HAMBURGER, Philip (Paul) 1914-2004

(Our Man Stanley)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 2, 1914, in Wheeling, WV; died of a heart attack, April 23, 2004, in New York, NY. Hamburger wrote for the New Yorker for many decades and was often credited as helping to set the tone for the national magazine. Graduating from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in 1935, and from Columbia with a master's in 1938, he joined the New Yorker staff the next year and would remain there for sixty-five years. The only interruption in his long service to the magazine was during World War II, when he worked for the Office of Facts and Figures (now the Office of War Information) from 1941 to 1943. From 1943 until the war's end, he was a correspondent in Europe for the New Yorker, reporting on such events as Mussolini's execution. Returning to New York City, Hamburger wrote on a wide variety of subjects, serving for a time as music critic and then becoming a regular for the "Talk of the Town" section, sometimes writing under the name Our Man Stanley. He also wrote on national and international politics and was noted for his profiles of famous people in the news, accomplishing all these subjects with an urbane and witty manner that marked him as an accomplished essayist. Many of his articles were collected and published in book form, including The Oblong Blur and Other Odysseys (1949), Our Man Stanley (1963), Curious World: A New Yorker at Large (1987), and Matters of State: A Political Excursion (2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, April 27, 2004, section 3, p. 9.

Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, MI), May 2, 2004, p. A30.

Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2004, p. B10.

New Yorker, May 3, 2004, p. 37.

New York Times, April 26, 2004, p. A21.

Washington Post, April 28, 2004, p. B6.