Twentieth Century
Marvin Breckinridge: One of “Murrow’s Boys”
When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 American filmmaker and freelance photojournalist Mary Marvin Breckinridge (1905-2002)* was traveling through Europe on two photojournalism assignments. She immediately went to London, where she took some of the first photos of air raid shelters and documented the evacuation of British children from the city. She was one of…
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Eleanor Packard. Half of “Pack and Peebee.” (I couldn’t make this stuff up.)
Eleanor Packard was a long -time correspondent for the United Press, who covered the Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. She worked as a team with her husband Reynolds Packard. They reportedly met in a bar when he got into a fight and she floored his adversary. (What the New York…
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Doris Fleeson: “A Tiger in White Gloves”
Doris Fleeson (1901-1970) was the first woman to become a nationally syndicated political columnist, the predecessor of the likes of Molly Ivins and Peggy Noonan. Fleeson began her career as a reporter at the Pittsburgh Sun. After several moves, in 1927, at the age of 26, she landed a job at the New York Daily…
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