Ralph de Toledano (August 17, 1916 – February 3, 2007) was an American writer in the
conservative movement in the United States throughout the second half of the 20th century. A friend of
Richard Nixon, he was a journalist and editor of Newsweek and the National Review, and the author of 26 books, including two novels and a book of poetry. Besides his political contributions, he also wrote about music, particularly jazz.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Background
Toledano was born in
Tangier, Morocco, the son of Simy (Nahon), a former news correspondent, and Haim Toledano, a businessman and journalist.[9] His parents were both
SephardicJews and American citizens. Toledano was brought to
New York at the age of four or five.[1][4][7]
During World War II, Toledano was drafted and became an anti-aircraft gunner before being transferred to the
Office of Strategic Services and trained for covert work in Italy. However, he was ultimately not sent to Italy, as the OSS felt he was "too anti-Communist to work with Italian leftists." After the war, he became a publicist for the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).[1][4][7]
Plain Talk
In 1946, Toledano helped found Plain Talk with fellow journalist
Isaac Don Levine and
China Lobby funder
Alfred Kohlberg.[11][12][13][14] By 1946, the magazine focused on exposing Soviet "spy rings," "secret armies," and other communist subversion in the USA.[15] Toledano served as managing editor[16] or assistant editor.[17] (In 1950, the US Senate reported that Emmanuel S. Larsen, investigated as part of the
Amerasia spy case, had stated that Kohlberg, Levine, and Toledano had changed an article he had written for Plain Talk, specifically that "Levine completely rewrote the article," and later had asked Larsen to "go easy on the Plain Talk article" when testifying.[17][18])
Newsweek
Pursuing a career in
journalism, after several journalistic jobs Toledano joined Newsweek in 1948.[1] Toledano covered the 1950 perjury trial of
Alger Hiss (Hiss being accused of being a Soviet spy), and in what the New York Times later described as "his political turning point," Toledano sided against Hiss and for accuser,
Whittaker Chambers. Toledano cowrote an "intensely partisan" book about the trial, Seeds of Treason, in 1950 and became a Republican.[1] Toledano met Nixon during the case, and during Toledano's coverage of Nixon's 1950 Senate campaign, Nixon would have him address crowds, introducing him as the author of Seeds of Treason.[1] Around the same time (October 1950–April 1951) Toledano cohosted the television series Our Secret Weapon: The Truth.[7]
During the 1960s, Toledano became a major writer for Human Events and contributed several page-one stories.
In the 1980s, Toledano resumed regular contributions to National Review as a music reviewer.
Nixon
Toledano met Nixon during the case, and during Toledano's coverage of Nixon's 1950 Senate campaign, Nixon would have him address crowds, introducing him as the author of Seeds of Treason.[1]
Toledano's differences with his conservative National Review colleagues became very pronounced before long, first in 1960 when Toledano dissented from the other National Review editors when they endorsed
Barry Goldwater, while Toledano supported Nixon.[1] By 1963, however, Toledano had switched to Goldwater.[1][7]
Years later when Nixon became president, Toledano was particularly close to the administration, in a rivalry with
Daniel Patrick Moynihan over the privilege of being named guru of Nixon's domestic policies, which conservatives both supporting and opposing them as a kind of
Tory socialism. Moynihan's victory in the struggle was likely a key moment in the rise of
neoconservatism.[7]
Legal issues
A 1975 lawsuit by
Ralph Nader against Toledano dragged through the courts for years, costing Toledano his life savings. The lawsuit concerned an alleged suggestion by Toledano, which Nader rejected, that Nader had "falsified and distorted" evidence about
the Chevrolet Corvair's handling. It was eventually settled out of court.[2]
In 2006, Toledano sued in connection with the rights to
Mark Felt's memoir, The FBI Pyramid, which he had cowritten in 1979 without knowing that Felt was "
Deep Throat".[2][7]
Personal life and death
Toledano married Nora Romaine, with whom he had two sons, James and Paul. His second wife, Eunice Godbold, died in 1999[1][2][7]
Toledano held forth until the end of his life at the
National Press Club. There, in 2005, he succeeded John Cosgrove as National Press Club American Legion Post No. 20 commander.[4] Toledano and first wife Nora were long-time friends of
Guenther Reinhardt, another anti-communist journalist and frequenter of the National Press Club.[19]
Toward the end of his life, he labeled himself a
libertarian, according to his son Paul.[2]
In 1956, literary critic
Irving Howe decried Toledano's biography Nixon for its "
Cohn-&-
Schine prose."[20] In 2006,
William F. Buckley, Jr. called Toledano's Cry Havoc "must reading... Toledano's best."[21] Professor
Paul Gottfried (a fairly frequent contributor, like Toledano, to The American Conservative) wrote, "Toledano uncovers continuities between
the Frankfurt School's conspiracy and the rampant cultural terrorism in America."[21] According to
Martin Jay in Cry Havoc "the crackpot claim is actually advanced that the Frankfurt School was a Commie front set up by Willi Muenzenberger."[22]
Books
Never straying far from his first passion of music, Toledano distinguished himself as an avid scholar of
jazz. During the latter half of his long career at National Review, he was relegated to writing a music review column, on account of his growing variance with the direction of American conservatism. He also wrote about music a good deal (by no means only jazz) for The American Conservative in his last years.
Non-Fiction Books:
Seeds of Treason (with
Victor Lasky) (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950)
Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1952)
Nixon (New York: Holt, 1956)
Lament for a Generation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960)
The Winning side, the Case for Goldwater Republicanism (New York: Putnam, 1963)
The Greatest Plot in History (New York; Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1963)
RFK, the Man Who Would Be President (New York: Putnam, 1967)
One Man Alone (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1969)
J. Edgar Hoover (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973)
Let Our Cities Burn (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975)
Hit and Run – The Rise – and Fall? – of
Ralph Nader (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975)
The Apocrypha of Limbo (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 1994)
Notes from the Underground (Washington: Regnery, 1997)[11]
Cry Havoc: The Great American Bring-down and How It Happened (New York: Anthem, 2006)
"Sound on Disc: Verdi Unadorned, Beethoven Straight" (August 20, 1982)
"Sound on Disc: Four Greats of Piano Jazz" (October 1, 1982)
"Sound on Disc: In Search of God" (November 26, 1982)
"Sound on Disc: Bessie, Satch & Little Jazz" (January 21, 1983)
"Sound on Disc: Five Concertos, Three Violins" (March 4, 1983)
"Sound on Disc: Nostalgia: A Triple Helping" (April 15, 1983)
"Sound on Disc: The Innovators" (June 10, 1983)
"Sound on Disc: The Duke and His Music" (August 5, 1983)
Miracle on Taiwan" (August 19, 1983)
"Sound on Disc" (October 28, 1983)
"Not Real, Not Politics (Review): The U.S. and Free China, by James C.H. Shen" (September 30, 1983)* "Sound on Disc: The Greatness of Billie" (December 9, 1983)
"Sound on Disc: Performing the Sonatas" (January 27, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: The Progressions of Jazz" (March 9, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: Opera: Mozart and Verdi" (May 4, 1984)
"Television: Concealed Enemies" (June 15, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: Will the Real Louis Please Stand" (July 13, 1984)
"Lifestyles: The Homosexual Assault" (August 10, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: From Gothic to Baroque" (September 7, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: The Jazz That Was" (November 16, 1984)
"Sound on Disc: 'Papa' Haydn? Oh, Yes..." (February 8, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: An Olla Podrida of Jazz" (April 5, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: Bringing It Back Alive" (May 3, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: The French Connection" (June 28, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: Schubert, Mozart" (August 23, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: Mozart & the Beat" (November 1, 1985)
"A Siding in Compiegne" (November 29, 1985)
"Sound on Disc: Cherubini & Other Matters" (January 31, 1986)
"South Korea Comes of Age" (February 28, 1986)
"Sound on Disc: The 'Smaller' Music'" (March 28, 1986)
"Sound on Disc: Mozart at the Piano, Plus" (June 6, 1986)
"Whittaker Chambers Remembered: The Imperatives of the Heart" (August 1, 1986)
"Sound on Disc: Liszt & Romanticism" (September 12, 1986)
"Sound on Disc: Jazz & Pop – The Real Legacy" (October 24, 1986)
"Books, Arts & Manners: Spies in the Parlor (Review): No Sense of Evil, by James Barros" (December 19, 1986)
"Sound on Disc: America's Real Music" (March 13, 1987)
"Sound on Disc: Haydn, Beethoven & Old Instruments" (April 10, 1987)
"Sound on Disc: Great & Imperishable" (June 19, 1987)
"Sound on Disc: Jazz: From LP to CD" (September 25, 1987)
"Sound on Disc: Bach & Mozart, Beethoven & Boyce" (December 31, 1987)
"Sound on Disc: Moldy Figs, Rejoice!" (February 19, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Faure & Co." (April 15, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Duke, Django, and Throttlebottom" May 27, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Vivaldi to the Fore" (July 8, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Salute the Commodore" (August 19, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: A Little List" (September 16, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Toward a Jazz CD Collection" (October 28, 1988)
"Twilight of the Idol (Review): The Selected Letters of
Richard Wagner" (September 2, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: Stravinsky, Beethoven, & Others" (December 9, 1988)
"Sound on Disc: From Hoagy to Nancy" (February 10, 1989)
"Sound on Disc" (April 7, 1989)
"Sound on Disc: Toward a Jazz CD Library" (May 19, 1989)