| Thompson, known as the "Blue-Eyed Tornado," was born in Lancaster, New York, on July 9, 1894. She attended the Lewis Institute in Chicago and Syracuse (New York) University (A.B., 1914), where she became ardently committed to suffragism. In this time she worked for the women's suffrage movement, then moved to New York City and worked in social service for several years. After World War I she went to Europe as a freelance correspondent. She was poor and used cheap transportation and stayed in cheap hotels, she got to meet a lot of average everyday people, which gave her insight into different countries. In 1925 she became head of the Berlin bureau of the New York Evening Post. She interviewed Adolf Hitler and believed that he was insignificant and no one to worry about. She regretted her misjudgment and later wrote many warnings about him. She married Sinclair Lewis in London in 1928 (her second of three marriages). On their return to America, Thompson led a domestic life for a few years, but, back in Europe, she began reporting about the Nazi movement, infuriating Adolf Hitler so much that, by his own personal order in 1934, she became the first American correspondent to be expelled from Germany. In 1936, for the New York Herald Tribune, she began her newspaper column "On the Record," which became hugely popular. On network radio and in popular speeches, she warned against Hitler, and Time magazine rated her the country's second most popular woman (after Eleanor Roosevelt). She and Lewis were divorced in 1942. Thompson wrote many books, including New Russia (1928), I Saw Hitler! (1932), Refugees: Anarchy or Organization (1938), Let the Record Speak (1939), and The Courage to Be Happy (1957). In her final years, she continued to write a monthly column for the Ladies' Home Journal. She was president of the American PEN club from 1936 to 1940. She died in Lisbon, Portugal, on January 30, 1961. |
