“I can’t begin to list all the things I loved about Walter,” says former SI writer Stephanie Salter. “They range from his pristine memory to his ability to sing every song by Cole Porter to the sheer natural beauty of his running stride. I think of all the lives and careers he touched.”
Walter would say that his life began when he was hired by SI in October of 1955, but in truth, he had already led a fairly interesting one before he arrived at the Time & Life Building at 50th and 6th. After all, how many people can say that they had a lunch date with Elizabeth Taylor in the MGM commissary, or saw Dr. Benjamin Spock for a bout with pneumonia, or played tennis with Kirk Douglas?
He was born on August 27, 1930 in Orange, N.J., to Janet and Walter Bingham. and he graduated from The Hill School in Pottstown, PA, where he played center field. He flunked out of Yale after one semester and moved to Los Angeles to be with his mother, who had been remarried to the renowned author Robert Nathan. His novels The Bishop’s Wife and Portrait of Jennie were made into classic films in the late ’40s, but Nathan himself was straight out of the movies—Janet was the fourth of his seventh wives.
Because his stepfather had become part of the Hollywood scene, Walter could say he spent time with Judy Garland on her 22nd birthday, dined with Gene Kelly and had that lunch with Liz. Nathan also introduced him to his Cape Cod summer home in Truro, the setting for Portrait of Jennie.
Walter took classes at UCLA and enlisted as a medic in the Air Force, which stationed him in Geneva, NY. Upon his return, he became a copy boy at the Los Angeles Examiner, where he would test his writing skills by doing mock game stories and asking Nathan to compare them with the real ones.
A friend told him that the fledgling magazine Sports Illustrated was hiring, so Walter applied for a job and was hired as a news clerk. Also working at SI at the time was Betty Bredin, who had become a reporter after a brief stint as a secretary. Their first date was a Red Sox-Yankee night game at the Stadium on May 28, 1956—Betty still has the scorecard. The Yankees won 2-0 in one hour and 49 minutes thanks to a five-hitter by Whitey Ford. Mantle scored the second run of the game after leading off the fourth with a single.
Walter was also at the Stadium for another 2-0 Yankee win on October 6 of that year. That was Game 5 of the World Series, and he was secretly rooting for his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to break up Don Larsen’s perfect game. Even though Larsen retired all 27 batters, and the Yankees went on to win the Series in seven games, Walter had found his perfect calling.
His first byline was in the July 15, 1957 Sports Illustrated, under a story entitled “The Oklahoma Kids Hit Town.” It was about the McDaniel brothers, Lindy and Von, who had pitched the Cardinals into contention, and it’s a masterpiece of reporting—Walter spent the day with 18-year-old Von, his fellow rookie, who finds out just before game time that he’s going to start against the Dodgers. After his victory, Walter goes out to dinner with Von and Lindy:
