The First Lady of Hollywood

by Samantha Barbas

54. Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 71-72.

  55. LAE, Aug. z6, 1931-

  56. LAE, Dec. 3, 1933-

  57. LAE, Nov. 18, 1933-

  58. LAE, Dec. 15, 1932-

  59. LAE, MY 30, 1930-

  6o. LAE, Dec. 15, 1930-

  61. LAE, June 13, 1932

  62. Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (New York: Oxford University Press, zoos), 217-18.

  63. LAE, Feb. 18, 1933-

  64. LAE, July 11,1934•

  65. LAE, Jan. 27, 1933-

  66. WRH to LOP, May 12, 1933, Carton 17, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  67. Grace Wofford to LOP, Nov. 27, 1931, Gloria Swanson Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

  68. Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Random House, 1980), 19o.

  69. Swindell, Screwball, 230.

  70. WRH to LOP, Jan. 30, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  71. Donald Bartlett and James Steele, Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes (New York: Norton, 1979), 68.

  72. Schulberg quoted in Carroll Graham and Garrett Graham, Queer People (New York: Vanguard Press, 193o; reprint, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), z8o.

  73. LAE, Oct. 25.

  74. LAE, Nov. 16, 1930-

  75. "Outside Pressure Chills Meggers on Queer People," Variety, Apr. 15, 1931, 6.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Letter from Tabor, Iowa, Mar. 4, 1934, Louella Parsons Collection, Charis Radio Show Files, University of Southern California. For popular depictions ofjour- nalists in the 1930s, see Alex Barris, Stop the Presses: The American Newspaperman in Films (South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1976); see also Howard Good, The Drunken Journalist: The Biography of a Film Stereotype (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, zooo).

  78. LAE, Sept. 20, 1931-

  79. Louis Weitzenkorn, Five Star Final (New York: S. French, 1931).

  8o. WRH to Jack Warner, Nov. 6, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  81. LOP to WRH, Nov. 6, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  82. Nasaw, The Chief 413-

  83. Eells, Hedda and Louella, 232.

  84. GI, 123.

  NINE. RADIO

  1. Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise (New York: Scribner, 1993), 15-

  2. Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood.- Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29.

  3. Christopher Sterling and John Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History ofAmerican Broadcasting (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1978),112; Norman Finkelstein, Sounds in the Air: The Golden Age ofRadio (New York: Scribner's, 1993),13•

  4. Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, z8.

  5. Michele Hilmes, Only Connect: A Cultural History ofBroadcasting in the United States (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002), 83-

  6. Finkelstein, Sounds in the Air, 32.

  7. Hilmes, Only Connect, 66.

  8. LOP to JW, n.d., Carton 12, William Randolph Hearst Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Hearst Collection, UCB).

  9. LOP to JW, Feb. 10, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  1o. Warren to Lance Heath, Feb. 21, 1931, Gloria Swanson Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

  ii. Los Angeles Examiner (hereafter LAE), Feb. 24, 1931, 31.

  12. "Mary Pickford-Louella Parsons," Variety, Feb. 25, 1931, 64-

  13. LOP to WRH, Apr. 3, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  14. LOP to WRH, Apr. 8, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  15. LOP to MD, May 7, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  i6. LOP to WRH, Nov. 4, 1931, Carton 12, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  17. Katharine Lowrie, "Fan Magazine Reporters Underrated as journalists," n.d., Harriet Parsons Clipping File, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS).

  18. Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound (New York: Scribner's, 1997), 477; Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30-31-

  19. LAE, May 22, 1932-

  20. LAE, Mar. 5, 1931, 15-

  2,1. William J. Mann, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 (New York: Viking, 1961), 154-

  2,2. Ibid., 149-

  23. William J. Mann, Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star (New York: Viking, 1998).

  24. LAE, June 4, 1931-

  25. See Samuel Marx, Deadly Illusions: Jean Harlow and the Murder of Paul Bern (New York: Random House, 199o).

  2,6. LAE, Sept. 7, 1932, 7.

  27. Crafton, The Talkies, 418, 436.

  28. Louis Pizzitola, Hearst over Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, zooz), 316-i9.

  29. LAE, Oct. 30, 32.

  30. LAE, Oct. 23, 32-

  31. Dorothy Manners Oral History, n.d., Hollywood Women's Press Club Collection, AMPAS; Herb Stinson, "Backstage with Louella," n.d., Louella Parsons Clipping File, AMPAS.

  32. Clipping, n.d., 1934, George Eells Collection, Arizona State University (hereafter Eells Collection, ASU).

  33. Mac St. Johns, interview by George Eells, n.d., Eells Collection, ASU.

  34. Herb Stinson, "Louella Parsons," Los Angeles Mirror, May 7, 1953, Louella Parsons Clipping File, AMPAS.

  35. Frank Liberman, interview by George Eells, n.d., Eells Collection, ASU.

  36. Walter Seltzer, telephone interview by author, May 3, 2004-

  37. "Personality," Time, Aug. 25, 1952, 36.

  38. Bob Thomas, Joan Crawford (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 93-94-

  39. LAE, Mar. i8, 1933-

  40. Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 319-21-

  41. Cari Beauchamp, Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women ofEarly Hollywood (New York: Scribner, 1997), 311-

  42. Louella Parsons, The Gay Illiterate (hereafter GI) (New York: Doubleday Doran, 1944), 127.

  43- Ibid.

  44. LAE, July 2, 1933, 1; GI, 126.

  45. Beauchamp, Without Lying Down, 309-10.

  46. Wonders to LOP, Nov. 9, 1933, LOP Collection, Charis Radio Show Files, Box 4, University of Southern California (hereafter Charis Files), italics in the original.

  47. LOP to E. J. Gough, Nov. 13, 1933; E. J. Gough to LOP, Nov. 14, 1933, Charis Files, Box 4.

  48. WRH to LOP, May 1, 1933, Carton 17, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  49. On the 1932 ban, see Michele Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

  50. "Parsons' Corsets," Variety, Dec. 11, 1933, 3-

  51. John Dunning, Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 412.

  52 - LOP to Wonders, Feb. 9, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  53. GI, 153.

  54. GI, 154-

  55. Dunning, Tune in Yesterday, 412.

  56. B. Henderson to LOP, Feb. 28, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  57. Fan letter from Tabor, Iowa, to LOP, Mar. 2, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  58. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 258-59.

  59. Anonymous to LOP, Mar. z8, 1934; Eva Gove to LOP, Mar. 4, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  6o. Fan letter from Mildred McCloud, May 17, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  6i. Lillian McWilliams to LOP, Apr. 27, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  62. Fan letter from Tabor, Iowa; B. Henderson; Virginia Hitchcock to LOP, n.d., Charis Files, Box 4.

  63. LOP to RW, May 19, 1934, Charis Files, Box 4.

  64. Louella O. Parsons, "Hollywood Is My Home Town," Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1934,48-

  65. LAE, Aug. 14, 1935, 4-
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  66. LAE, June 15, 1934, 15•

  67. Louella Parsons, Tell It to Louella (New York: Putnam, 1961), 103-4-

  68. "Parsons Jr.," Hollywood Studio Magazine, Oct. 1982, Harriet Parsons Clipping File, AMPAS.

  69. Mann, Behind the Screen, 193.

  70. Ezra Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 442-

  71. "Hollywood Inside," Daily Variety, Nov. 8, 1934, 2.

  72. Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 72.

  73. Mary Jane Higby, Tune in Tomorrow (New York: Cowles, 1968), 64-

  74. "It's Getting Tough for Radio Chatters to Get Free Talent," Variety, Apr. 6, 1935,1•

  75. James Kotsilibas-Davis, Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming (New York: Knopf, 1987), 123.

  TEN. THE BEST AND THE HEARST

  1. Los Angeles Examiner (hereafter LAE), Mar. z6, 1933

  2,. LAE, Jan. 29, 1933•

  3. LAE, Apr. 7, 1933, I, 18-

  4. WRH to L. B. Mayer, Mar. 17, 1933, Carton 17, William Randolph Hearst Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Hearst Collection, UCB).

  5. John Kobal, People Will Talk (New York: Knopf, 1985), 639-

  6. Samuel Marx, Mayer and Thalberg: The Make Believe Saints (New York: Random House, 1975), 223-

  7. Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), 430.

  8. Dorothy Manners Oral History, Hollywood Women's Press Club Collection, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California (hereafter HWPCC).

  9. LAE, May 20, 1934.

  1o. LAE, Oct. 14, 1934•

  ii. Ronald Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 42-

  12. Bosley Crowther, Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times ofLouis B. Mayer (New York: Holt, 1960), 200.

  13- Joe Willicombe to George Young, Nov. 511934, Carton 19, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  14. Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 48-53-

  15. LAE, Oct. 22, 1933.

  16. WRH to Tom White, Apr. 4, 1934, Carton 19, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  17. David Nasaw, The Chief The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 485•

  18. Ibid., 502.

  19. W. R. Hearst, "Red Pictures," LAE, Dec. 15, 1934-

  zo. WRH to George Young, Nov. 5, 1934, Carton 19, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  21. Louis Pizzitola, Hearst over Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002),345-

  22. Nasaw, The Chief 506.

  23. Joel Faith, "Louella Parsons, Hearst's Hollywood Stooge," New Theater, Aug. 1935, Louella Parsons Clipping File, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California (hereafter AMPAS).

  24. Pizzitola, Hearst over Hollywood, 347.

  25. "Louella Parsons: Reel 2," New Theater, Sept. 1935, Louella Parsons Clipping File, AMPAS.

  26. "Louella Parsons: Reel 2,."

  27. Joseph Alsop, "Miss Louella Parsons Speaking," New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 27,1935, LOP Scrapbook #20, AMPAS.

  28. S.F. Van Buren, "They Cover Hollywood," n.d., Trade Journals Clipping File, AM PAS.

  z9. Quoted in Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Knopf, 1994),134-

  30. Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 120.

  31. Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice ofthe Press (New York: Boni, 1927), 5.

  32. Dorothy Manners Oral History, n.d., HWPCC.

  33. Leo Rosten, Hollywood, the Movie Colony (New York: Arno Press, 1970), 7.

  34. Grover Jones, "Knights of the Keyhole," Collier's, Apr. 16, 1938, 25.

  35. Wilkerson quoted in Ezra Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 57.

  36. Marcia Boric, "Reporting on Hollywood for 6o Years," Hollywood Reporter, Sept. z8, 1990, Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  37. J. Willicombe to LOP, Mar. 13, 1933, Carton 17, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  38. Val Holley, Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 87, 89.

  39. "The Trade Paper Racket," Louella Parsons Clipping File, AMPAS.

  40. Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, 71.

  41. "Hollywood Inside," Daily Variety (hereafter DV), May 28,

  42. Alfred O'Malley, "They Cover Hollywood," n.d., Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  43. Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, 78.

  "Hollywood Inside," DV, Nov. 15, 1935, 2-

  45. LOP to WRH, Oct. 14, 1933, Carton i9, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  46. LAE, Aug. 17, 1935, I, 13•

  47. LAE, Aug. 9, 1941, I, 11-

  48. Jimmy Starr, Barefoot on Barbed Wire (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, zoos), 249•

  49. Gabler, Winchell, 255, 277.

  50. Walter Winchell to WRH, June 23, 1933, Carton 16, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  51. Kathy Feeley, "Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: The Rise of the Celebrity Gossip Industry in Twentieth-Century America, 1910-1950" (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2003), 134-

  52. Alfred O'Malley, "They Cover Hollywood," n.d., Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  53. James Bacon, "Riotous Memories of Sidney Skolsky," Los Angeles Herald Examiner, May 10, 1983.

  54. Ray Van Ettisch to WRH, Nov z4,1937, Carton 22, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  55. Sidney Skolsky, Don't Get Me Wrong-ILove Hollywood (New York: Putnam, 1975), 42-43-

  56. Bacon, "Riotous Memories."

  57. Skolsky, Don't Get Me Wrong, 45. Louella later denied that she had anything to do with Skolsky's firing, but all evidence-in particular, Louella's animosity toward Skolsky and her involvement in Hearst's anticommunist campaign-suggests the contrary. That Hearst would fire Skolsky for his political position is also corroborated by Hearst's treatment of Winchell, who in the late 193os began inserting his political opinions into his column. When Winchell wrote of his support of Spain's Republican government, which was in Hearst's eyes tantamount to communism, Hearst instructed his editors to "edit Winchell very carefully and leave out any dangerous or disagreeable paragraphs." They were to "leave out the whole column" if necessary. Hearst wrote in a telegram to Louella that Winchell "has no institutional loyalty, and furthermore is a pink." Hearst telegram quoted in Feeley, "Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," 134.

  58. "Fidler, the Man Nobody Throws," The Coast, n.d., Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  59. Jones, "Knights of the Keyhole," z6.

  6o. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Nov. 20, 1935,2-

  6i. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Nov. i6,1935, 2-

  62. Louella Parsons, The Gay Illiterate (hereafter GI) (New York: Doubleday Doran, 1944), 130-31•

  63. LAE, Oct. 4, 1937-

  64. LOP to WRH, Oct z6, 1937, Carton 17, Hearst Collection, UCB.

  65. Mary Jane Higby, Tune in Tomorrow (New York: Cowles, 1968), 61.

  66. Ibid., 65-66.

  67. Gypsy Rose Lee, interview by George Eells, n.d., George Eells Collection, Arizona State University.

  68. "Agencies' Showmanship in 35," DV, Jan. 1, 1936, 157-

  69. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Nov. 10, 1937, 2.

  70. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Apr. 14, 1937, 2.

  71. Higby, Tune in Tomorrow, 67.

  72. "Snow Falls at Bacher Stunt Broadcast," DV, Dec. 23, 1936, 32-

  73. Higby, Tune in Tomorrow, 23.

  74. Michele Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 199o), 67.

  75. Higby, Tune in Tomorrow, 67.

  76. "Parsons Ices Pickford," Variety, Mar. 2, 1936,1.

  77- Ibid.

  78. Ibid.

  79. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Mar. 24, 1936, 2.

  So. Edward Baron Turk, Holl
ywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 19o.

  81. Hollywood Inside," DV, Mar. 24, 1936, 2.

  82. Quoted in Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (New York: Oxford University Press, zoos), 217.

  83. "Hollywood Inside," DV, Aug. 29, 1936, 2.

  84. "Klondike Annie Brings Trouble," Motion Picture Herald, Mar. 7, 1936, Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  85. Ibid.

  86. Elizabeth Yeaman, "Power of Hearst Press Discounted by Results in Editorial Campaign," Hollywood Citizen, Mar. 14, 1936, Trade Journals Clipping File, AMPAS.

  87. "Klondike Annie Brings Trouble."

  ELEVEN. THE FIRST LADY OF HOLLYWOOD

  i. Los Angeles Examiner (hereafter LAE), Sept. 6,1936.

  2. Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise (New York: Scribner's, 1993), 30-

  3. Margaret Thorp, America at the Movies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939),94-

  4. Robert Lynd and Helen Lynd, Middletown (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), 265; Caroline Ware, Greenwich Village (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), 350-

  5. Carl Cotter, "The Forty Hacks of the Fan Mags," The Coast, Feb. 1939, Fans Clipping File, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California (hereafter AMPAS).

  6. Leo Rosten, Hollywood, the Movie Colony (New York: Arno Press, 1970), 360. Adler is quoted on p. 368.

  7. Moss Hart and George Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), 37-40-

  8. Thomas Wood, "The First Lady of Hollywood," Saturday Evening Post, July 15, 1939, 10.

  9. LAE, Oct. 7,1935•

  10. Ibid.

  ii. DOS to LOP, Sept. 23, 1936, Selznick online exhibit, Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University ofTexas, www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/gwtw/ scarlett/ (accessed Jan. 25, 2000-

  12. LAE, Jan. 18, 1939-

  13. LAE, Sept. 15, 1937.

  14. Louella Parsons's Hollywood Hotel contract, Sept. 17, 1937, Hollywood Hotel Files, Warner Brothers Collection, University of Southern California (hereafter Hollywood Hotel Files).

  15. LOP to WRH, Jan. z6, 1932, Carton 12, William Randolph Hearst Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  16. LAE, Sept. z6, 1937.

  17. Hollywood Hotel, dir. Busby Berkeley, Warner Brothers, 1938.

  18. Charles Einfeld to R. J. Obringer, Sept. 17, 1937, Hollywood Hotel Files. Louella also turned her experience as an "actress" into the subject of a feature article, "I Get In and Out of the Movies," in the February 1938 issue of Photoplay magazine.