Floyd Gibbons

American journalist (1887–1939)

Floyd Phillips Gibbons (July 16, 1887 – September 23, 1939) was the war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune during World War I. One of radio's first news reporters and commentators, he was famous for a fast talking delivery style. Floyd Gibbons lived a life of danger of which he often wrote and spoke.

Floyd Phillips Gibbons was born on July 16, 1887, in Washington, D. C. Gibbons moved with his family to Des Moines, Iowa and lived there from 1900 to 1903. He attended schools in Iowa and Minneapolis. His father owned a trading stamp business for merchants in Iowa. He also worked for the Milwaukee Free Press and the Minneapolis Tribune. He moved to the Chicago Tribune in 1912. Gibbons lost an eye after being hit by German gunfire at Château Thierry in June 1918 while attempting to rescue an American marine. Always afterwards he wore a distinctive white patch on his left eye. He was given France's greatest honor, the Croix de Guerre with palm, for his valor on the field of battle. He narrated Vitaphone's "Your True Adventures" series of short films, which began as a radio program in which Gibbons paid twenty five dollars for the best story submitted by a listener. Gibbons was the narrator for the documentary film With Byrd at the South Pole (1930). In 1929, he had his own half hour radio program heard Wednesday nights on the NBC Red Network at 10:30. Competition from Paul Whiteman's show on CBS Radio, however, brought Gibbons' show to an end by March 1930. In 1927 he wrote a biography of the Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) titled The Red Knight of Germany. He also wrote the speculative fiction world war novel The Red Napoleon in 1929. The Red Napoleon was the first invasion novel to combine fears of yellow peril with fears of communism.

In "The Floyd Gibbons Story", a 1962 episode of The Untouchables, Gibbons was portrayed by Scott Brady.