Joseph Alsop

Passions

Vocation

Lifestyle

Family

American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s. His influential journalism and status as a top insider in Washington was prominent from 1945 to the late 1960s, often in conjunction with his brother Stewart Alsop. Alsop kept his homosexuality a closely guarded secret all of his life. Early in 1957, the KGB photographed him in a hotel room in Moscow having sex with another man, a Soviet agent. He rebuffed Soviet attempts at blackmail. In the 1970s, the Soviets sent Alsop's embarrassing photos to several prominent American journalists without adverse consequences. Alsop considered making his homosexuality public to end the harassment, but ultimately did not. In 1961 he married Susan Mary Jay Patten, and they had two stepchildren, William and Anne. The couple divorced in 1978. A noted art connoisseur and collector, Alsop delivered six lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on The History of Art Collecting in the summer of 1978. Joseph Alsop was at work on a memoir when he died at his home in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1989. The memoir was published posthumously as "I've Seen the Best of It." Link to Wikipedia biography