Few people have had a greater impact on the media and American culture than columnist and radio commentator Walter Winchell. From the near-invention of the modern gossip column to pioneering the culture of celebrity to the intense personal orientation that has today become intertwined with much of the media's reporting, Winchell blazed the trail.

Born April 7, 1897, in New York, Winchell got his start performing in vaudeville, where a popular backstage scandal-sheet he wrote about the private lives of the performers gave the would-be writer his first taste of the power of the press.

That experience also taught Winchell that the possession of private, personal information as much as the use of that information - or even the threat of its publication - brought him a degree of personal power as well. And it was the wielding of that power that brought Winchell both praise and condemnation.

By the late 1920s, Winchell, who had joined The New York Daily Mirror, was already established as the nation's most widely read newspaper columnist, appearing in nearly 2,000 papers throughout the country. Estimates put his weekly readership at more than 50 million.

In 1932, Winchell added a weekly radio broadcast to his repertoire, commencing each program with the refrain, "Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea; let's go to press." An instant success, by 1938 Winchell anchored the most popular radio show in the country, with more than 20 million American households tuning in each week.

In the run-up to WWII, Winchell gained much praise and admiration for his attacks on Adolph Hitler and Germany's march toward war, calling attention to the country's treatment (and murder) of its Jewish citizens.

The 1950s, however, were not so kind to Winchell, in great part because of his decision to champion the cause of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and because of his continuing feuds with many media, entertainment and political figures.

All of these events are neatly covered in director Paul Mazursky's "Winchell" (1998), a lively biopic featuring the Emmy-winning performance of Stanley Tucci in the title role. Produced by HBO Films, "Winchell" also features fine assists from Paul Giamatti as Herman Klurfeld, Winchell's primary ghostwriter, and Glenne Headly as a part-time love interest and celebrity spy.

While "Winchell" doesn't break any new cinematic ground, it does an outstanding job of capturing the man and the media's evolution, as well as the famed columnist's personal and professional triumphs and tragedies.

Not content to whitewash Winchell's transgressions or paint him as simply misunderstood, Scott Abbott's screenplay, based on Klurfeld's book, does an excellent job of providing a balanced point of view even though the portrait it paints is not always pretty.

Though Mazursky's cinematic complexity never matches its subject, the straightforward treatment maintains interest throughout in a man who, for better or worse, was surely an American original.