Earl Wilson, columnist, radio commentator, and editor was born in Rockford, Ohio, on May 3, 1907. He attended Heidelberg College for two years, and in 1931 received a B.S. from Ohio State University. After graduation he worked as a writer on several Ohio newspapers. Wilson eventually moved to New York where he became a rewriteman for the New York Post. In 1942 he became their drama, amusement, and night club editor and began writing a daily Broadway column, “It Happened Last Night.” Each evening Wilson and an assistant visited night spots and talked to famous and beautiful people. The resultant column, which was syndicated in over 150 newspapers, was characterized by “girls, laughs, and human interest.” In addition to celebrity coverage, the column often contained cheesecake shots, descriptions of women's measurements, anecdotes, one-line gags (sometimes identified as “Earl's Pearls”), and personal interest stories about his wife Rosemary (“B.W.,” an abbreviation for “Beautiful Wife”) and his son Earl, Jr. (“Slugger”).
Wilson has contributed articles to several magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, and Esquire and has authored several books. Among these are Jungle Performers (1941), I Am Gazing Into My 8-Ball (1945), Pike's Peak or Bust (1947), Let Em Eat Cheese Cake (1949), Look Who's Abroad Now (1953), Earl Wilson's New York (1964), The Show Business Nobody Knows (1971) (containing many stories Wilson couldn't print in his column), Show Business Laid Bare (1974), and Sinatra (1976). The latter work was an unauthorized biography and the subject of a lawsuit which Sinatra later dropped.
Wilson has been a radio commentator on WOR-Mutual network and at this writing continues to cover the New York scene in his newspaper column.
