Despite the tense atmosphere behind the scenes, by the fall of 1935 Hollywood Hotel was in the Crosley Reports' list of top ten most popular radio programs in the nation.68 The most common criticism of the program was that the twenty-minute film preview scenes were often dry and hard to follow. "Parsons' piece of the program was not punchy," Variety commented on a November 1937 episode in which Louella previewed the Fred Astaire film Damsel.69 "It was devoid of... chronological continuity and as entertainment it offered no more body than a film trailer. "70 But the show earned fans, who sent Louella more than a thousand letters a week. It also sold filmsand soup. After one show in which an upcoming MGM film was previewed, the daily revenue for the film at Radio City Music Hall jumped from seventeen thousand to thirty-seven thousand dollars. On a check made at another theater, seventy-eight out of one hundred people queried at the box office said they were attending because they had heard about the movie on the program. "A particular broth would be mentioned on [the] show and presto! Store shelves across the nation would be swept clean of the product and distributors would be clamoring for more," recalled Mary Jane Higby. At one point Louella "forced a crisis on the cream soup division: the sponsor ran out of tomatoes."71 The show was given a generous promotion budget, which enabled several publicity stunts. In 1937, the KHJ studio was opened to an audience of fifteen hundred and, in a promotion for the featured film, One in a Million, which was set in Switzerland, synthetic snow dropped from the ceiling. For one broadcast in 1937, Louella invited five hundred children from local orphanages. After the program the children were entertained by cast members on the stage, where Louella had provided a huge Christmas tree loaded with gifts.72
Prior to 1936, most radio shows were produced in New York, where NBC and CBS had their transmitting facilities. AT&T maintained high charges for broadcasts not based in New York; in the case of Hollywood Hotel, it charged to transmit the signal from Los Angeles to New York, then from New York out to stations across the country. Since Louella secured the performers for Hollywood Hotel at no cost, the show's producers could afford the AT&T surcharge. But the cost was prohibitive for most sponsors and producers. When Eddie Cantor attempted to relocate his program spon sored by Chase and Sanborn to Hollywood, he was informed that the move would add two thousand dollars to the weekly budget. As a result, Hollywood Hotel was one of the few Hollywood-based shows in the early 1930s, and it is often credited as having been one of the pioneers of West Coast radio.73 When AT&T removed the double charges following a congressional investigation in 1936, many New York-based shows moved to Hollywood and adopted formats similar to that of Hollywood Hotel. One of them was the Lux Radio Theater, a movie adaptation program that between 1936 and 1942 became one of the most popular shows on the air. In the late 1930s, the Warner Brothers Academy Theater and Screen Guild Theater programs also used Hollywood Hotel's film preview format. According to radio historian Michele Hilmes, Hollywood Hotel not only strengthened the alliance between Hollywood and the broadcasting industry but also, with its aura of glamour and use of top talent, "promoted the gossip and talk format to a kind of respectability" and thus laid the groundwork for decades of talk radio programming.74
In April 1935, despite rumors that Louella had accepted a radio contract from the makers of Lucky Strike cigarettes, Campbell's and CBS extended Louella's contract for another two years. It was around that time that Mary Pickford began hosting her own radio show-Parties at Pickfair, a half-hour program on CBS sponsored by the Associated Ice Industries. Like Hollywood Hotel, Pickford's program used "free talent." While Louella used fear to get actors on her program, stars went on Pickfair out of respect for Pickford. When Louella found out about the show-on the same network, no lessshe began a campaign to sabotage the competing program. One day in the spring of 1935, Pickfair's producers received calls from two stars saying that they couldn't appear on the show as they had planned. Shortly afterward, another star called to cancel his engagement. Louella, the producers discovered, was threatening actors with banishment from the Hearst press if they agreed to appear with Pickford. In the ultimate dirty trick, Louella promised Pickford that she would appear on the program, then backed out at the last minute.75
But Pickford persisted despite Louella's threats. The program continued, and Louella told Pickford that she would be blacklisted from the column. Louella also blacklisted the Jesse Lasky Film Company, with which Pickford was affiliated. When Pickford threatened to complain to Hearst, Louella told her not to bother-the press ban had Hearst's sanction, so appealing to him would be useless.76 This was not the first time Louella had used threats of blacklisting to help her radio ventures. According to Daily Variety, Ginger Rogers had been blacklisted from the column because she had appeared on Pickfair but refused to go on Hollywood Hotel. Fred Astaire and Frederic March were also threatened with banishment from the column when they refused Louella's request to go on the show. After continued pressure from Louella, Astaire and March finally gave in and appeared on the program.77
Appalled, the Screen Actors' Guild and Screen Writers' Guild decided to crack down. The leaders of the two guilds started resolutions that called on members to refuse to give free services for radio broadcasts and, with the cooperation of Daily Variety, vocally protested Louella's tactics. In a series of articles beginning with a March 1936 front-page expose titled "Parsons Ices Pickford," Variety announced: "It's a battle of Soup vs Ice, for Louella Parsons has declared war on her old pal. The causus belli is Pickford's trying to corral pic names to the cause of ice via radio without pay." Louella's announcement that Pickford would be blacklisted "sort of stunned Miss Pickford, who has been a close friend of Miss Parsons. She was helpful in establishing the chatterer socially ... when she first came to Hollywood." Though "there was no harm in Miss Parsons competing for talent with Miss Pickford, when Miss Parsons struck below the belt and used the powerful Hearst papers as a bludgeon to frighten people[,] ... that was rough."78
Embarrassed, Louella set out to make amends to Pickford and the show's producers and, three weeks after the blowup, was reported to have received a large box of roses from Pickfair producer Lynn Farnol.79 During this time she also mended fences with Jeanette MacDonald. When the mother of Gene Raymond, MacDonald's fiancee, sent Louella a letter that questioned MacDonald's sexual virtue, Louella called up Helen Ferguson, MacDonald's publicist. "This letter could really wipe up Jeanette," Louella said, and, as a peace offering to MacDonald, burned the letter. Ferguson relayed the news to MacDonald, who arranged to have lunch with Louella at the Vendome. To thank Louella, MacDonald offered to go on Hollywood Hotel. "So far as the hatchet is concerned," MacDonald said, "it's buried long since. I'll do the show for you not in payment for what you did for me, but because you're a good, decent woman and I like you very much. "10 After MacDonald's appearance on Hollywood Hotel, she was given "plenty of space" in Louella's column.81
But the attack on longtime nemesis Mae West continued. After West and Paramount, in 1936, released Klondike Annie-a film that Hearst deemed immoral for its intimations of promiscuity and miscegenation-Hearst banned all advertisements for the film in his papers. "After you have had a couple of good editorials regarding the indecency of this picture, then DO NOT mention Mae West in our papers again while she is on screen," he instructed his editors.82 Editors who violated the rule were subject to "immediate dismissal."" Hearst also launched his own editorial attack on West. In one piece, "The Screen Must Not Relapse to Lewdness," Hearst accused West's Broadway plays and movies of being "largely responsible for the uprising of the churches and the moral elements of the community against the filth in moving pictures." Another Hearst editorial, "Stop Lewd Films," urged audiences to boycott the film. "The public should ... show, through non-patronage of these productions that PANDERING TO THE LEWD ELEMENTS OF THE COMMUNITY IS NOT PROFITABLE."84 In typical fashion, Louella cooperated with Hearst by excluding all mentions of West and Klondike Annie from the column.
According to the film industry tr
ade journal Motion Picture Herald, the Hearst campaign had less to do with his dislike of Klondike Annie than the fact that "Miss West had not so long before rather firmly declined an invitation to appear as a guest star on a Hollywood Hotel program."85 In other words, the Herald suggested inaccurately, Louella had urged the press attack. "All over Hollywood people speak in fearful whispers of the power of the Hearst newspapers. They cringe at the mere thought of getting their names on the Hearst blacklist," wrote Elizabeth Yeaman of the Hollywood Citizen News. "Consider the case of Mae West. She refused to appear as a guest artist on Louella Parsons' weekly radio broadcast."86 Despite the poor publicity, the film was a success. According to the Motion Picture Herald, the movie was taking in between twenty-five thousand and eighty-five thousand dollars above expected box office proceeds, and West retained her position as one of the nation's top ten most popular stars.87
Louella entered the second half of the 193os bruised and weakened. For the first time, her power and authority had been challenged, and she began to fear the loss of her commanding position as Hollywood's most influential gossip writer. When she panicked, friends reminded her of the power she wielded as a Hearst columnist. Even though they may have resented her, the studios depended on her for publicity, so they had no choice but to flatter her, appease her, and ply her with news. She was still the undisputed "queen of Hollywood," but that would soon change.
Hedda Hopper, a rival gossip columnist who wrote for the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate. Courtesy Photofest.
Lana Turner and Louella do a "Victory Broadcast" during World War II. Courtesy Photofest.
The comedy duo Abbott and Costello clowning around with Hollywood's most powerful columnist. Courtesy Photofest.
Gracie Allen and Louella at the Brown Derby in Hollywood. Courtesy Photofest.
In 1946 director Mervyn LeRoy celebrated Louella's radio work by giving her a cameo role in the film Without Reservations. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella and Harry Martin at the Stork Club in New York before their European trip in 1948. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella and Charlie Chaplin. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella in her bedroom in Beverly Hills. Courtesy Photofest.
Rosalind Russell, Louella, and Jimmy McHugh. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella and Hedda Hopper in the mid -1950s. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella and Clark Gable. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella and Marilyn Monroe. Courtesy Photofest.
Louella with Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle on a book tour for Tell It to Louella. Courtesy Photofest.
THOUGH SHE WAS INCREASINGLY HATED IN HOLLYWOOD, Louella was more popular among American newspaper readers than ever. In 1936, a Chicago-based Louella Parsons fan club formed that had branches in several cities. Moreover, that year she was voted in a New York poll to be "far and away the choice of newspaper readers as the outstanding motion picture columnist," reported the McCann-Erickson Company, which had taken the survey. "So decisive is her superiority that she has no close rivals." By 1937, she was earning over a thousand fan letters a week, a testament not only to her ability to command readers but also to the nation's immersion in celebrity culture.'
By 1935, the film industry had recovered the financial losses it had experienced during the early depression years, thanks to the codes established by the National Recovery Act, a slight upswing in the economy, and the studios' successful marketing of high-gloss, "prestige" pictures. Film attendance rose from sixty million in 1933 to seventy million in 1934 to eighty million by 1935; by 1936, eighty-five million movie tickets were sold each week.2 Movies not only were one of the most, if not the most, popular forms of commercial entertainment but also had become a powerful socializing agent. And Hollywood actors had become public role models and trendsetters. According to sociologist Margaret Thorp, who did an in-depth study of celebrity culture in the mid193os, millions of Americans learned the basic rules of social etiquette from the movies-how to dress, how to date and kiss, and even how to fall in love. When Clark Gable took off his shirt in the 1934 film It Happened One Night, revealing that he wore no undershirt, the men's underwear industry went into a decline that cut its business by half in one year. "So seriously do the fans take advice, so conscientiously do they copy their models, that publicity men can no longer indulge in flights of fancy about baths in goat's milk and honey ... or exquisitely imaginative reducing diets. Every beauty hint must now be checked by an expert lest the fan sicken in her enthusiastic imitation-and sue," she wrote.' Robert and Helen Lynd, authors of the noted sociological study Middletown, an investigation of contemporary midwestern, middle-class culture, claimed that adolescents "went to school" in the movie theaters, modeling themselves after movie stars and repeating movie jokes and gestures. The movies were "not only the most universal form of recreation but a major source of ideas about life and the world in general," claimed the author of a 1935 study of community life in New York City.4
Critics decried the "Hollywoodization" of American culture and all that it represented: the replacement of an older, nineteenth-century set of values-hard work, frugality, and Protestant ethics-with a new, modern set of virtues centered on personality, images, and conspicuous consumption. Film stars, they lamented, earned more press and public attention than politicians, writers, and business figures; Rudolph Valentino's 1927 funeral received much more attention than the funeral, on the same day, of Harvard president Charles Eliot Norton. Articles in the popular press attacked the studios for misleading audiences with publicity "ballyhoo" and criticized fans as "moronic" and gullible, prone to hopelessly conflating the screen and real life. Not only did fans "pattern their hairstyles, their clothes, their cookery, and their behavior after those of their favorite actors ... but [they] also base[d] their most profound thinking on the words of those same authorities," claimed Carl Cotter in The Coast magazine.5 "More than any other art," wrote philosopher Mortimer Adler in 1937, the movies "[are] the social and political problem of our day."6
As an agent and icon of "Hollywoodization," Louella was often attacked. In 1931, she was satirized in the Moss Hart play Once in a Lifetime, about a group of Broadway actors who try to capitalize on the "talkie revolution" by heading to Hollywood and posing as voice experts. On the train to Hollywood, the group encounters Helen Hobart (called "Prunella Parsnips" in some versions of the play), the author of a syndicated column called "Hollywood Happenings." Plump, effusive, and bedecked with jewels, Hobart gushes, "I write the most widely syndicated column in the United States.... Where on earth have you been, that you haven't heard about me? ... Moviegoers all over the country take my word as law. Of course I earn a perfectly fabulous salary-but I'm hardly allowed to buy anythingI'm simply deluged with gifts." 7 In a 1932 comedy, The Runt Page, Shirley Temple played a similarly overwrought and scatterbrained newspaper columnist called "Lulu Parsnips." Critics attacked Louella for her "idiotic slop." "She employs no standard higher than your shoelace, and as often as not it is a great deal nearer the heel," claimed one magazine.'
But what her detractors despised, fans loved. In hundreds of letters, they praised Louella's detailed accounts of celebrity life and described her as their friend and ally. In 1935, the women of the sophomore class at Northwestern University banded together and asked her to pressure producer Irving Thalberg to cast Robert Taylor as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. ("Thank you for implying I have influence. I shall speak to Irving Thalberg and tell him you cannot understand why Robert Taylor would not make a perfect Romeo," she wrote back.)9 When David Selznick announced his plans in 1936 to film Gone with the Wind, Louella received thousands of casting suggestions from readers for the role of Scarlett.10
As the fans had hoped, Louella forwarded the suggestions to Selznick, who thanked her for the input. Lest they become angry if their candidates were not chosen, Selznick asked Louella to explain to her readers, concerning his choice of leading lady for Gone with the Wind, "With such a wide difference of opinion even among your own read
ers, everybody cannot be made happy with my final choice of cast.... Stars are under contract to different studios [,] and however much I might like to obtain this or that player it is more often than not impossible."" Though Miriam Hopkins and Paulette Goddard received the highest number of fan votes, in the end Selznick decided on the British actress Vivien Leigh. When Louella announced the decision, she was "literally bombarded with letters." "The Southerners, in particular, are protesting in bitter denunciation against a British miss being chosen while there are so many fine [American] actresses. The fans of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Arthur, Miriam Hopkins, and Paulette Goddard have increased [my] mail to six times its normal size.""
The First Lady of Hollywood Page 25