Joseph Bard
Who was Dorothy Thompson 's spouse from 1923 to 1927?
Dorothy Thompson Dorothy Celene Thompson ( July 9 , 1893 – January 30 , 1961 ) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster . She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and was one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s . Thompson is regarded by some as the First Lady of American Journalism and was recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosevelt . Life and career . Thompson was born in Lancaster , New York , in 1893 , one of three children of Peter and Margaret ( Grierson ) Thompson . Her siblings were Peter Willard Thompson and Margaret Thompson ( later Mrs . Howard Wilson ) . Her mother died when Thompson was seven ( in April 1901 ) , leaving Peter , a Methodist preacher , to raise his children alone . Peter soon remarried , but Thompson did not get along with his new wife , Elizabeth Abbott Thompson . In 1908 , Peter sent Thompson to Chicago to live with his two sisters to avoid further conflict . Here , she attended Lewis Institute for two years before transferring to Syracuse University as a junior . At Syracuse , she studied politics and economics and graduated with a degree in 1914 . Because she had the opportunity to be educated , unlike many women of the time , Thompson felt that she had a social obligation to fight for womens suffrage in the United States , which would become the base of her ardent political beliefs . Shortly after graduation , Thompson moved to Buffalo , New York and became involved in the womens suffrage campaign . She worked there until 1920 , when she went abroad to pursue her journalism career . Journalism in Europe . After working for women’s suffrage in the United States , Thompson relocated to Europe in 1920 to pursue her journalism career . She was interested in the early Zionist movement . Her big break occurred when she visited Ireland in 1920 and was the last to interview Terence MacSwiney , one of the major leaders of the Sinn Féin movement . It was the last interview MacSwiney gave before he was arrested days later and died two months after that . Because of her success abroad , she was appointed Vienna correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger . While working in Vienna , Thompson focused on becoming fluent in German . She met and worked alongside correspondents John Gunther and G . E . R . Gedye . In 1925 , she was promoted to Chief of the Central European Service for the Public Ledger . She resigned in 1927 and , not long after , the New York Post appointed her head of its Berlin bureau in Germany . There she witnessed firsthand the rise of the National Socialist or Nazi party . According to her biographer , Peter Kurth , Thompson was the undisputed queen of the overseas press corps , the first woman to head a foreign news bureau of any importance . During this time Thompson cultivated many literary friends , particularly among exiled German authors . Among her acquaintances from this period were Ödön von Horváth , Thomas Mann , Bertolt Brecht , Stefan Zweig and Fritz Kortner . She developed a close friendship with author Carl Zuckmayer . In Berlin she even got involved in a lesbian affair with German author Christa Winsloe , while still married , claiming the right to love . Thompsons most significant work abroad took place in Germany in the early 1930s . While working in Munich , Thompson met and interviewed Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1931 . This would be the basis for her subsequent book , I Saw Hitler , in which she wrote about the dangers of him winning power in Germany . Thompson described Hitler in the following terms : He is formless , almost faceless , a man whose countenance is a caricature , a man whose framework seems cartilaginous , without bones . He is inconsequent and voluble , ill poised and insecure . He is the very prototype of the little man . Later , when the full force of Nazism had crashed over Europe , Thompson was asked to defend her Little Man remarks ; it seemed she had underestimated Hitler . The Nazis considered both the book and her articles offensive and , in August 1934 , Thompson was expelled from Germany . She was the first American journalist to be kicked out . At the New York Tribune . In 1936 Thompson began writing On the Record , a New York Herald Tribune newspaper column that was also syndicated nationwide . It was read by over ten million people and carried by more than 170 papers . She also wrote a monthly column for the Ladies Home Journal for 24 years ( 1937–1961 ) ; its topics were far removed from war and politics , focusing on gardening , children , art , and other domestic and womens-interest topics . Radio and the Herschel Grynszpan affair . Around the same time as she started On the Record , NBC hired Thompson as a news commentator . She began in 1936 and remained with NBC until 1938 . Her radio broadcasts went on to become some of the most popular in the United States , making her one of the most sought after female public speakers of her time . When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 , Thompson went on the air for fifteen consecutive days and nights . In 1938 , Thompson championed the cause of a Polish-German Jewish teenager , Herschel Grynszpan , whose assassination in Paris of a minor German diplomat , Ernst vom Rath , had been used as propaganda by the Nazis to trigger the events of Kristallnacht in Germany . Thompsons broadcast on NBC radio was heard by millions of listeners , and led to an outpouring of sympathy for the young assassin . Under the banner of the Journalists Defense Fund , over $40,000 USD was collected , enabling famed European lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi to take up Grynszpans case . Fame and controversy . In 1939 , Thompson was featured on the cover of Time , with an accompanying picture of her speaking into an NBC radio microphone . The article was captioned she rides in the smoking car and it declared that she and Eleanor Roosevelt are undoubtedly the most influential women in the U.S . She was one of the most respected women of her age . The article explained Thompsons influence : Dorothy Thompson is the U.S . clubwomans woman . She is read , believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands , who got them from Walter Lippmann . In Woman of the Year ( 1942 ) Katharine Hepburn played Tess Harding , a character directly based on Thompson . The Broadway musical is based on Thompson as well , this time played by Lauren Bacall . During the 1936 presidential race , Thompson characterized Black voters as a bloc notoriously venal . Ignorant and illiterate , the vast mass of Negroes are like the lower strata of the early industrial immigrants , and like them are bossed and delivered in blocs by venal leaders , white and black . In 1941 , Thompson wrote Who Goes Nazi ? for Harpers Magazine . She was a keynote speaker at the Biltmore Conference , and by wars end was regarded as one of the most effective spokespersons for Zionism . Thompson switched her views round radically after a trip to Palestine in 1945 , and ran into difficulties , including accusations of anti-Semitism , which she strongly rebuffed , after being warned that hostility toward Israel was , in the American press world , almost a definition of professional suicide . She eventually concluded that Zionism was a recipe for perpetual war . Thompson died 1961 , aged 67 , in Lisbon , Portugal and is buried in the Town cemetery , Barnard , Vermont . Family life . She was married three times , most famously to second husband and Nobel Prize in literature winner Sinclair Lewis . In 1923 she married her first husband , Hungarian Joseph Bard ; they divorced in 1927 . Thompson married Lewis in 1928 and acquired a house in Vermont . They had one son , Michael Lewis , born in 1930 . The couple divorced in 1942 . She married her third husband , artist Maxim Kopf , in 1945 , and they were married until Kopfs death in 1958 . In popular culture . Her marriage to Sinclair Lewis was the subject of Sherman Yellens Broadway play Strangers , where she was played by Lois Nettleton . The play opened on March 4 , 1979 and closed after nine performances . Works . - 1928 : The New Russia ( Holt ) - 1932 : I Saw Hitler ! ( Farrar and Rinehart ) - 1935 : Maps - 1938 : Dorothy Thompsons Political Guide : A Study of American Liberalism and Its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States ( Stackpole ) - 1938 : Refugees : Anarchy or Organization ? ( Random House ) - 1937 : Concerning Vermont - 1939 : Once on Christmas ( Oxford University Press ) - 1939 : Let the Record Speak ( Houghton Mifflin ) - 1939 : Christian Ethics and Western Civilization - 1941 : A Call to Action , Ring of Freedom - 1941 : Our Lives , Fortunes , and Sacred Honor - 1942 : Listen , Hans ( Houghton Mifflin ) - 1944 : To Whom Does the Earth Belong ? - 1945 : I Speak Again as a Christian - 1946 : Let the Promise Be Fulfilled : A Christian View of Palestine - 1948 : The Truth About Communism ( Washington : Public Affairs Press ) - 1948 : The Developments of Our Times - 1955 : The Crisis of the West - 1957 : The Courage to Be Happy ( Houghton Mifflin )