the long distance operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone
that President Kennedy was going to be killed. Two days after the
assassination, Miss Kupcinet was found murdered in her apartment.
The case has never been solved.
(4)
Neil Steinberg, Chicago
Sun-Times (12th November, 2003)
Irv Kupcinet
( Kup) was friendly with presidents, barbers and the top A-list of
Hollywood. It wasn't a press agentish, fake kind of friendship. He
stayed at their homes - at Jack Benny's, at Danny Thomas’s, at
Joan Crawford’s. When he went on vacation, Bing Crosby might
pitch in to write his column, or Mike Todd, or Betty Grable. Bob Hope
spoke at the 1968 dinner honoring Kup's 25th anniversary as a columnist.
He appeared
on television as early as 1945 and was a pioneering television talk
show host - he started on CBS in 1952 with a late night news/interview
program. In 1957, he replaced Jack Paar on NBC’s “America
After the Dark,” which eventually became “The Tonight Show.”
His own television program ran from 1959 to 1986, syndicated at one
point to 70 stations nationwide, and featured newsmakers from Richard
Nixon to Alger Hiss to Malcolm X - with whom he forged an improbable
friendship.
The show was
known for its spontaneity. Carl Sandburg once walked off the set in
mid-broadcast, declaring he had to “wee-wee.” Radical Abbie
Hoffman lit up a joint on the air and was asked by Kup to leave.
Ann Landers
shocked the audience - and Kup - when, on a show that paired her with
porn star Linda Lovelace, the advice columnist described in precise
detail the act Lovelace was famous for.
The show won
15 local Emmys and the prestigious Peabody Award.
He was a close
friend of Truman, who gave Kup and his family a personal tour of the
White House while he was president. Eight years out of office, when
Truman finally revealed why he had fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur during
the Korean War, he gave the scoop to Kup: the general had been chaffing
to attack communist China with atomic bombs...
The couple
had two children, Jerry and Karyn, who was called “Cookie.”
Cookie was an aspiring actress and moved to Hollywood, where she died
under mysterious circumstances, probably murdered, in 1963 at the
age of 22. The crime was never solved.
Kup grieved the loss of
his daughter for the rest of his life. In 1966, when the Tribune syndicate
asked Kup to replace the recently deceased Hedda Hopper, dangling
a “mind-boggling” offer that included Hopper's Hollywood
home, Kup refused, largely because he and Essee did not want to move
to what he later described as “the Hollywood that had sucked
our daughter into its maelstrom.”
(5)
Irv Kupcinet, Chicago
Sun-Times (9th November, 1992)
The NBC "Today
Show" on Friday carried a list of people who died violently in
1963 shortly after the death of President John F. Kennedy and may
have had some link to the assassination. The first name on the list
was Karyn Kupcinet, my daughter. That is an atrocious outrage. She
did die violently in a Hollywood murder case still unsolved. That
same list was published in a book years ago with no justification
or verification.
The book left the impression
that some on the list may have been killed to silence them because
of knowledge of the assassination. Nothing could be further from the
truth in my daughter's case. The list apparently has developed a life
of its own and for "Today" to repeat the calumny is reprehensible.
Karyn no longer can suffer pain by such an inexcusable mention, but
her parents and her brother Jerry can.
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