The Duchess

A Journalism Pioneer

Jackson Foote
Carbondale Community High School, Carbondale

"Duchess!" the editor yelled across the packed room; "copy!" That became a familiar sound in newsrooms across Chicago as the "Duchess," Virginia Marmaduke, became one of the most lively and innovative journalists of her day and the first woman to cover hard news in the "windy city."

Virginia Marmaduke was a pioneer in her field. Just as the women traveling in the mid-nineteenth century on their covered wagons had to be tough on the prairie, Virginia Marmaduke had to be tough on the mean streets of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. Marmaduke was one of the first women to break away from the fashion, entertainment, and society pages to cover hard news.

The Duchess had a combination of lady-like charm, Dale Carnegie optimism, and tough-as-nails journalistic grit, a combination that made her unstoppable. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet said, "She was a great reporter, male or female, didn't make any difference. She could talk like a truck driver when she had to and then be as classy as anyone in Chicago."

Writer Studs Turkel said, "She had a glow about her that opened doors for her everywhere she went." Rather than taking her womanhood as a liability, Marmaduke used it to her advantage by repeatedly gaining access to beat the competition. Thirty years after her retirement, Virginia Marmaduke remains a role model for female journalists and women in Illinois.

Virginia Marmaduke was born in Carbondale on June 21, 1908, but grew up in Chicago where her father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. After studying journalism at the University of Iowa, Marmaduke returned to southern Illinois in 1930 to start a career in journalism at the Herrin Daily Journal. In 1943 she moved back to Chicago where she worked for the Chicago Sun and the Chicago Tribune. Marmaduke was one of the first journalists to make the transition from newspaper to radio to television. In 1954 Marmaduke hosted a popular program on WLS (Coffee with the Duchess) and later on WMAY (Date with the Duchess). After managing the Illinois pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, Marmaduke retired in southern Illinois, where she still lives. In 1979 Marmaduke became the first and only woman journalist to be named Press Veteran of the Year by the Chicago Press Veterans Association. In 1992 Marmaduke was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.

Even as a young journalist for the Herrin Daily Journal, Marmaduke showed that she could compete with her male counterparts by adding an important woman's perspective to hard news. When reporters started covering a profitable casino/bar for miners, Marmaduke interviewed the miner's wives and reported that the men came home with little or no money to support their families after blowing it at the casino. A few days later, the casino owner shouted, "I'm not gonna touch you now, but if I ever see you at night on this road, watch out!" Three months later, the casino moved out of town.

When applying for her job at the Chicago Sun, the editor asked why Marmaduke left blank the line about what she wanted to cover. "You want to write about nothing," he snarled. Marmaduke said, "Well, I didn't like the choices. I don't want to write about society or entertainment or fashion." "What's left?" the editor asked. "I want to be a newspaperman. I want the blood and the guts and the sex and the greed. I want to cover it all." The editor liked her spunk and hired her.

On her first day, the editor said, "I can't go shouting 'Miss Marmaduke' all over the newsroom. What did they use to call you in high school?" She said, "Ginny." "Well, I can't call you that either; it says you're not married. But there's a duke in your name, so I'll call you Duchess." From then on, Virginia Marmaduke became known throughout Chicago as "The Duchess."

Marmaduke got her wish for the gruesome stories early on when she was assigned to cover the murder of a dismembered little girl. Marmaduke was the only reporter on the scene and actually found the girl's head in a sewer. Marmaduke stayed on the sensational story until a man was convicted; he was found to have raped and murdered women all over Chicago.

Marmaduke soon proved that she could write stories as quickly, as accurately, and as well as any male reporter. And she could get much closer to the story. When writing about the hardships of welfare cuts, Marmaduke moved in with a welfare family for a week. She reported that one of the girls in the family, Anne Marie, came home from school crying because children laughed at her for wearing a used piece of Christmas tinsel from a garbage can in her hair. In the story, Marmaduke said the mother had to decide between spending a dime on a hair ribbon for her daughter or using it to buy a meatball to feed the children. Thousands of readers sent hair ribbons to Anne Marie, and Chicagoans got a firsthand view of the kinds of real choices people on welfare had to make. When Virginia Marmaduke was honored later on the network television program This is Your Life, Anne Marie and her family

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were flown to Los Angeles to surprise their favorite reporter.

After Marmaduke had proven herself time and again, editors no longer hesitated to send her out on the tough stories that required her legendary "street smarts" and charm. When the Chicago Sun assigned Marmaduke to find out who was going to succeed a prominent gangster in Chicago, Virginia and a photographer hid in a hospital linen closet where they could observe who it was that went into the dying gangster's room. When the photographer found opportunity, he snapped a picture. One of the gangsters pulled a gun, and the quick-thinking Duchess rapped the gangster on the hand with one of her high-heeled shoes until he dropped the gun and the police arrived.

Virginia Marmaduke now lives in Pinckneyville, Illinois, where she helps journalism students at Southern Illinois University by providing scholarships and encouragement. Marmaduke eagerly shows visitors her "brag wall" of famous people she has interviewed. It includes photos from the campaigns of three presidents she covered, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, and famous men who escorted her around Chicago. This woman who blazed paths for a new generation of women journalists continues to show off her unique blend of charm and spunk. When people ask eighty-three-year-old Marmaduke how she is doing, the Duchess replies, "Well, I don't walk so well, and I don't see so well, but I can still talk like hell."-[From: student historian's interview with Jack Dyer, Carbondale, Ill., Jan. 16, 1997; student historian's telephone interview with Virginia Marmaduke, Jan. 20, 1997; Virginia Marmaduke, unpublished manuscript; Judy Miller, '"The Duchess' of Journalists Still Spins Yarn," Springfield Journal-Register, Sept. 8, 1992; "Police Find Child Slain," Chicago Sun, Jan. 8, 1946; Wes Smith, 'The Duchess," Chicago Tribune, Jan. 28, 1992; student historian's interview with Jak Tichenor, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, Jan. 16, 1997; Jak Tichenor, "A Date with a Duchess," WSIU-TV (1996); P. Wiseman-Conroy, Marmaduke to Receive the Order of Lincoln," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Jan. 29,1983.]

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