Laura Vitray

Laura Yard Vitray (December 13, 1892 -February, 1963) was an American journalist, newspaper and magazine editor, author of fiction and non-fiction books and the first woman in the United States to hold a city editorship of a major metropolitan daily newspaper.

Reporter, editor and author.

After attended two years of college at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, Mrs. Vitray was employed performing various duties for newspapers in Trenton and Philadelphia. She traveled to France as a reporter in 1918 intending to cover the war as a freelance writer and remained in Paris until 1929. Mrs. Vitray honed her journalism skills in Paris working for a U.S. newspaper and continued her journalism career in New York after her return. She also worked in Washington DC from 1933 to 1936 and returned to Paris for 18 months after World War II.

1918 - 1922: Fatherless Children of France.

1924-1929: Freelance writer for the Paris Bureau of the N.Y. World Newspaper and for the Publications Division of the League of Nations.

1929: Returned U.S.A: Reporter for various N.Y.C. newspapers and on the staff of The Columbia School of Journalism.

1930: City Editor of the New York Evening Graphic newspaper, the first woman to be named city editor of a major metropolitan newspaper in the United States.

1932: Reporter with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, "The New York Evening Journal." In this position, Mrs. Vitray was the lead reporter covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in March 1932. Based on this experience, she published (in April 1932) the book: "The Great Lindbergh Hullabaloo." (W. Faro, Inc.)

1933-1936: Sunday Editor of the Washington Post.

1936-1939: Associate editor of McCall's Magazine.

1939: Authored a dubbed radio recording: "The World is Yours. (The story of fossils)," for the Smithsonian Institution.

1939: Published (with John Mills, Jr. and Roscoe Ellard) the book: "Pictorial Journalism," which became an important reference book for the profession and a highly rated textbook in journalism schools.

1939-1940: Editor U.S. Office of Education.

1940-1945: Chief of Public Relations of the U.S. Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C.

1943-1944: Consultant, Manpower Division American Council for War Production, Detroit, Michigan (working with George Romney, the council's managing director.)

1944-1945: Editorial board and Managing Director of "Free World" magazine. Published (with Orson Welles and Agnes M Wilkes): "Correspondence with Theodore Dreiser," (comprised of 4 items to Dreiser and 2 items from Dreiser or his representative.) Also, published articles describing the war’s effects on Europe’s children and the challenges for Americans caused by our development of the Atomic Bomb.

1946-1947: Special representative for the Save the Children Federation and European editor of United Nations World. During this period, Mrs. Vitray also published articles about Europe in Free World magazine and the New York Times.

1947-1950: Published articles in United Nations World and the New York Times.

1950's and early 1960's: Editor of "The American Girl" magazine.

January 1958: Published the novel, "Celia, Country Reporter," (Dodd, Mead & Co.)

May 1959: Published (with Marjorie Vetter): "The Questions Girls Ask," (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.)

January 1960: Published the novel, "Fashions for Cinderella," (Dodd, Mead & Co.)

Early Life

Mrs. Vitray was born in Trenton N.J. on December 13, 1892, the daughter of a prominent physician, she attended Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania for two years, then did space writing on a home-town paper, then regular reporting, then got a job on a Philadelphia paper. During this period she wrote an unpublished novel about the bridge builders of Trenton. Also during this period, she married and, within a few month, divorced her first husband.

Paris after World War I

In 1918, Mrs. Vitray boarded a ship bound for France to write about "the war," a young woman alone, with no job waiting for her there and just basic high school French; her only skill her writing ability. She arrived in Paris on November 11, 1918, just as the Armistice that ended WW I was signed. She used her own savings to survive while volunteering with The Fatherless Children of France, a U.S. based NGO. In Paris, he met her husband Georges Victor Laporcher dit Vitray, an actor in the Vieux Colombier. (George later became an actor at the Comédie-Française, the French National theatre, and performed in 46 movies. In recognition of his work, Georges was elevated to the rank of chevalier of the Legion of Honor.) Through Georges, Mrs. Vitray was exposed to the avant-garde theater movement in Paris and the great actors, writers, directors of that era. She also met many of the emerging fashion couturiers of the day. After their son George Alain Vitray (Alain) was born in Paris in March 1924, Mrs. Vitray returned to journalism, writing stories about Paris nightlife, the circus and other “Gay Paris” activities for the Paris Bureau of the N.Y. World Newspaper. Her experiences in France became the basis for her novels: “Fashions for Cinderella” and "Paris, in Tears and Laughter".

New York Evening Graphic

Mrs. Vitray, her husband Georges and her young son Alain moved to New York in early 1929. Due to difficulty finding work as an actor given his inability to speak English, Georges returned to France after only a few months. Mrs. Vitray, already finding success in the New York news business decided to stay there with her son, Alain. Some years later Georges divorced Mrs. Vitray in Paris on grounds of desertion. In September, 1929, Mrs. Vitray was employed by the New York Evening Graphic newspaper a popular but flamboyant tabloid of the day. Her first assignment was to the copy desk, the first women to edit copy and write headlines (“heads”) for a large paper. “I loved the copy desk,” she reportedly said, “it is the closest thing to a gambling game I know. It requires the gambling spirit to take a ‘story’ that is handed to you and choose that part of it which is to be displayed in a headline that will attract the reader. And, moreover, to write good heads, you must have a sense of rhythm that has an affinity to poetry—which I do not write,” she added smiling.

After four months on the copy desk— Mrs. Vitray was assigned to write special stories on a torch killers trial. So forceful and original were her stories that she was put on special assignments from then on and managed, among other exciting things, to scoop the city by getting the first interview with the artichoke king, Ciro Terranova. She was writing by-line stories when elevated to city editor, the first women ever to hold down the city editor’s desk in a large metropolitan newspaper.

Unfortunately, The Graphic went bankrupt in 1932. But by then, Mrs. Vitray had become a reporter for the New York Evening Journal.

The Lindbergh Kidnapping

In her preface to “The Lindbergh Hullabaloo” Mrs. Vitray wrote: “As a reporter for the New York Evening Journal, I was assigned to this story ten minutes after it broke. For five weeks at Hopewell, New Jersey, I tried to get to the bottom of it. I think I did.” She commented at one point that she felt a personal connection to the family because of her own son Alain, who was 8 years old at the time. Her diligence as a reporter is demonstrated by the fact that she rented the house across from the Lindbergh estate in Hopewell, so she and her fellow reporters could see who was coming and going from the estate. She “respectfully dedicated” her book (“this true account of a national tragedy”) to William Randolph Hearst “who fired me for writing it.” The kidnapping occurred on March 1st 1932 and she published her book on April 12th, 1932, an extraordinarily fast turn-around at a time long before e-books. The hypothesis of her book is that the Lindbergh baby had not really been kidnapped, that instead, the entire episode was a sham (what we might call today “wagging the dog”) orchestrated by the Federal and state government with the complicity of Charles Lindbergh himself, to “divert public attention from the grave disaster” (the economic depression and foreign aggression) “that threatens this nation.” Although she was wrong in her basic premise that the Lindbergh baby was still alive (the body was found on May 12th), the bulk of her book provides valuable details of the mistakes made by Lindbergh himself (e.g. bringing in mafia figures to run the investigation) and the police, who allowed Lindbergh to take control in conducting the investigation, and has provided fodder for conspiracy theories ever since, including the theory that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was executed for the crime in 1936, was in fact innocent and put forward by the government as a patsy to end the embarrassing failures of the investigation.

Washington DC

Mrs. Vitray was Sunday editor of the Washington Post from 1933 to 1936. During this period, she reportedly interviewed Albert Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey shortly after he moved there in 1935. Also, during this period, she married her third husband “a reporter” (as reported by Walter Winchell, with whom she had worked at the New York Evening Graphic.)

Return to Paris After World War II

From early 1946 through May of 1947, Mrs. Vitray lived in Paris as Special representative for the Save the Children Federation and European editor of United Nations World. During this period, Mrs. Vitray toured most of war-torn Europe, paying particular attention to the living conditions of children. She described the conditions as “hard to visualized” and added that “food is the answer to Peace” (in an interview published in the New York times upon her return to New York). While in Paris, Mrs. Vitray covered the Paris Peace Conference, which lasted from July to October 1946, as negotiators from the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, and other Allied powers agreed upon the provisions of the Paris Peace Treaties, signed in February 1947. “As a youngster in Paris after the first World War, I recall leaning over the barricade that surrounded the part of the gardens of Versailles where the Peace delegates took the air.” For this conference, Mrs. Vitray was invited into the Luxembourg Palace to observe the negotiations as an accredited journalist.

New Hampshire

For most her time in New York, Mrs. Vitray (and Alain until he left for school) lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive on the upper west side of Manhattan (almost under the George Washington Bridge). Prior to going away to The Hill School and then Bucknell University, Alain attended a private school in the city. Mrs. Vitray reportedly liked to keep house, but hated to cook. She also was not addicted to any strenuous form recreation, such as tennis, golf, swimming, or riding. In fact, she spent much her leisure writing. She did, however, enjoy country life. In the 1950’s, Mrs. Vitray purchased a farmhouse on 100 acres outside Conway, New Hampshire and spent much of her summers there for the rest of her life. She often took her work with her, including reviewing story submissions to The American Girl magazine, where she was an editor. She used her experiences in New Hampshire as background for her novel: "Celia, Country Reporter.” After one final visit to Paris for a few months in 1962, Mrs. Vitray returned to New Hampshire where she died in Eaton Center, New Hampshire only a few miles from her farm house, in February 1963.