"Verbal spankings" were administered to actresses who, according to Louella, showed too much will and sexual independence and thus threatened their careers. "There is a romance going on in our midst that is bound to end disastrously. One of our best-known young actresses is seen daily dancing, lunching, and dining with a certain well-known actor. Her reputation, since she married, has been spotless, and she has made an enviable name on the screen for herself. Let's hope she sees this article and knows whom we mean and will stop her nonsense," Louella wrote in 1930.58 When Clara Bow made national news in the early thirties for her alleged gambling addiction, Louella chastised Bow for weeks. "We hope Clara will not do any more foolish things, because everyone who knows her likes her and feels sorry she doesn't grow up," she told her readers.59 Myrna Loy, who was never friendly toward Louella, paid for her attitude with bad reviews in the Examiner. "Myrna Loy, who did the spy act in `Renegades' is again a spy in `Squadrons.' Miss Loy is one of the best-looking girls on the screen, and maybe one of these days her acting will match her looks. Here's hoping," Louella wrote in 1930.60
Another victim was Mae West, whom Louella had described in the column as "fat, fair, and I don't know how near forty."6' In this case the antipathy stemmed from a long-standing feud between the actress and Hearst. In the 192os West had written and produced a play called Sex, and Hearst, upset by what he considered to be the play's offensive content, ran a smear campaign in the New York American.61 It was also rumored that Hearst disliked West because she had insulted Marion Davies at a party. Despite her popularity at the box office-in 1935, she was voted by fan magazine polls the most popular actress in America-West received mixed reviews in Louella's column.
West's screen image exuded sex and sexual innuendo, which won her fans but also the wrath of censor boards throughout the country. West was thus forced to lighten her sexual aggression with comedy and exaggerated mannerisms, a tactic she used in a 1933 screen adaptation-She Done Him Wrong-of her stage play Diamond Lil. Despite the initial opposition of Will Hays, who claimed that the film's racy themes violated the industry's selfcensorship regulations, Paramount eventually altered the script to conform to the Production Code and the film went on to become a box office success. In her column, Louella praised She Done Him Wrong for being "healthily naughty ... [with] no decadent suggestion of the sort that we dislike."63 But when West ran into trouble with the New York censor boards in 1934 for her film ItAin'tNo Sin, Louella described it as a "naughty picture" and chastised Paramount for having defied the code. "Had Paramount listened to the Hays Office, New York would not have so coldly refused her screen amours," she wrote.64
Those who had truly offended Hearst and Louella were subject to the "general ban"-complete banishment from the Hearst papers. One of the early victims was Ann Harding, a Hollywood newcomer who, like Garbo, was no friend of the press. "Stepping off the train at Pasadena, Ann Harding shooed away the press like so many flies. Stars who take this attitude often live long enough to step off trains without any waiting newspaper delegation," Louella wrote in 1931.65 The prophecy came true. When Harding repeatedly refused interviews, Louella complained to Hearst, who ordered Harding out of his publications. "I am going to refuse to notice her in any Hearst paper," he wrote to Louella. "She isn't any good anyhow... The young lady ... certainly needs some disciplining, and we'll do our best."66
Even old friends became potential targets. Gloria Swanson, who had been a bit player at Essanay, had been a friend of Louella's for years. But when Swanson attained stardom, her turbulent romantic life became fodder for the column. Throughout the late twenties, Louella had chronicled Swanson's marriage and divorce from the French marquis Henri de la Falaise de Coudray in tones some readers described as "catty." "I have been reading your story in the San Francisco Examiner and can't say I find it very interesting. Us readers don't appreciate such stories as what was published about Gloria[,] and I am surprised that the Hearst papers would publish such rot," complained a Swanson fan.67 (Swanson recalled that Louella had grown increasingly unfriendly over the years and had "a horrible way of looking at youor rather, past you-when she wanted to cut you.")68 Thus, it was hardly surprising that in 1931, when Swanson found herself pregnant out ofwedlock, she went to great lengths to keep the news from Louella.
Determined to have her baby in peace, the actress and the baby's father, Michael Farmer, traveled to Europe that fall. To keep the voyage and the birth from Louella and her informants at the Western Union station, Swanson devised a secret code to use in her correspondence with her press secretary, lawyer, banker, and accountant. Random combinations of letters stood for key words and phrases. For example:
Absum: We are leaving for
Abtau: Will arrive in
Acfry: We are traveling incognito as
Acfub: Louella Parsons prints story that
Adaad: Parsons asks
Adbe: Los Angeles newspaper prints story that
Swanson's daughter Michelle was born on April 5, 1932, free of the usual press ballyhoo and without a single word in Louella's column.
Yet Louella praised as much as she criticized, and she often used the column to champion both old friends and promising newcomers. When Carole Lombard arrived in Hollywood in 1929, to ensure good publicity, and to thank Louella for having provided her first break in film, she "made it a point of putting through a personal telephone call to Louella Parsons at least once a week, and flattered the columnist with occasional impromptu visits to her home," according to Lombard's biographer.69 In return, Louella boosted Lombard in her column. Hearst's personal favorites also received top billing in the column. "Poor Sally O'Neill, who was very satisfactory and popular on the screen, has had a series of troubles that have practically eliminated her from the attention of the producers," Hearst telegrammed Louella in 1931. "I would like very much to help her get started again. Would you please talk to some people, Winnie Sheehan and others, and see if you cannot get her a good part in some production[,] and in the meanwhile give her all the publicity you can in the paper."70
In 193o, Louella launched a campaign against the young producer Howard Hughes. It started that spring when Hughes held a private screening for his film Hell's Angels without inviting Louella. Offended but determined to see the film, Louella and her secretary sneaked into the theater. The film was not yet finished, and Hughes was "so annoyed at me that he wasn't even civil," Louella recalled. When Hughes discovered her inside the theater, he ordered her out. But Louella refused to leave and, as a result, became the first movie writer in the nation to review the film.7' Her positive review of the film not only contributed to its box office success but also helped launch its leading actress, Jean Harlow, to stardom.
A few months later, Louella and Hughes clashed again, this time over Hughes's plan to film a controversial novel called Queer People. Written by two brothers, Carroll and Garrett Graham, Queer People tells the story of a reporter nicknamed Whitey who seeks his fortune as a Hollywood screenwriter. Moving west from New York, Whitey briefly works at the Los Angeles Examiner, then quits to take a night job as a piano player in a bordello and pens screenplays by day. After a few failed attempts, Whitey finally succeeds with a script that becomes the talk of the town. He is subsequently hired as a screenwriter by a major Hollywood studio and, before long, has worked his way up to a producer position. Riches and fame follow accordingly. But in the classic twist, the success goes to his head, and by the end of the novel he is implicated in the murder of a young starlet at a Beverly Hills party.
Today, the anti-Hollywood plot has become almost a cliche. But in 1930, the book's satire of unscrupulous, money-hungry Jewish studio moguls"Jacob Schmaltz" and "Israel Hoffberger," thinly disguised caricatures of reallife studio heads Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg-and its expose of Hollywood nightlife nearly created a scandal. According to screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg, who was working as a screenwriter at the time, "When it was published in 1930, it was the sort of thing you would not dare
bring into a motion picture studio unless you hid it in a brown wrapper and locked it in your middle desk drawer."71 In the fall of 193o, Louella learned that Hughes had bought the rights to the novel and was seeking a director for the film. "It seems all any writer needs to do is to present Hollywood in a bad light to get a play or book purchased. A recent book which damned everybody in the industry has been sold as a movie," she announced in her column in late October 1930.73 A few weeks later, she warned that "Howard Hughes will meet with some opposition in the motion picture industry if he attempts to film `Queer People."' He will be "making a grave mistake to put on the screen a book that so openly violates all good taste in describing motion picture folk."74 Louella then sent the columns to Will Hays in the hope that that he would ban the film. According to Variety, Hays subsequently warned Hughes "that it would be a good idea if the storywould be shelved. "75
But Hughes refused to give up, and shortly afterward he assigned the direction to Lewis Milestone, who, according to Variety, "did a rave over it."76 After Louella called a secret conference with Milestone, threatening the director with possible blacklisting by the studios if he filmed the book, Milestone backed out of the project and Hughes reassigned it to Leo McCarey. Then Louella met with McCarey, and a few days later McCarey begged Hughes to switch his assignment. In the end, Hughes dropped the project.
The conflict over Queer People was a prelude to an even larger battle the following year, over an "anti-newspaper" film called Five Star Final. During the early thirties several Hollywood studios released films that vilified newspapers and reporters. The most notorious, Scandal Sheet and The Front Page, dramatized journalistic misbehavior, depicting reporters as crass, drunken scoundrels who lied, cheated, and connived to get their coveted "scoops." The antireporter animus reflected growing public skepticism about what was described at the time as ballyhoo. As newspapers hoping to keep afloat during the depression tried to outdo each other with more sensationalistic stories, and as press agents' publicity schemes grew ever more wild and unbelievable, Americans began questioning news content. By the early 1930s, Louella was receiving letters from readers disgusted with newspapers' and press agents' publicity stunts; as one reader told her, "These days some of the publicity stunts being pulled off are a scream." 77
"Why do the directors picture newspaper reporters as glorified editions of gangsters?" Louella wrote in September 1931. "I have looked at hundreds of pictures this last year, and with very few exceptions the newspaper men are without any sense of honor, and absolutely devoid of all politeness and courtesy.... Next time the producers have newspaper reporters in their films, they should get a tip on how newspaper men really conduct themselves. I, for one, am getting a little weary of seeing these caricatures."78 Warner Brothers' release of the film Five Star Final later that fall only added to her wrath. Based on a Broadway hit by Louis Weitzenkorn, the film depicts a vicious tabloid editor who attempts to boost circulation by reopening an unsolved murder case. The plot was based on real life: in 1926, the Hearst tabloid the New York Daily Mirror had revived the Hall-Mills case, an unsolved murder from 1922, and the parallel was hardly unintentional. In the film, the reporters and investigators are drunken and foul mouthed, the editors cutthroat and manipulative, and a shady society columnist named Luella Carmody seems suspiciously like her real-life namesake.79
"I am in no way hostile to you or your enterprises. In fact, as you know, I am extremely well disposed towards both," Hearst wrote to Warner Brothers' studio head, Jack Warner. "I do think, however, that the patience of newspaper people has been tried ... by the constant attacks on the newspaper fraternity in films which portray reporters as drunkards and editors as unscrupulous rascals." The note ended with a threat: "If the newspapers should reverse their attitude towards moving picture producers, I do not think it would be very beneficial for the producers. "10 The same day Louella joined the attack and had "a long talk with Jack Warner and a very satisfactory one," she wrote Hearst. During the conversation, Louella had hinted to Warner that if he withheld the release of Five Star Final, Davies would consider signing with Warner Brothers when her contract expired at MGM. In a telegram to Hearst, Louella explained,
It was not necessary for me to mention our star. Jack Warner asked me when she would be free at MGM. I told him she had one more picture. He asked me if she were going to renew her contract and I said I was sure she had made no arrangements with them.
If you think it's a good idea[,] why not let me bring Mr. and Mrs. Warner up next weekend so that you can have an informal talk with him. I feel sure the subject would come around naturally without its being evident that any of us were trying to promote anything.
"One more thing," Louella wrote in closing. Fearing that her negotiations with Warner might ruin her relationship with MGM, Louella asked Hearst, "Will you keep my part in the Jack Warner matter confidential? L. B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg are always so nice to me."$'
In the end, Warner Brothers released the film. In a final effort to keep Five Star Final off the screen, Hearst commissioned his newspaper editors to call on their city officials and ask them to ban the film from theaters. In Boston, the ban was successful, though Louella and Hearst insisted to Jack Warner that Hearst "had nothing to do with the Boston situation." The campaign against Five Star Final had another effect: fearing similar Hearst reprisals, Warners shelved two similar antinewspaper films.82
Meanwhile, the studio heads conferred and decided to rescind the fortyeight-hour exclusive. They agreed that Louella was becoming too ruthless and dictatorial; moreover, the exclusive agreement with Louella alienated them from the other movie writers and correspondents stationed in Hollywood who by the early 193os numbered more than two hundred. Though Louella was insulted by the decision, according to Jerry Hoffman, she learned to see it as a challenge. Within weeks, she had come up with a scheme that would enable her to adhere to the studios' rules but still beat every reporter in town. The key figure in the plan was Myron Selznick, the son of Lewis Selznick and one of the top agents in Hollywood. As a favor, Selznick sneaked Louella the latest information on pending deals and contracts-news so fresh that in many cases the actors involved had not yet heard it. When Louella reported that Constance Bennett, who was under contract with the Pathe studio, was secretly negotiating to make films for Warner Brothers, the executives at both studios came under fire, and in the resulting fallout, two Pathe executives were forced to resign. "The studios were going crazy. Louella was breaking stories while deals were still pending. They couldn't figure out how she was doing it," Hoffman recalled. Finally, the publicity directors formed a committee and came to Louella. They wanted to go back to the preferential arrangement.83
To Louella, regaining the forty-eight-hour exclusive was one of the greatest victories of her career. "And as long as I can tear out a telephone by the roots making myself heard, that rule will stay in effect," she wrote in her autobiography. Or else, "as the boys say, `Parsons is on the warpath again!' "14
AT LAST, THE GREAT DEPRESSION HIT HOLLYWOOD, and it hit hard. In 1931, theater admissions fell from eighty million to seventy million a week and in 1932 dropped to fifty-five million. After registering profits of $14.5 million in 1929 and $7 million in 1930, Warner Brothers lost nearly $8 million in 1931; Paramount sustained a record loss of $21 million in 1932. By 1933, Paramount, Fox, and RKO had gone into receivership, and by the mid-1930s, more than 20 percent of the workforce in Hollywood had been laid off.' Though the motion picture industry was better off than many American businesses, the losses came as a shock. Since 1910, profits had poured into the coffers of the movie moguls unabated; in the words of Hollywood historian Thomas Doherty, up to that point "box office had been all boom and no bust. "2
Complicating this dismal state of affairs was the threat from radio. During the early 192os, radio had been broadcast in several major cities, but the stations' low wattage kept it essentially an urban phenomenon. In 1927, however, the formation of national networks owned by
the National Broadcasting Company and Columbia Broadcasting System turned radio into a nationwide medium, and by 1928 coast-to-coast network coverage carried programs to 8o percent of American homes. Before 1922, fewer than sixty thousand American families owned radios, but by 1930 over thirteen million had a set.3 Millions of Americans found broadcast radio a convenient and cheap alternative to the movies, and film exhibitors panicked. They lowered admission prices and used such gimmicks as raffles, "bank nights," and door prizes to lure patrons to theaters, but, by the middle of 1932, sixty-five hundred movie theaters had closed.4
By the early 1930s, advertising was the accepted means of support for radio stations, and most radio shows were sponsored by major corporations. The companies were represented by New York ad agencies, which wrote and produced the programs. This meant that repeated, blatant, and often annoying product endorsements were interspersed throughout the broadcasts. Rather than stop the show for a separate commercial, stations incorporated a pitch for the product into the program's content. In a classic example of this style of "integrated advertising," the singer and 193os radio host Rudy Vallee, portraying a nightclub host on the air, strolled among the tables and just happened to overhear a young couple talking about Fleischmann's Yeast.5 When Jack Benny was sponsored by the makers ofJello, he began his programs with the greeting "Jello everybody." The J. Walter Thompson and Lord and Thomas advertising agencies were so powerful that they had private telephone links with the NBC and CBS studios from their offices blocks away in New .6
The First Lady of Hollywood Page 19