Stanley Walker (editor)

Stanley Walker (1898–1962) was an editor of the New York Herald Tribune in the first half of the 20th century.

According to a roadside memorial at the site of his birth near Lampasas, Texas, Walker began his career in Austin and Dallas. He served as city editor of the Herald-Tribune, and also on the staff of the Philadelphia Ledger. Among his books was The Night Club Era. He spent his last years in the Lampasas area.

Earl Stanley Walker was born to William Walker, a one-time teacher turned farmer, and his wife Cora Stanley. The first of five sons, he grew up working on the family farm, later attending Lampasas High School where he was a member of the debate team. After graduating in 1915 he attended the University of Texas, pledging Sigma Nu fraternity. Walker interned on the Austin American newspaper until he left the university in 1918 to work full time on the Dallas News.

By 1919 Walker had left Dallas for New York City where he started as a beat reporter on a city paper. He earned his own byline with The Sun and New York Herald a year later, writing Sunday features. Walker married his college sweetheart Mary Louise Sandefer in January 1923; the couple would have two children.

Besides working on the editorial staff of his newspaper, Walker wrote book reviews for the New York Times and freelance articles for other publications. One such essay, "The Fundamentalist Pope" for H.L. Mencken's American Mercury drew the ire of local clergy. Walker was also rumored to write "Wild West" fiction under a nom de plume.

Walker was appointed night editor of the New York Herald (later known as the Herald Tribune) in 1926. Two years later he became city editor, a position he would hold until 1934. He then left the Herald Tribune for short stints at the Daily Mirror, The New Yorker and the New York Woman, returning in 1937 to again hold the position of editor for another two years.

While still editor at the Herald Tribune, his first book, The Night Club Era, was published in 1933. A look at New York City's colorful nightlife in the Speakeasy age, it would prove to be his most popular book. A year later he wrote another, this time about his own profession.

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