The First Lady of Hollywood

by Samantha Barbas

  Rather than attack Hopper directly, Louella went after the actors and press agents who appeared to be favoring Hopper. During his first week as publicity director at Warner Brothers in the mid-1940s, Bill Hendricks nearly lost his job because he contacted Hopper with an exclusive, rather than Louella. Louella promptly contacted Jack Warner and urged him to fire Hendricks. Warner forced Hendricks to make peace with Louella, and through Louella's nephew Gordon Maynard, Hendricks arranged to meet Louella for breakfast. "We can get along," she allegedly said. "All you have to do is just give me all the stories." 19 Thereafter, he did. Former MGM publicist Walter Seltzer recalled that it was the "rule" of the studio publicity department to alternate giving stories to Hopper and Louella. He particularly feared Hopper, who was "hard as nails, political and opinionated." Louella was more likely to be "forgiving," he claimed.20

  When actors or publicists "double planted"-that is, gave stories to Louella and Hopper simultaneously-there was hell to pay. Once, when Hopper was at a Beverly Hills party, actress Gene Tierney came up to her and announced, "I've been trying to get you all afternoon to tell you I'm going to have another baby." Tierney's studio, however, had given the story to Louella the previous afternoon, and when, at the party, Louella heard that Tierney had confided in Hopper, she attacked her so mercilessly that the actress collapsed into tears. "La Tierney knew exactly how blazing mad I was. When I'm mad I do not simmer or boil. I explode!" Louella recalled. Though a crowd of celebrities witnessed the tongue-lashing, no one came to Tierney's aid-they were afraid of Louella.2'

  The Hopper-Parsons feud caused problems for the studios, which tried ingeniously to appease the rivals without playing favorites. Recognizing Louella's longtime friendships with the studios and the importance of the Hearst papers, the studio continued to give Louella the majority of exclusives. By 1942, the publicity offices had worked out a formula of doling out scoops to Louella and Hopper on a sixty-forty basis. Nonetheless, Hopper had a sizable following of loyal publicists and informants, including a "special ally," as Hopper described him-Mark Hellinger, a former columnist for the New York Daily News who was working as a producer at Warner Brothers. "The scoops I had on the affairs of Warner Brothers nearly drove Jack Warner out of his cotton-picking mind," Hopper recalled in her autobiography.22 During the 1940s, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and Twentieth Century Fox tended to favor Louella with news, while Hopper had the edge with Paramount and MGM. At industry-sponsored banquets and meetings, Hopper and Louella were given seats equidistant from the principal speaker, but the studios faced a conundrum when it came to advertising displays. It was typical for most film advertisements to include blurbs from critics, but where the comments appeared in the frame of the ad reflected studios' perspective on the critics' importance. Top billing was better than bottom billing, and left was better than right. Because it was impossible to give both Louella and Hopper top position, the studios agreed to print their comments in separate ads.23

  "Hedda gave me an ultimatum-you can't be friends with both of us," recalled Joan Fontaine. "I walked a narrow tightrope, inviting Louella to one party and Hedda to the next. 1124 When Louella suspected that Frances Marion was writing Hopper's column-which, in fact, she was not-Louella turned on Marion, who had once been a friend.25 To keep in the columnists' good graces, actors, executives, and publicists showered both women with expensive gifts, but sometimes the attempts at appeasement backfired. One Christmas, Hopper received not one but two crystal decanters, one engraved with "HH" and the other "LOP." Hopper apparently refused to return Louella's gift, commenting that it would be entertaining to ask guests, "Would you like some Jack Daniels out of Louella's bottle?"26

  If done skillfully, playing the rivals off each other made for good publicity. In 1943, Selznick's publicity director, Whitney Bolton, planted a story with Louella about Jennifer Jones's selection for an upcoming film role. He then called Hopper and told her that Teresa Wright had been chosen for the part. "Today Hedda Hopper carried a story that of course it was silly for 'another paper' to print that Jones would get the role when everybody knew Teresa Wright would get it," Bolton told Selznick. "I like this kind of a controversy[,] and since you know that Jennifer Jones will undoubtedly receive the role, it can do no harm to continue the controversy. " 27Though Selznick did not punish Bolton for his "double planting," the producer reminded him of the importance of giving Louella news on a regular basis. "I have assured you that there is no need to give Louella all the breaks [but] Louella is entitled to preference on a portion of them because of. a) her prominence as to circulation; b) the headlines which she gives us, which are not obtainable on a national basis from other columnists. "21 Selznick advised Bolton to "keep a few stories in reserve for Louella," and to tell her "that we will have one or two important stories for her if and when she really needs something for her banner and will hold them exclusively for her."29 Later, when Louella began threatening to run inaccurate stories about the studio that she had heard from other sources' publicists, to appease Louella, Selznick issued a memorandum to his publicists ordering that Louella be given news items at the rate of "thirty or forty a week." 30

  In addition to ending Louella's forty-eight-hour exclusive, the rivalry with Hopper diminished Louella's access to news, and she began calling publicists several times daily, begging for stories. Paranoid, she attacked them when she suspected that they were withholding news. In 1942, when Universal Studio made a deal with Deanna Durbin, they contacted advertising and publicity director John Joseph and instructed him to tell Louella. It was four in the afternoon when he reached her, and according to Daily Variety, "She was very indignant and wailed plentifully because she hadn't been tipped off to the yarn earlier. When Joseph pleaded innocence ... she sarcastically replied that she didn't believe him."" Louella's increasingly bad temper and her desperation for news were being dubbed by some studios "the Parsons Problem." By late 1942, Louella had become so hungry for exclusives that she began paying Western Union clerks at the Waldorf Hotel, where studio executives often stayed in New York, to tip her off. There were also reports that she had hired an obstetrical nurse at Doctors' Hospital in New York to call her with the names of actresses who had gone in for abortions.32 Still the industry loyalist, she suppressed the news, which would have been scandalous, but threatened to reveal it unless the studios gave her other stories.

  By 1942, the rivalry with Hopper, her increasing alienation from the film community, and the termination of the Hollywood Premiere radio show were taking an emotional toll on Louella. Though Hollywood Premiere had been successful, her radio contract with Lever Brothers was not renewed, and the show ended in late 1941. There were rumors in the summer of 1942 that she would be going back on the air with a Hollywood Hotel-like preview show sponsored by Pabst Brewing Company (which promised to pay for all guest talent), but the plans never materialized.33 Louella feared that her absence from radio was hurting her popularity, especially since Hopper had been on the air with her Sunkist show almost continuously since 1939. According to Variety, in late 1941 Louella did an "inward burn" when the Hearst writer Jimmy Starr was being introduced over his radio program as "the best-known reporter in Hollywood."34

  The gossip war was played out against the backdrop of the world war, which had dramatically transformed the nation's culture and economy. Because much of the wartime defense industry was based in Southern California, thousands of workers migrated to the area, increasing the population by 15 percent. Over six million women entered the workforce to fill positions created by the defense industry and to meet the labor shortage caused by male military service. As part of its project of wartime industrial expansion, the federal government pumped billions of dollars into defense, thus ending the Great Depression and creating an economic boom. The federal budget, which was nine billion dollars in 1939, rose to one hundred billion dollars in 1945, and in some parts of the country personal incomes doubled. Between 194o and 1942, the profits of the eight largest Hollywood studios increase
d from twenty million dollars to fifty million. And between 1943 and 1945, the film industry earned an average of sixty million dollars each year.35

  In January 1942, the federal government created the Office of War Information to coordinate government information activities and a branch of this office, the Bureau of Motion Pictures, to serve as a liaison with the Hollywood film industry. Guided by the bureau's Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, issued in July 1942, the major studios produced dozens of newsreels and films that glorified the Allies, condemned fascist ideology, and encouraged patriotism and resource conservation. Dozens of actors and directors enlisted in the Armed Services Jimmy Stewart, Robert Montgomery, Tyrone Power, Ronald Reagan, William Holden, and Clark Gable, among othersand were lauded by Louella, who commended them in a Photoplay magazine article for "fighting ... to get this hellish war over and come home to the USA. When you speak about patriotism an actor ceases to be just an actor and becomes the greatest citizen in the world John American."36 To entertain the thousands of servicemen who arrived in the Los Angeles area prior to their departure for the Pacific, several stars established the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub on the corner of Cahuenga and Sunset Boulevards, where uniformed men danced with such top stars as Betty Grable, Irene Dunne, and Joan Crawford. Within six months, over six hundred stars had entertained on the club's stage.37

  Like the rest of Hollywood, Louella threw herself into the war effort. She urged readers to buy war bonds and, like Hearst, with his rabid anti-Japanese editorials, described the "Japs" as "treacherous, mean, and unreliable." Like the Chief, she supported the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast-in 1942, over one hundred thousand, perceived to be a threat to national security, were incarcerated for the duration of the war-and described them as "vermin" who never should have been admitted into the United States.38 In April 1942, the Examiner ran a six-part series on the Japanese American "race problem" that not only accused Japanese Americans of disloyalty but also encouraged internment and the deprivation of their civil rights. (In drumming the Hearst philosophy of "one hundred percent Americanism" into its readers, the Examiner "blurred the line between fascism and patriotism," the newspaper historian Rob Wagner has written.)39 Away from the Examiner, Louella volunteered regularly with several wartime service organizations, including the American Women's Voluntary Services, Bundles for Bluejackets, and the Red Cross, and both she and Harriet emceed the festivities at the Hollywood Canteen, hosting "Louella Parsons Night" and "Harriet Parsons Night. 1140

  While the Office of War Information guarded politics, the Production Code Administration, under the leadership of head administrator Joseph Breen, continued to police the morality of motion picture content.41 Illicit sex, illegitimate pregnancies, miscegenation, and other socially and politically controversial themes were still prohibited in films, though the producers continued to test the limits. In 1941, Americans witnessed the much-publicized battle between producer Howard Hughes and the Production Code Administration over the film The Outlaw, which featured controversial "breast shots" of actress Jane Russell, both in the film and in publicity stills. Louella attacked Hughes for degrading Hollywood's image. "I wonder where the Hays office was when the photographs of Jane Russell were released to a national picture magazine?" she asked in the column. The Catholic organization the Legion of Decency was "up in arms-and rightly so," Louella reported. "It is unfair to the little girl, who is a sweet child and who should not make her debut in a photograph as disgusting and suggestive. The time has passed when any actress needs to appear indecently clad to win success," she wrote in January 1941.42 Breen told Hughes that he had to reshoot the controversial scenes in order to receive a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration, and when Hughes refused, the film was shelved. Hughes finally released the film, without the seal, in May 1946, and it caused controversy almost everywhere it played.41

  In her column, Louella celebrated stars' volunteer work on behalf of the war and criticized as un-American those whom she claimed had shirked their patriotic duty. Louella often used these claims to attack old enemies. When Greta Garbo failed to appear on a patriotic radio show called The Victory Program, Louella wrote, "Whether Greta Garbo did or did not agree to go on the Victory Program is not as important as the chance she missed in NOT broadcasting. So much criticism has been heaped on her head these past few months by Americans all over the country who complain that she made her money here and then sent it to Sweden. Had she appeared on the broadcast with other too percent Americans, much criticism might have been avoided. Garbo after all owes it to the industry to make a public appearance or give some explanation for her attitude if she wants to continue her screen ca- reer."44 Louella criticized Mae West for her failure to appear in a live performance for the merchant marines: "Too bad Mae West couldn't see her way clear to appear on the ... program," Louella wrote in March 1942. "All she would have had to have done was to go down and let the boys see her since they asked for her. But there will be a wonderful show anyway and every other artist has expressed his willingness to do his share."45

  The war became personal for Louella in the spring of 1942, when Harry, insisting that it was his patriotic duty, enlisted in the Army Medical Corps, as he had in World War I. With Maggie Ettinger and Louella's close friend Virginia Zanuck, the wife of producer Darryl Zanuck, Louella accompanied Harry to the Ross Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, where he began his training on May 15, 1942. Louella drove up to San Francisco each weekend to visit him until he shipped out for the South Pacific on July 27, 1942.46

  She recounted that difficult afternoon: "I went down the pier as far as I was permitted-laughing, somehow-clinging to my Doctor as long as I could.... I watched my soldier, with his major's cap so jaunty over his graying hair, as far as I could see him, and when he was out of sight I could only stand there in the middle of the street. Corey, the Irish cab driver, who was an old friend and who always drove us to Mass in San Francisco, came up and touched my arm. I followed him without a word. I think I knew where he was going." The driver took her to the Old St. Mary's Church, near Chinatown. "I went into the church. I don't know how long I stayed. Somehow I pulled myself together. I knew Harry would come back, but I also knew that until he did, that breathless pain would stay turning in my heart."47

  With Harry gone, more than ever she sought solace and support from her friends-Clark Gable, Carole Lombard's secretary Madalynne Lang, and her husband, the director Walter Lang.48 In January 1942, Carole Lombard, on a tour selling war bonds in Las Vegas, boarded a TWA DC-3 bound for Hollywood. The plane smashed into a cliff, killing her instantly. Louella consoled Gable after Lombard's death, and he remained a close friend of Louella's until his death in 1960. Louella was also part of an informal social network of female journalists in Los Angeles that included Adela Rogers St. Johns; Florabel Muir, who covered the Hollywood beat for the New York Daily News; and Agness Underwood, who worked the crime beat on Hearst's Herald Examiner. According to St. Johns' son, Louella was well respected by the women but was often intimidated by them. She was particularly awed by St. Johns, who, in addition to having written successful screenplays and short stories for such publications as Good Housekeeping and the Saturday Evening Post, earned national fame during the depression for an expose on the squalid living conditions of the poor. (She was subsequently billed by the Hearst papers as the "World's Greatest Girl Reporter.")49 Louella feared that any moment St. Johns, with her superior writing and reporting abilities, could "walk in and take over the column," he recalled.50

  Sometime during the winter of 1942, Louella lost contact with Harry, who was in New Guinea, and she feared for his life. Through the assistance of Lee Van Arta, a correspondent for the International News Service, she learned that he was in an army hospital, suffering from what was diagnosed as a tropical fever. In January 1943 he was discharged from the army and returned to San Francisco, where he was hospitalized for two weeks. Louella went to visit him in early February, and by the e
nd of that month he had returned to Los Angeles.51 Although by the spring of 1943 the Hollywood Reporter noted that he and Louella were spotted dancing at Ciro's restaurant, Harry was still seriously ill. Within months he was back in the hospital, and Louella struggled to combine her writing responsibilities with the time-consuming task of overseeing his care. In the spring of 1943, Louella and Harry decided to sell Marsons Farm.52

  Writing an autobiography had not initially been her idea. In October 1942, Doubleday Doran offered her a contract for an autobiographical work to be titled The Gay Illiterate, after the nickname she had been given by Nunnally Johnson in the 1939 Saturday Evening Post article. Seeing it as an ideal publicity opportunity, she embarked on the project with the help of a ghostwriter, the prolific journalist and screenwriter Richard English, who had been assigned to her by Doubleday. Since Kane, Louella had become almost hypervigilant about restoring her "just folks" image of small-town innocence and had played up her rural roots in press interviews. "Born and reared in Illinois, Louella Parsons has been swapping recipes since she was old enough to give fudge the hairline test. At [her] ranch she can be comfortable in an old pair of slacks. She concedes to the doctor's old-fashioned prejudice that the wife should not wear slacks in public places," Radio Life wrote in a feature article in 1941.53 She hoped that the autobiography would help her image-recovery project.

  During the writing of the manuscript in 1943, Louella suffered a major loss to Hopper, who had gotten the exclusive on a sensational story concerning Charlie Chaplin and a young actress, Joan Barry. That spring, Barry had contacted Hopper claiming that she was carrying Charlie Chaplin's child. After winning the young woman's trust, Hopper called in a physician to have her examined and found that indeed she was pregnant.