The First Lady of Hollywood

by Samantha Barbas

  Confidential got tips from actresses, waiters, "ex-husbands or wives, or embittered lovers like the small-time movie actor who in 1955 told Confidential the story of the sexual eccentricities of a fast-rising young actress who jilted him," according to Time. Harrison was so intent on digging up dirt that he employed a squad of private detectives equipped with small noiseless cameras and wrist-attached microphones that could pick up a sigh sixty feet away. The magazine caused not merely a stir in Hollywood but a national sensation ("Everyone reads Confidential. But they deny it. They say the cook brought it into the house," recalled Humphrey Bogart). 111 After five years of publication, Confidential was selling nearly four million copies of each issue, making it one of the best-selling magazines on American newsstands. 119

  The Hollywood producers, disgusted, finally took action in September 1955 following a story titled "The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe's Divorce." The article detailed an attempt by Monroe's husband, Joe DiMaggio, plus Frank Sinatra and a private investigator, to break into the apartment of Monroe's vocal coach, Hal Schaefer, with whom she was allegedly having an affair. The group bungled the job and ended up in the apartment of a middleaged woman named Florence Kotz. When the story appeared in Confidential, the film elite was outraged. Pressured by industry moguls, in 1957 the California attorney general, Edmund Brown, indicted Harrison. During the sensational trial, a prostitute named Ronnie Quillan went on the stand to confess that she had been a paid informant for the magazine, and several New York and Los Angeles police admitted to having been on Confidential's payroll. The Hearst papers hyped the trial: the New York Mirror called it a "super colossal bedroom extravaganza," and the Los Angeles Examiner put it on the front page and sold out almost every day.

  In the end, the charges were dropped on Harrison's promise to change the magazine's editorial policy and publish only flattering stories about movie stars and politicians. Predictably, circulation plummeted, though the magazine continued for over a decade. In April 1959, the magazine ran a piece on Louella, "The Hatchet Woman Hollywood Fears." "Is she really the most powerful woman in Hollywood? Can she really make or break stars?" it asked. An indication of the magazine's new, toned-down style-or perhaps the extent to which Louella had already been scandalized by the press-the article was a tired rehash of familiar rumors and accusations. Louella "couldn't write," the piece claimed, and was a "sloppy, inaccurate reporter." "Meanly vindictive," she let "loyalty to her friends get in the way of her job as a reporter," took "advantage of her position to corral enormous quantities of loot from movie studios, actors, and others," and was "extremely vain." "Six nasty words in Louella's column cost me $66,ooo," one actor was quoted as saying. "One hour after her column was on the streets, I lost a three-month extension on my contract. And all she really said was, `I don't fancy that man much."'120 When the article came out, no one, not even Louella, raised an eyebrow. In over four pages of text, the magazine said nothing new.

  Confidential opened the scandal floodgates. Several imitators were launched in the mid-1950s, including the magazines Suppressed, Hush Hush, Inside Story, Exposed, Behind the Scenes, Rave, Whisper, Lowdown, Top Secret, Private Lives, and On the QT. By 1955, the combined circulation for these amounted to more than ten million. The wildly successful tabloid National Enquirer began in 1957 and spawned its own set of copycats-National Exposure, National Mirror, and National Limelight, among others-with a combined circulation of more than seven million.'2' Newsweek asked in 1955 why Americans were so interested in the expose publications. The country had gotten jaded. "The US public is the most communication-glutted group of people in world history. Daily bombarded by `facts' which conflict, daily told opposite versions of the same incidents, hopelessly incapable in this complicated world of sorting out the truth, a great many Americans have undoubtedly built a thick shell of skepticism around themselves. Having seen more than his share of legitimate scandals and exposures, the reader begins to think that every story must have some kind of a `lowdown' beneath the surface, some `uncensored' facts known only to a `confidential' few," the magazine concluded.122

  For the fan magazines, which had banked their fortunes on public naivete, this cynicism was troubling. The major fan publications, most prominently Modern Screen and Photoplay, scrambled to find a way to appease a less gullible public without compromising their candy-coated image of Hollywood. One tactic was to acknowledge the mistakes of the scandalous stars but emphasize the clean lifestyles of the majority. Photoplay even went as far as to produce a chart that listed the marital, parental, and home-ownership status and community involvement of over 150 celebrities. Another approach was to describe the celebrity sinners as having erred due to work-induced stress. As Louella claimed in a 1952 Modern Screen article, such stars were to be "pitied" rather than vilified. As a last resort, some fan magazine editors broke down and gave in to sensationalism. Turning the scandal-magazine formula on its head, they countered stories that actors were sleeping around with pieces that asked, "Is it true that everyone in Hollywood is sleeping around?" 123

  Louella, who had delved only once into the realm of scandal with the Bergman story, abhorred the trend toward sensationalism, and she continued to glorify Hollywood. In 1955, she was still cranking out such titles as "Why the Alan Ladds Are Hollywood's Happiest Couple" and "The Role Bing [Crosby] Likes Best Is Playing a Swell Dad" and paeans to "sweet, understanding" actresses like Marie Wilson, who "never wants to hurt anybody. She is completely unselfish and puts her own interests last. "124 Like much of the popular media, Louella's writings concealed under a facade of contented middle-class domesticity the social turbulence of the decade-a mounting crusade for civil rights, nuclear fears, and the discontent of suburban housewives that would erupt into the feminist movement of the following decade. The image of Hollywood and America that she presented in her column reflected her own conservative social vision, but it was not real. "I think a Hol lywood columnist should print the news ... but not betray any confidences," Louella told TV journalist Ed Murrow.125 "There are far too many sensationalists who are getting their story inspirations from the dirty words written on back fences. 11126 Though her words were sincere, she was clearly out of touch with the times. The creator of Hollywood gossip could no longer live in the house that she had built.

  LOUELLA WAS ALMOST EIGHTY WHEN, in 1958, Kingsbury Smith, chief of the International News Service, renewed her contract for three years. "I hope I'll live that long," she told Smith, half jokingly. Even though she now required an extra daily nap-"I get pretty tired, and rest is very good," she wrote in a note to Jack Warner-Louella was still energetic and compulsive, with near "cyclonic" energy, as Anita Loos once described it.' When asked by an interviewer if and when she planned to retire, she laughed. "I'll be meeting eight deadlines a week when they have me in a wheelchair," she promised.'

  She meant it. In April 1958, she won citywide acclaim for a major story she wrote on the murder of Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner's abusive exboyfriend, byTurner's daughter, Cheryl Crane. During an argument in early April, Crane had heard Stompanato, a former bodyguard for gangster Mickey Cohen, threaten Turner with violence. Crane went to the kitchen, got a knife, and plunged it into his abdomen. Because Louella knew the intimate details of the Stompanato-Turner relationship and "how to obtain information from sources on a moment's notice," according to newspaper historian Rob Wagner, the Examiner city desk had Louella, rather than a crime reporter, write the story, which appeared on the front page.'

  She followed up her success with a sensational 1958 story on the divorce of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a breakup that the press attributed to Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Fisher was having an affair.4 (Hopper claimed to have gotten the scoop, which the Hearst papers paraphrased without giving her credit.) 5 The divorce led to an outpouring of hostility against Taylor, and Louella received hundreds of letters from outraged fans. Though Louella tried to defend Taylor, whom she called "an old friend" and a victim of exaggerated press accounts tha
t demonized her, Taylor despised Louella for having publicized the divorce, and blamed her for the public sentiment against .6 That year Louella also infuriated Joan Crawford, when, following the death of Crawford's husband, the Pepsi magnate Alfred Steele, Louella claimed in a front-page story that Crawford was "flat broke."7 After Pepsi executives told Crawford that the story made the company look bad, Crawford denied Louella's story and forced her to print a retraction. Louella was livid but "printed the rebuttal and never forgave Crawford," according to biographer Bob Thomas.'

  Still insecure about her appearance and performing talent, for years Louella had refused to do a live television show. But in 1958 she finally relented and appeared on Ed Murrow's TV talk show Person to Person, in a segment filmed at her Maple Drive home. Looking somewhat tired and confused, she told Murrow that she still "splits the infinitives" but had changed her style to "write more about the younger set." After showing off portraits of Hearst and Cardinal Spellman on her piano and making a tour of the dining room (where at Christmas dinner the same twenty-five people had paid the same compliments to each other for twenty-five years but never tired of them, she quipped), Louella went into her den. What is a typical evening at home like? Murrow asked. "I have my radio, TV, and hi-fi. I love music," Louella said. Though rock-and-roll was too "wild" for her tastes, she liked "the sweet and tender ballads." One of her favorite records, she told Murrow, was the album jimmy McHugh in Hi-Fi, for which she had written the liner notes.

  Inevitably, the subject shifted to Hollywood. Louella admitted that things in the film industry "are not as good as they once were [but] I have confidence we'll get out of it beautifully." Why? She put her faith in heaven. "The one thing I treasure most is my statue in the garden of the Madonna. I have a shrine out there, and I go in the morning to say my prayers; and I am happy for the day because I know God is in his heaven and all is good for the world," she said as she smiled.9

  In June 1959, Louella, Harriet, Jimmy McHugh, and Maggie Ettinger traveled to Quincy, Illinois, where Louella received an honorary doctorate from Quincy College, the oldest Catholic college in the state.1° Friends and relatives from Dixon and Freeport came down for the event, and Louella was awarded a twenty-four-karat gold key to the city of Freeport." Louella and the entourage left Quincy for New York, where Louella was honored at a cocktail party put on by Gloria Swanson at the Sheraton Hotel and at a dinner celebrating her thirty-seventh anniversary with the Hearst Corporation. l2 At the dinner, she received a gold typewriter and a gold bracelet with links marking "all the important things in my life, such as signing my ... first contract with Mr. Hearst.... I'm staying on with the Hearst organization as long as I live and I'm useful," she told reporters. "Mr. Hearst once said to me, as long as you are enthusiastic you'll be good. I won't say I'm good, but I have never lost my enthusiasm for the Hollywood beat, and I suppose I'll fight and scratch for scoops as long as there's a breath of life in me."13 Later in New York she did an interview for the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University, which was assembling a collection of interviews from entertainment industry figures for its Popular Arts Collection.

  Her words were bitter. In the old days, she reminisced, Hollywood was a "great big village. I mean, we were all friends, the parties were small, and we would meet the same people.... Stars were groomed to the teeth. They never appeared in public without looking every inch a star. Today I see some of the younger generation wearing slacks, being not as well groomed and tidy as the stars were in the old days." And actors were silent literally. Docile studio employees, they knew that their job was to look good, not to think. "We didn't have the actors' studios [and] they didn't try and be intellectual as they do today. And they weren't businessmen and women," she lamented. Now "the stars are ... the bosses, it seems to me, because they now direct, they own part of the picture, and have a lot more to say than they did in the old days."'4

  The passing of the old Hollywood made her sad, "very, very sad." "It's made me very sad because I felt-and I hate to say anything against my beloved industry-I felt they made a very grave mistake in selling their fine pictures to TV. They could have re-released them." Also, "I think there are too many downbeat pictures now. I think people like to get out of their own troubles.... I think the old formula, `Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry,' is good. That's what made Charlie Chaplin so great. In all of his nonsense there was a pathos."15

  "I think my career has been based on luck," she concluded. "I seem to have been born under a lucky star. I'm always amazed myself. I wrote a book called The Gay Illiterate, and occasionally, if I forget to split a participle or use an ungrammatical phrase, my readers object. They want me to talk as if I were talking over the fence to the next door neighbor, and they don't expect me to write anything profound and deep."'6

  By the late 195os Louella could no longer hide her anger over the changes in Hollywood and her abandonment by the industry she had built. Though she was still invited to parties, she was no longer the center of attention; at many events she sat forlornly in a corner while newcomers asked the identity of the "old lady" and old-timers politely paid their respects. But she insisted on going out, even when her health gave way in the early r96os, prompting snide comments from observers who mocked what seemed like pathetic attempts to hold on to her youth. "When she progressed slowly to a restaurant table with Jimmy [McHugh]'s hand under one of her elbows and a waiter's hand beneath the other, she looked ... like some richly dressed little mummy," one journalist recalled.'?

  It was perhaps because of her feelings of loss and betrayal that in the end she became, like Hopper, a staunch right-wing critic of Hollywood liberals. By 1958, her column, which had dealt with politics only sparingly, was filled with strident and incendiary anticommunist propaganda. In particular, she lashed out against those members of the Hollywood Ten who had been pardoned and had resumed work in film. When director Otto Preminger publicized the fact that Dalton Trumbo, one of the Ten, had written the script for his film Exodus, Louella attacked Trumbo, describing him as "one character we can do without." "I am sorry to see Otto Preminger publicize him. Look now for some of the others of his ilk to come through the opened door," she warned.'$ When Jules Dassin, who had been living in Europe since the HUAC investigations, received an Academy Award nomination as best director for Never on Sunday in 1961, Louella reminded readers that "just for the record, according to the 1952 annual report of [HUAC], Dassin was identified as a communist by Edward Dmytryk on April 25, 1951, and by Frank Tuttle on May 24, 1951. There are authenticated stories of Dassin's work with the People's Daily World, The Daily Worker, the Workers' Theater, and other Communist affiliations. His movies have always received acclaim in Russia. As of May it, 1960, the records show he has never appeared before the UnAmerican Activities Committee to refute the charges."'9 She now publicly pledged to support the American Legion in its effort to "expose UnAmericanism wherever and whenever found" and urged the independent producers to sign the "Waldorf Declaration against letting communists into our industry," as the major studios had done in 1947. In 1961, when she wrote that "our popular FBI head J. Edgar remains untouchable whether it's a Democratic or Republican administration, and that's as it should be," Hoover wrote personally to Louella thanking her "for the very generous comments." It was "encouraging," he added "to know that I have the unselfish and active support of such staunch friends as you."20

  Her ongoing attacks on movie "filth," both in and out of her column, be came an embarrassment to many in Hollywood. On January 24, 1960, seven hundred film industry notables attended a Screen Producers' Guild dinner for Jack Warner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. When Jack Benny introduced Eva Marie Saint, who was going to present an award to Warner, Benny delivered an extensive introduction. Saint then said, "All I can say after that is, oh, shit." Appalled, Louella wrote an "open letter" to Saint in her column: "If you think I'm on a soap box to lecture you about that headlined `word' you used at the Producers' Dinner, you are mistaken. I've known you ever sinc
e you came to Hollywood, and I know you to be a fine mother, wife and actress-and a very `nice' person as well.... But, my dear, never be afraid to say, `I'm sorry.' So far, you've said everything else."2' She saw her stand against Saint as heroic, but very few in Hollywood agreed.

  Louella may have turned against the new Hollywood, but she remained faithful to Harriet, who left RKO in 1955 after having produced Never a Dull Momentwith Irene Dunne and Fred McMurray, Clash By Nightwith Barbara Stanwyck and Marilyn Monroe, and Susan Slept Here with Dick Powell and Debbie Reynolds. In 1956, having become "disenchanted with Hollywood," as she later told reporters, she began work as a Broadway producer.21 Louella raved in the column about Harriet's new career. "A relative of mine, a very happy young lady by the name of Harriet Parsons"-the "young lady" was fifty-four at the time-"telephoned from New York to say that the Rape of the Belt, which she is producing, opens in New York at the Helen Hayes Theater. Believe me, nothing can keep me from being in New York for my daughter's big night," she wrote in 1960.23 True to her promise, Louella attended opening night in New York and then went to Boston, where Jimmy McHugh showed her around town and she visited "Elizabeth Arden's famous salon" to have her hair coiffed by an expensive "Parisian hair specialist."24 The Rape of the Belt was Harriet's first and last theater production; the show closed after nine days. In 1961, with Louella's help, Harriet acquired the screen rights to I Married a Psychiatrist, a novel that was appearing serially in Hearst's Chicago American, but the film project never materialized.25

  It was in that year that Louella's second and last book, Tell It to Louella, was published. She had accepted an advance for the book in 1959, which she spent quickly, without having written a word. A ghostwriter, Dee Katcher, was then brought in to help her with the manuscript. Putnam marketed the book to younger fans ("filled with never-before-told information and profiles on such stars as Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, [and] Elizabeth Taylor," read the jacket copy). But it was largely a tribute to the golden era, with several chapters on the old studio moguls-Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, the Warner brothers, and Darryl Zanuck-and "the Chief," whom she described as "a great man whether you liked him or not. Whether you agreed with him or not."26 As she had in The Gay Illiterate, she attacked her detractors. In particular, she went after Ezra Goodman, a Los Angeles journalist and former Time correspondent who had damned her in a 452-page book called the FiftyYear Decline and Fall ofHollywood. Louella fumed at Goodman's (correct) accusation that the writer Richard English had helped her with The Gay Illiterate, and at "an old and false story that one year all my Christmas gifts were stolen from my car and that I demanded they all be replaced."27 According to Harriet, the Christmas present story, a staple of Hollywood gossip for decades, hurt Louella deeply. (There was no truth to the tale; "Mother gave more than she took," Harriet told reporters in 1982.)28