Academy Award-winner Amy Madigan is daughter of former CBS Chicago news director John Madigan

Amy Madigan, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Sunday night, is the daughter of a newsman who helped shape CBS Chicago in the 1960s.

Madigan, 75, won the Oscar Sunday for her role in "Weapons." She plays the clownish Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger's horror tale, described by CBS News' David Morgan as a monster, with ice water in her veins, who cruelly uses her nephew, Alex, to further a vague plot that has thrown an entire town into turmoil when elementary school children disappear."

Amy Madigan's father, John Madigan, was a Chicago journalist who spent many years in prominent positions at CBS Chicago — including as news director at WBBM-TV, Channel 2, and political commentator at WBBM Newsradio.

John Joseph Madigan Jr. was born in Chicago in 1918, and began his career in the 1930s, finding work as a newspaper copy boy at the age of 16. He served in the U.S. Navy and worked as ship's press officer during World War II.

Upon returning, John Madigan became a reporter for the Chicago American, where he covered the infamous case of the "Lipstick Killer," who killed two women and a 6-year-old girl and scrawled a message, "For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more," in lipstick in one of his victims' apartments. William Heirens later confessed to the murders.

In 1952, John Madigan covered the first presidential campaign that used airplanes to move around the country.

After leaving the American that year, John Madigan was hired by Newsweek and worked in Washington, D.C. He moved to television and became the first moderator of CBS News' "Face the Nation" in 1954.

Back in Chicago, John Madigan became the news director at WBBM-TV in the early 1960s, published reports noted.

John Madigan also appeared on the air at Channel 2, moderating the show "At Random," and delivering commentaries on the station's newscasts, anchored back then by Fahey Flynn.

"CBS was his home," widow Elizabeth Madigan said of her husband in 2012. "He hired Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson."

While both would leave the station a few years after John Madigan hired them in the 1960s, Kurtis and Jacobson went on to return and become CBS Chicago's most iconic anchor team beginning in 1973.

John Madigan later moved upstairs at CBS Chicago's old broadcast center to WBBM Newsradio, where he was part of the team that led the transition to the station's all-news format in 1968. Madigan anchored and served as political editor and commentator at WBBM Newsradio for many years.

John Hultman was one of John Madigan's colleagues at WBBM Newsradio, and remarked in 2012 on how Madigan could tap a vast network of sources from his days in Washington.

"He had, as a former White House correspondent with Newsweek magazine, he had a little black book with lots of names in it, and telephone numbers, for people who could talk to us about politics," the late Hultman said in 2012, "and he would find them in a poker game or some club."

John Madigan was recognized by his signature outcue, "Newsradio Sssssseventy-eight!"

John Madigan retired from his full-time role at WBBM Newsradio in 1988, but kept hosting the "At Issue" program for some years afterward, according to published reports. He went on to become chief spokesman for the Illinois Supreme Court.

John Madigan died in 2012 at the age of 94.

Amy Madigan was one of John and Dolores Madigan's three children, along with sons Jack and Jim. Dolores Madigan died of cancer in 1992, and John Madigan went on to marry his second wife Elizabeth.

Amy Madigan started as a rocker-performance artist, but later turned to acting. She studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and appeared on stage, where she met future husband Ed Harris. 

Amy Madigan was also nominated for an Oscar for her role in the family drama "Twice in a Lifetime" in 1985. She has also appeared in "Love Letters," "Alamo Bay," "Uncle Buck," "Field of Dreams," "Female Perversions," and "Gone Baby Gone," among other films.