Liz Smith, Queen Of Gossip, Dies At 94

It was an early morning in May, 1998 and Liz Smith – the queen of gossip whose eponymous column graced three of New York City's daily newspapers at one point or another – was yanked from her sleep by a call from a reporter.

"Ms. Smith, sorry to wake you but Frank Sinatra has died," the reporter said.

"He's dead?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not feeling so well myself," she said, hanging up the phone.

As it turns out, she had a cold.

Smith, who had brought her brash honesty to New York from Texas decades earlier, died at her Manhattan home on Sunday. She was 94.

In the ensuing decades after her move, Smith, reigned over the world of gossip, dishing on every boldfaced name from Frank Sinatra to Donald Trump to Tom Brady.

Before The Daily News offered her own her column in 1976, Smith had bounced around over the years, holding jobs with, among others Mike Wallace when he had a radio show, Newsweek, Modern Screen Magazine and Allen Funt on Candid Camera.

But it was as a gossip columnist that Smith found her voice. And the world found her.

Hired by the Daily News in 1976, she would stay there for 15 years writing a column called simply, Liz Smith. That led to a regular stint on WNBC's Live at Five, which started during the 1978 strike that crippled the city's papers.

She won a local news Emmy Award for her work there.

In 1991, she moved to New York Newsday, writing her column for them until 1995 when she moved to The New York Post.

Smith remained at the Post until February, 2009.

Maureen O'Brien – who was friends with Smith for decades and even edited her memoir, Natural Blonde – says that Liz was her her hero.

"I was very lucky to have her as a hero, a mentor, and then get to meet her, be friends with her, and edit her book," O'Brien says. "She was strong, a great writer, a great reporter.

"She never phoned it in," O'Brien said. "She worked as hard any reporter. And broke more than her share of stories."

It was one of those scoops that made O'Brien aware of Smith for the first time.

"I was working at the Los Angeles Times and everyone was focused on the Begelman scandal (Columbia Pictures executive fired over an embezzlement scandal)," O'Brien remembers. "And I was young, really just starting out. Liz broke a huge part of the scandal and I read her from there on out."

O'Brien said that as tough a reporter as Smith could be, the fact was she was a kind person.

"Liz wrote tough about people but was never unfair," O'Brien says.

"She was also nice as nice can be, never losing sight of the fact that she was just a girl from Fort Worth. Not that she didn't know when to be tough. She would stand up to people and taught me to do the same."

O'Brien said that as brash as Smith could be, she loved few things more than being able to help someone.

"She loved being able to promote someone's success," she says. "She loved helping people, giving credit to people.

"She was the best friend to so many people," O'Brien says. "Best friend. Mentor. She took people in, made them family."

One of her final big scoops was the news that New England Patriots star Tom Brady had left Bridget Moynahan, for model Giselle Bundchen.

Smith never stopped working, mostly recently filing stories for David Patrick Columbia's New York Social Diary.

She would tell The New York Times that while much of her life had centered around gossip, she didn't have time for outlets like Gawker and TMZ.

"I never know whether the stories are true," she said.

O'Brien says that even as the business changed, Smith didn't – she loved to work, she loved to go out and see people.

"If it was one of those rare nights that she didn't have an invitation to something, she would almost panic and start working the phones until she found someone to do something with her.

"She'd call me up. Let's see a movie, she'd say. And I would beg off, being exhausted. And she would keep looking. She always found someone."

One night, a reporter ran into her at Elaine's, the famed watering hole on the Upper East Side. A couple of nights later, he ran into her again – this time at the Lion's Head, the now-gone reporter and writer's hangout in Greenwich Village.

"You're everywhere," he said.

"I'm everywhere there's someone to talk to," she said.

Hearing that story, O'Brien laughs.

"That is her," she says, "She loved New York in ways few people ever had. She especially loved it at night. The people, the sights.

"She loved people, loved to be with them, and loved to hear their stories."

Photo of Liz Smith with Maureen O'Brien courtesy Maureen O'Brien