The First Lady of Hollywood

by Samantha Barbas

  Because New Theater was an independent, Popular Front publication with limited circulation, the article most likely did little damage to Louella's public image. Coming at a time when Louella was feeling fragile, the attack probably wounded her ego more than her reputation. By the mid-i93os, Louella "was becoming big beyond what people even recognize now; she was the Barbara Walters of her day," according to Dorothy Manners. But she was drained by her overwhelming slate of commitments, and she struggled with exhaustion. "She hardly had time to devote as much attention to the column as she needed. She was doing rehearsals for radio," Manners recalled.32 Every Sunday, Manners went down to station KHJ and took dictation from Louella while she rehearsed for Hollywood Hotel. On many occasions Manners ended up writing most of the column.

  Louella was also feeling threatened by the emergence of several formidable rivals. By the mid-1930s, there were almost four hundred columnists, news reporters, and feature writers assigned full-time to Hollywood; only Washington and New York had larger press corps.33 Thirty-five of these commentators, considered "powerful" by the studios, were fed a minimum of ten news items each day by each studio, six days a week.34 In addition to the competition from the mainstream press, by 1934 Louella faced two new Hollywood trade journals, the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. The Hollywood Reporter, founded in 193o by former film salesman Billy Wilkerson, was the first daily movie industry newspaper to come out of Hollywood. From the start, the paper had an antagonistic relationship with the studios. Wilkerson peppered the publication with scathing film reviews and critical editorials: "There are too many $iooo and $zooo and $3000 a week executives whose ignorance retards every effort that means anything. They have to go," read one early editorial attack.35 Reporter writers were subsequently barred from studio lots. The paper was so threatening that Winfield Sheehan, head of production at the Fox studio, ordered the mailroom workers at the studio to gather up the entire morning's delivery of the Reporter and pile them in a heap outside his office. The papers were then set on fire.36 When Louella heard about the trouble the producers were giving the Reporter, she was outraged and complained to Hearst, who instructed her to "tell the whole story" in her column "without sparing anybody."37

  The Reporter's daily gossip column, "The Rambling Reporter," was considered one of the best-read gossip columns in Hollywood.38 Because columnist Edith Gwynne, Wilkerson's wife, refused to toe the studio line, the "Rambling Reporter" "created talk and naturally circulation. It also created something else-a healthy desire to stay out of it," recalled one Hollywood insider."9 Gwynne and Louella were friends, and because Louella had supported the paper in its battle with the studios, the Reporter regularly defended Louella against her critics.

  But Daily Variety, a spin-off of the New York theatrical publication Variety, was hardly an ally. In the early thirties, weekly Variety had a Hollywood office and put out an addition to the New York edition called Hollywood Bulletin. In 1931, weekly Variety sued the Hollywood Reporter, charging "news lifting," and in 1933 it established Daily Variety to combat the Hollywood Re- porter.40 The paper was headed by Arthur Ungar, who had been with Variety in New York for several years and was known for his "raging, cursing" disputes with studio executives and publicists. Never missing an opportunity to tear down powerful Hollywood figures, Daily Variety printed candid exposes of underhanded studio politics with sensationalistic headlines meant to provoke outrage. In the 1930s it also featured a gossip section, "Hollywood Inside," that frequently lampooned Louella's mistakes. In 1935, for example, it noted that "Louella Parsons went overboard on her front page story of the Fox-Twentieth Century merger by including United Artists in the deal. It was news to the UA crowd that this company was now allied with Fox, and more news that United Artists members are not entirely pleased with the new amalgamation. "41

  By 1935, Louella also had several rivals in the mainstream press, including Sheilah Graham, a British former showgirl who began writing for the North American Newspaper Alliance syndicate in 1936. Graham was known for her "good looks and cultured British speech" and for being a "tough independent" who had few qualms about telling off the studios, according to one trade journal. The Associated Press and United Press had syndicated film columnists who were generally more compliant with the studio establishment. Frederick Otheman, the United Press correspondent, had a policy of running all his copy by the studio publicity offices prior to publication, and Robin Coons of the Associated Press similarly made a name for himself by "steering clear of odoriferous stories."42

  On the Hearst papers were movie writers Erskine Johnson, Harry Crocker, who wrote a column called "Behind the Makeup" (punsters dubbed it "Makeup the Behind"), and Jimmy Starr, who had a column, "Starr Dust," in Hearst's Los Angeles Herald Express. Ten years earlier Hollywood gossip writing had been dominated by women, but as Hollywood and film celebrity culture gained wider public acceptance, the profession gained status and men increasingly joined the ranks. By the mid-1930s, over half of the Hollywood news writers and film reviewers in the mainstream press were men, but most of the fan magazines, with a predominantly female readership, continued to be edited and authored by women. In 1934, the major studios accused the fan magazines of printing "sensational and salacious material" and of being "one of the major factors that brought about the church attack on films." At a meeting in August that year, the publicity directors decided to create, from the field of approximately three hundred fan magazine writers, a "white list" of fifty writers "who are established and who are noted for their honest and clean writing." Only those on the list were given access to the stars and studios. The studios also exerted strict censorship over fan magazine copy; MGM once forbade a magazine to write that Norma Shearer had two children and that Robert Montgomery was a father.43

  In 1935, Hearst hired Marion's sister Reine Davies to write a column in the Examiner that covered social events in Hollywood, but when Davies began releasing news about production deals and contracts, Louella complained to Hearst that Davies had no right to encroach in the "straight news field." Though Davies continued the column, Hearst ordered her to keep her hands off of production news.44

  Hearst's response to the Reine Davies situation was typical. The Chief generally complied with Louella's demands and, with only a few exceptions, did not edit her column. In 1933, Hearst chastised Louella for promoting certain Hollywood restaurants in the column and forbade her from future "cafe promotion," claiming that he wanted to "keep the papers in line with what is considered good journalistic ethics." Louella complained, "I am a little upset over that cafe order inasmuch as I know that I am responsible for getting a good share of their advertising for the paper. I am working about ten times as hard now as I have ever worked in my life and with a [small] staff." If she could not "mention little bits of gossip that happen in some of the cafes," she feared, she would lose not only advertising for the paper, she told Hearst, but also the cooperation of the restaurateurs who were important informants. But Hearst would not back down, and Louella ceased her aggressive plugging of the Montmartre, Brown Derby, and other Hollywood eateries.45

  But aside from Hearst, no one changed a word in Louella's column. Even the managing editors on the Examiner couldn't alter the copy without asking Louella's permission. This led to frequent and frequently embarrassing mistakes. In one column, Louella quoted the title of Mary Pickford's book Why Not Try God as Why Believe in God.46 She was quickly taken to task by readers and forced to print a correction. Not long afterward, she reported that a fan recommended the book How I Lost My Girlish Figure by Norman Harrington. Later, she apologized: it should have read How I Lost My Boyish Figure. By the late 1930s, the typos and errors had become so egregious that readers began complaining. "I've read your column for years and never thought I'd find you profane in your comments," wrote a woman from Ogdensburg, New Jersey. "Was I shocked to read the following comment: Martha Eg- gerth has much charm but she seems to be in need of a good dressmaker. Hell, MGM will attend to that." Apparent
ly, the word should have been "well. "47

  In 1935, Jimmy Starr found an error in the early morning edition of Louella's column. "I thought I would be a nice rival and let her know of the mistake, which would make her column a collectors' item if the typographical error wasn't corrected," Starr recalled. He called Louella at home, but Louella was out, and her maid, Sadie, said that she might be at the Cocoanut Grove. Starr called the Grove, but Louella hadn't arrived yet. Panicked, he called "a half a dozen other places where I thought she might drop in. I left messages all over town." Louella didn't return his call until the next morning, and it was too late; the error had run and the papers were selling for a dollar a copy. In announcing the purchase of a story by MGM, The Life of Private Tussy, she had reported it as The Life ofPrivate Pussy.48

  Because New York-based Winchell dealt rarely with Hollywood studio and production news and because they were both on the Hearst payroll, Louella and Winchell were "technically noncompetitive," in the words ofWinchell biographer Neal Gabler, and Louella did not consider him a threat. According to Gabler, Louella even offered Winchell breaking stories to use on the air. When Winchell starred in the 1937 film Wake Up and Live, Louella devoted an entire column to an interview with him.49 But there were occasional spats. Louella often printed news items about Winchell without his approval, and Winchell frequently complained to Hearst. In 1933 Winchell sent a telegram to Hearst complaining that Louella published a story "without checking. [It] will hurt me in the public eye and tear down my work which took many years to build Up. "50 Winchell considered Louella to be little more than a hack, a self-aggrandizing small-town biddy with no real talent. In 1938 Winchell had apparently made some unflattering comments about Louella in his column and Louella complained to Hearst, who told her that she was "at perfect liberty to sue."51 Louella never pursued the issue.

  Her relationship with columnist Sidney Skolsky was more hostile. A former Broadway columnist who came to Hollywood in 1932, Skolsky, a pillpopping hypochondriac, became famous for his informal "office." He did all his work out of Schwab's Drugstore in Hollywood, where for years he was a permanent fixture. After being fired from the New York Daily News syndicate in 1935, he was hired to write a Hollywood gossip column, "Hollywood Is My Beat," for Hearst's King Features. "The nearest thing to a socially minded progressive" in Hollywood, as one film industry publication described him, Skolsky's left-wing politics irked Hearst and, by extension, Louella. She was also annoyed by his grating personality and the obvious competition he presented, and it was not long before they clashed. 12 In 1938, after Skolsky beat her to a news story, the conflict got physical.

  In the spring of 1938, Louella had run a front-page headline that Greta Garbo would marry the Philadelphia Symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski. Where Louella got her news Skolsky had no idea; all he knew was that Louella was wrong. The following day, to spite Louella, Skolsky ran his column with the first line, "Garbo will not marry Stokowski." (Skolsky, it turned out, was right.) Upset, Louella allegedly called Hearst and accused Skolsky of being a communist. Skolsky then telephoned Hearst at San Simeon to deny the charges. "Are you sure she didn't say columnist?" he asked. "You know, she has a difficult time pronouncing words." "I know what she said," Hearst replied. "You'll work out your contract and when we're through with you, you'll be nothing."53

  Since Skolsky disliked Hearst, he was hardly sorry to go. Since 1937 he had been fighting with him and had complained loudly of the way his column had been "cut to the bone" by the Hearst editors. In November 1937, Ray Van Ettisch, managing editor of the Examiner, had written to Hearst about the "trouble with Skolsky." According to Van Ettisch, Skolsky insisted on using a part of the column called "Movie Boners," "though the Chief [gave] orders to kill it." "He became abusive, said that the Examiner was run by a bunch of bastards, his attitude that of the worst egomaniac with whom I have ever dealt," Van Ettisch wrote to Hearst.54 After his confrontation with Hearst over Louella's accusations, Skolsky took his column out of the Examiner without finishing the contract and put it in the Hollywood Citizen News.55

  About three months later, Maggie Ettinger and Alva Johnson, a writer for the New Yorker, were sitting with Louella in Chasen's restaurant when Skolsky came in. Maggie invited Skolsky to join them, and Johnson, Maggie, and Skolsky talked for about fifteen minutes without a word from Louella. According to one of Skolsky's friends, the reporter James Bacon, Louella finally turned to Skolsky and said, "I didn't know you were such a nice man. Else I never would have told Mr. Hearst you were a communist." Skolsky "saw red" and his first impulse "was to take a poke at her." ("If it had been Barney's Beanery I might have," he later said, "But how can you hit a woman in Chasen's?") All of a sudden Louella screamed. Skolsky had bitten Louella in the arm, then stood up and left.

  In a postscript to the story, a few nights later Harry approached Skolsky at Ciro's restaurant and asked him to dance with Louella as a peace gesture. "Louella's sorry about the whole thing and wants to make up," Harry said. So Skolsky, who had never been on a dance floor in his life, danced with Louella.56 Louella was satisfied, except for the fact that Skolsky had stepped on her feet. "From then on Louella and I became ... well let's just say a truce existed between us," Skolsky wrote in his memoirs. "Perhaps it was a fragile truce, but fortunately its strength was never tested and it survived to the end of her life."57

  During the mid-1930s it was Jimmie Fidler who was Louella's most threatening rival. Fidler, a former Hollywood publicist, had both a radio show-a weekly NBC gossip program sponsored by the makers of Tangee lipstickand a syndicated column with the McNaught Syndicate, "Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood," with 187 outlets. With his Winchell-esque, rapid-fire radio delivery Fidler was generally considered in Hollywood to be a far more lively and charismatic broadcaster than Louella. He was also considered a better gossip, one with greater "reliability and authenticity," according to one Los Angeles magazine.51 And, according to some accounts, the studios feared him more than Louella. His film reviews both in print and on the air were merciless, and in his pointed series of "open letters" to the stars that appeared in his column he freely criticized them, referring to box office failures (and their stars) as "stinkers." Fidler claimed to have "twenty-four tipsters" on his payroll, all of whom held key positions in the major studios. "When they phone in a story-and this may sound a little melodramatic to you, but it's truethey identify themselves merely as `Operator Seven' or `Operative iooi,' whichever it may be," he told a San Francisco newspaper.59

  In November 1935, Louella heard a rumor from one of her New York connections that Clark Gable was planning to divorce his wife, Rhea. Apparently Gable's lawyer had leaked the news, and when Louella found out, she called Gable in New York. According to Variety, Louella, secure that she had the story, waited to release it until Gable returned to Hollywood and could give her a signed statement. The Examiner "was all set for a sweet circulation via street sales" when Fidler got wind of the news and announced it on his Tangee broadcast.60 When Louella's story hit newsstands the following morning, it was already "a cold potato," Variety reported .61 Had Louella gotten the exclusive, the Examiner would have scored an additional twenty-five thousand newspaper sales, Variety speculated.

  Louella was so embarrassed that she lied about the story in her autobiography. According to Louella, Gable had told her that he preferred she get the news from Rhea. Louella claimed to have then called Rhea and invited her to the Maple Drive house for dinner. Louella allegedly interviewed Rhea, wrote the story, and called a messenger to take it to the Examiner. In the meantime, she claimed, she trapped Mrs. Gable in her living room lest she release the news to another syndicate. "We played cards. We talked clothes. And I even modeled two new hats I bought. But all evening long I kept a weather eye on the clock. A messenger had called ... for my story, and as time went by I knew it was speeding across the wires."62 Though she maintained for years that she got the exclusive, everyone in Hollywood knew that she had been outscooped.

  The go
ssip game was heating up, and the turf battles became more frequent and contentious. In 1937, Louella complained to her readers that "whole items" were "swiped out of the column and put on the air." "We've never before raised our voice when the first edition has been consistently raided, but you would think some of these air commentators and other writers would at least change the language and make some effort to cover up their piracy. And may I remind some of these people who have been getting their news the easiest way that this column is copyrighted."63 Soon afterward she wrote to Hearst that she felt she wasn't getting "proper bylines" in Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, which often reprinted her syndicated stories. According to Louella, a story about actress Sylvia Bruce was "a Parsons exclusive [but] the Mirror lifted it without a byline." This was not the first time, she complained, that the Mirror had run a Parsons exclusive without giving her credit.64

  She took comfort in the success of Hollywood Hotel. After a "wobbly start," according to Variety, and "several months of sorry plodding," in 1935 the show acquired Bill Bacher, one of the highest paid producers in radio. A former New Jersey dentist who had abandoned his practice to become a radio director in New York, Bacher was-according to Mary Jane Higby, a Hollywood Hotel radio actress-"an intense man" with a personality as vivid as his "shock of reddish brown hair." Bacher was a notorious taskmaster, and rehearsals at times devolved into shouting matches between Louella, Bacher, and the program's emcee, actor Dick Powell. Still self-conscious about broadcasting, Louella was sometimes so nervous that she rehearsed her lines in the car on the way to the radio station. When Bacher criticized any aspect of her performance, she threw a tantrum.65

  While Louella earned over two thousand dollars per week for the show, the twelve supporting actors for the program, who read bit parts, made only eighteen dollars each broadcast and were unbilled. According to CBS policy, if they were billed, they would not be paid. When radio actress Barbara Luddy was called to play opposite film star Francis Lederer in a scene, Luddy asked how much she could receive for the part. "You're not going to be getting paid," she was told. "You're getting billing." "I'm sorry," she replied. "I don't work for nothing." Her name was then stricken from the list of credits and she received her usual eighteen dollars. There was discontent in the ranks, to say the least, and the abuses on Hollywood Hotel and other, similar network radio programs led to the formation of a radio actors' union, the American Federation of Radio Artists, headed by Eddie Cantor, in 1937.66 The film stars who appeared on the program were also disappointed with their flimsy compensation. "You rehearsed all week with that radio show," re called actress Gypsy Rose Lee. "That was not an easy show to do. You did sketches and everything. If you were doing a film, the studio asked you to do it. About ten days later you received a case of Campbell's Soup, [which was] sent to the studio."67