Heywood Broun - (1888 - 1939)

Heywood Broun spent his life championing the underprivileged, earning accolades from friends and Presidents. The latter included Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once read a piece of Broun's over the air. Broun left Harvard ten credits short of a degree, having spent too many afternoons watching Tris Speaker and the Boston Red Sox and eventually became a sports writer at the New York Tribune. His mythopoetic prose led to a job as a drama critic (and a libel suit from an actor within his first year). He ran afoul of the publisher for supporting socialist Eugene Debs and moved to the World, where he worked until he ran afoul of the publisher for supporting Sacco and Vanzetti. He started the American Newspaper Guild, which today gives its Heywood Broun Award to news organizations which exhibit an abiding concern for the underdog.

During the run of a Broadway show in which Tallulah Bankhead was starring, Broun whispered to the actress, "Don't look now, Tallulah, but your show's slipping."