Thread by @nimkef

Lloyd Shearer, Longtime Celebrity Columnist, Dies at 84

Published: Sunday, 27 May 2001

nytimes.com/2001/05/27/us/…

Lloyd Shearer, a Hollywood fixture whose Personality Parade column in Parade magazine reached as many as 50 million readers in its heyday, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.

Personality Parade, which Mr. Shearer wrote under the name Walter Scott from 1958 to 1991

Mr. Shearer, whose nickname was Skip and who favored Hawaiian shirts and drove a turquoise 1955 Bel Air convertible, was also known for having a journalistic salon of sorts.

"What Skip ran was basically a kind of journalistic government in exile out in California," said the author Richard Reeves, who met Mr. Shearer in the 1960's while covering Robert Kennedy. "If you were from NYC or DC or UK, he would be your guide to the mysteries of California"

Among the politicians and journalists at Mr. Shearer's home you might find a young couple with political ambitions named Bill and Hillary Clinton, college friends of his elder son, Derek.

Years later, after Mr. Clinton did rather well in politics, Derek Shearer was named amb to Finland; his sister, Brooke [Strobe Talbott's wife, died 19 May 2009], became a Snr adviser to the Sec of the interior; & a sign over Lloyd Shearer's guest house: "Bill Clinton slept here"

Or you might see Henry A. Kissinger at Mr. Shearer's house. Although Mr. Shearer was critical of the war in Vietnam and made President Richard M. Nixon's enemies list, he retained his friendship with Mr. Kissinger.

Mr. Shearer particularly enjoyed sending tenderly (and fraudulently) inscribed photographs of starlets to Mr. Kissinger -- but only when he knew the White House staff would see them.

Mr. Shearer was born in NYC 20 Dec 1916. After graduating from UNC, Chapel Hill, he was drafted into the Army in 1941 & spent the war years in NYC & LA, first as a writer for the Army magazine Yank, then for Armed Forces Radio. He contributed light pieces on military life to NYT

Mr. Shearer became Parade's West Coast correspondent in 1953. In 1958, prompted by the hundreds of questions from readers, he started Personality Parade. In 1980, Parade magazine, an insert in Sunday newspapers, had a circulation of 20M and an estimated readership of 40-50M

Mr. Shearer received an average of 5,000 letters weekly. Although it was known that Mr. Shearer wrote many of the questions, Derek Shearer insists they were composites.

Writing under his own name, Mr. Shearer also wrote profiles of a variety of subjects, including the young, unknown Elvis Presley and Ralph Nader. His contacts, Derek Shearer said, were exceptional.

"Somebody once said to him, 'You're so good on the phone; let's see how many calls it will take you to find that woman Eisenhower had an affair with,'" Derek Shearer said. "It took him two calls to find Kay Summersby."

In addition to Derek Shearer, Mr. Shearer is survived by his wife, the former Marva Peterson, another son, Cody Shearer, and a daughter, Brooke Shearer, all of Washington; and four grandchildren.