Buchwald, Art

Born Arthur Buchwald, October 20, 1925, in Mt. Vernon, NY; died of kidney failure, January 17, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Humor columnist. In syndicated columns that ran for more than 60 years in more than 500 newspapers, Art Buchwald fulfilled one of his goals in life. “I was put on earth to make people laugh,” he was quoted in Entertainment Weekly as having said. Through his columns, memoirs, four novels, a stage play, a screen play, and a number of radio and television appearances and interviews, Buchwald spent his life doing just that. When he began writing his first column as an American living in Paris, he became part of the daily read for Americans and Europeans alike. “The routine for readers was to scan the front page, check out the sports scores and the funnies, then settle into 600 words from either Buchwald or [fellow sati-rist] Russell Baker,” wrote a columnist for the London Times.

Buchwald’s career introduced him to world leaders and celebrities, but though he hobnobbed with big names, he never became a snob: His phone number was always listed in the phone book, and he professed to love people. Though his columns showed a savage wit, they also contained optimism on topics from politics to dying. Buchwald received the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982 and the 2006 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He was also elected into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2006.

For someone so well known for his comedy, Buchwald grew up with all the trappings of tragedy. The son of Joseph and Helen Buchwald, he was the fourth child and the only boy in the family. Soon after his birth, his mother was admitted into a mental hospital for depression. Left alone with four children, Joseph Buchwald had no way to support his family during the Depression and shuttled the four off to orphanages and foster homes. When Buchwald began school, he realized he could cope with his loneliness by making others laugh, and he quickly became the class clown.

Buchwald dropped out of two high schools before, at 17, he lied about his age to join the Marine Corps. He spent most of his tour in the Pacific, earning his sergeant stripes and editing his squadron’s newsletter. When he returned to the United States, he used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After three years, he learned he could use the G.I. Bill to study abroad, and so he took what little money he had and left for Paris. “My dream was to follow in the steps of Hemingway, Elliot Paul, and Gertrude Stein,” he was quoted as having said in the New York Times. “I wanted to stuff myself with baguettes and snails, fill my pillow with rejection slips, and find a French girl named Mimi who believed that I was the greatest writer in the world.”

It was in Paris that he first became a columnist. He took a sample to the Tribune editor and got a job writing about haute cuisine by claiming that, while serving in the Marines, he had been a wine taster. Though he bluffed his way into the role and through his assignments as a food critic, his column, “Paris after Dark,” became a popular enough feature that his editor asked him to write another. His second column became “Europe’s Lighter Side,” which, by the early 1950s, was syndicated internationally. One 1953 column, written to explain the Thanksgiving holiday to the French, was run annually for years afterward.

But by the early 1960s, Buchwald began to feel he was running out of material, and he began longing for home. In 1962, he and his wife, Ann McGarry, whom he had met in Paris, packed up their three adopted children and left for Washington. There, he wrote for the Washington Post, changing his focus from social commentary to political satire. He never revealed his own politics and seemed to have no agenda other than poking fun at Washington insiders. By 1972, his column, published three times a week, was syndicated in more than 400 U.S. newspapers and 100 international periodicals.

Along with his column, Buchwald tried his hand at memoirs, fiction, and playwrighting. Buchwald felt that his two memoirs, Leaving Home and I’ll Always Have Paris! brought him acknowledgement as not just a humorist, but as a writer. In them, he discussed his bouts with mental disorders: Twice, Buchwald was hospitalized for depression and considered suicide. His frank discussion of his illnesses, both in his memoirs and in television appearances, spread a message of hope for others suffering from depression. Two of his novels were adapted into movies, and he tried his hand at screenwriting. A disagreement with Paramount Pictures over an idea he had pitched became the center of a law suit when Buchwald and producer Alain Bernheim received no credit for their development work on the Eddie Murphy film Coming to America. When Buchwald and Bernheim won the suit, Hollywood contracts started featuring what became known as the “Buchwald clause” protecting studios from similar cases.

In 2000, Buchwald had a major stroke, and though he continued to write, his health declined. By 2006, he was on kidney dialysis three times per week, and one of his legs had to be amputated below the knee. In February of 2006, he chose to end his dialysis treatment and entered the Washington Home and Community Hospices, prepared to die within three weeks. But the diagnosis of his doctors was proven wrong: Buchwald lived for another five months at the hospice before deciding to summer in the family’s summer home in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His continued life, knowing that death could come at any time, provided him with fodder for new columns, as well as his final book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, and renewed reader interest in his insights.

Throughout his life, Buchwald received praise from fellow writers and world leaders for his work.Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes wrote in People, “He was one of the most genuinely funny guys this country has ever known.” Former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson once called Buchwald “the greatest satirist in English since Pope and Swift,” and a London Times columnist felt, “He represented the US at its best.” Richard Severo of the New York Times called Buchwald “the most widely read newspaper hu-morist of his time.” Buchwald himself saw the reason behind his popularity: “If you can make people laugh, you get all the love you want,” he said in a final video interview with the New York Times. Buchwald died in his son’s home in Washington, D.C., on January 17, 2007 at the age of 81. Sources: Chicago Tribune, January 19, 2007, p. 1, p. 3; CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/01/18/buchwald.obit/index.html (January 18, 2007); Entertainment Weekly, February 2, 2007, p. 16; New York Times, January 19, 2007, p. A1, p. A25; January 25, 2007, p. A2; January 27, 2007, p. A2; People, February 5, 2007, p. 124; Times (London), January 19. 2007; Washington Post, January 19, 2007, p. A1, p. A10.

—Alana Joli Abbott