Tony Blankley | Gingrich aide, columnist, 62

Tony Blankley, 62, who frustrated and entertained reporters as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during his rise to power in the House, then joined the press corps himself as a columnist and editorial-page editor at the Washington Times, died Saturday in Washington. The cause was stomach cancer, said his wife, Lynda Davis.

 As a press secretary he was a staunch defender of Gingrich, who engineered the Republicans' first House majority in 40 years in the 1994 elections.

But while Mr. Blankley routinely dismissed ethics complaints against the speaker, who was fined more than $300,000, he also had a sense of humor about him. In a 1995 interview with the New York Times, he echoed his boss in comparing Gingrich to such transformative world leaders as Churchill, de Gaulle and, most memorably, Gandhi.

"Newt is a tad like Gandhi," he said, "a combination of visionary and practical tactician not often seen in politics. But obviously, Gandhi dressed better."

Anthony David Blankley was born in London. He was 3 when his father, who had been Churchill's accountant, moved the family to California for a position in the movie business.

Mr. Blankley became a child actor. He appeared on Highway Patrol and other television shows and played Rod Steiger's son in the 1956 movie The Harder They Fall - which, he often joked with reporters, was the last movie for Humphrey Bogart, and for him, too.

Mr. Blankley, a naturalized U.S. citizen who retained a mild British accent all his life, was a prosecutor in California from 1972 to 1982. After that, he went to Washington to work in the Reagan administration as a speechwriter. He moved on in 1989 to write for California Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, and joined Gingrich's staff in 1990.

He stayed through Gingrich's rise to the speaker's chair and left in 1997, becoming a columnist and then editorial page editor at the conservative Washington Times, a position he held until 2007. In recent years, he was executive vice president for global affairs for Edelman International, a public relations company. - N.Y. Times News Service