And when the deceased is Steve Dunleavy, 81, "Avatar of Murdoch News," it's all the better because there is a greater body of work and acquaintances to draw on.
Mr. Dunleavy had been at his trade so long there's even an Ava Gardner story. Ava, reluctant to give an interview to Steve at a New York nightclub, thew a glass of champagne in his face, trying, I'm sure, to underline what "no" meant.
Well, even "no" is a story, especially when you can create a headline: "Last night I shared a glass of champagne with Ava Gardner. She threw it: I wore it."
Mr. Dunleavy was with the New York Post as one of the original journalists to join the paper after Rupert Murdoch took it over in 1976, beginning what I would call the golden age for the paper.
Dunleavy was Australian, as is Rupert Murdoch, and with Ray Kerrison, editorial cartoonist Paul Rigby, Page Six gossip and photos, along with headlines like "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar," they all contributed to putting the Post ahead of the Daily News as to which tabloid was the sauciest. Given a choice as to which one I'd pick up if they were both left on a seat, I would always choose the Post.
Sam Roberts in the NYT obit gives the journalist's equivalent of a 21-gun salute, a 6-column account of his career. It's an affectionate narrative that gives Dunleavy credit for breaking major stories in addition to getting champagne in his face at the Stork Club from a temperamental actress. I suspect Mr. Roberts wrote the obituary on deadline rather than relying on something prewritten.
Dunleavy exposed Elvis Presley's drug use, and interviewed some very unpopular subjects: the mother of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy's assassin; Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler.
"Mate, I've never had a bad day in journalism in my life. You win, you get drunk because you won. You lose, you get drunk because you lost." A bar on West 47th Street, Langan's served as his second office.
Reporters who knew him would observe: Charles Leduff, "Dunleavy doesn't take food with his meals."
And two of my favorites checked in. Pete Hamill, "I always thought he was writing his columns like he was double-parked."
Jimmy Breslin, "...and he wrote simple declarative sentences that people could read, as opposed to these 52-word gems that moan, 'I went to college! I went to graduate school college! Where do I put the period?'"
Over the years I've heard the Breslin quote repeated often, but I never knew the context. I immediately thought of Breslin's comment when I was reading something in the New Yorker by Robert Caro, I think, that was a sentence that went on for 101 words. Not run-on, as the thirds grade teacher always warned us against, but a true sentence that used dashes, clauses of all varieties, and prepositional phrases, that if diagrammed would require two pieces of paper and look like a schematic drawing for landing gear. No wonder Caro is still working on his last book in his Lyndon Johnson series.
Stuart Marques said, "there are a million Steve Dunleavy stories and they're all true, even the ones that never happened."
The news marches on.
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