Frank, is the pull they both have over young actors who would give
their back teeth to be IN. Membership dues include generally behaving
like Mongols from the court of Genghis Khan.
The Clan was riding high the night Eddie Fisher opened his night-club
act at the Ambassador Hotel here, before the _Cleopatra_ debacle got
under way. I was in New York at the time. Frank and his henchmen took
over and mashed Eddie’s performance. “This was a disgusting display
of ego,” snorted Milton Berle, sitting in an audience that included
comedians like Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, and Red Buttons, any one of
whom, if he’d tried, could have joined in and made the Clan look silly.
Elizabeth Taylor, on Eddie’s side that night, raged: “He may have to
take it from them, but I don’t. One day they’ll have to answer to me
for this.”
Steve McQueen was one young actor I managed to extricate from the
Clan. I took him under my wing when he was driving racing cars around
like an astronaut ready for orbit. “You could kill yourself when you
were single, and it was only your concern. But you’ve got a family and
responsibilities now. Think of them.” Between his wife and myself, we
got him away from overpowered automobiles.
I took to Steve as soon as I saw him in “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I liked
his arrogant walk, the don’t-give-a-damn air about him. So did Frank.
When he sent Sammy Davis, Jr., into temporary exile for indiscreet talk
to a newspaper about other Clansmen, Frank had Sammy’s part in _Never
So Few_ rewritten for Steve. When Frank is in a movie, he becomes
casting director, too.
He took Steve on a junket to New York when the picture ended, and Steve
took along a big bundle of Mexican firecrackers, which he cherishes.
He hadn’t previously been any kind of drinker, but in Frank’s crowd
you drink. From the tenth floor of his hotel Steve had a ball tossing
lighted firecrackers into Central Park. When the police ran him to
earth, it took all of Frank’s influence to keep him out of jail.
As a peace offering, Steve had a live monkey delivered to my office in
advance of his return. He wasted his time. I don’t like monkeys, so
I gave it away and summoned Steve for some Dutch-aunt lecturing when
he got back. “I know all about your trip. You were loud, boorish, and
probably drunk. You have to make up your mind whether you’ll have a
big career as Steve McQueen or be one of Frank Sinatra’s set. Think it
over.”
Twenty-four hours later he gave me his answer. “I was out of line. I
was flattered that Mr. Sinatra wanted me, but I’d rather stand on my
own feet.”
* * * * *
I sometimes wonder about the Leader. His face lit up like a neon sign
when he broke the news to me that he was going to marry Juliet Prowse,
the South African dancer to whom he was engaged for an hour or so. “I
haven’t seen that light in your eye for ten years,” I told him.
But I suspect the men around Frank went to work against Juliet. It’s
easy enough to work the trick if you’re determined and unscrupulous.
A word dropped into the conversation here and there will plant the
doubts. “Do you think she really goes for you, Frank?” “She’ll probably
figure on keeping her career.” “You should have met that family of
hers--strictly nothing.” Frank was convinced eventually that Juliet
wasn’t for him.
With all his talents and power, I sometimes wonder who’s the Leader and
who’s being led.
_Four_
When Louella Parsons heard that I’d started work on this book, she
telephoned to ask what its title was going to be. “Come, Louella,” I
said, “you don’t expect me to reveal that to you, do you?”
“I hoped you would. And I hope you’ll be kind to me in your book
because I was very nice to you in mine.”
“You certainly were--you got the facts about me so mixed up that I
haven’t finished reading it.”
“Well, anyway, what are you going to write about?”
“I’m just going to tell the truth.”
“Oh, dear,” she wailed, “that’s what I was afraid of.”
* * * * *
In the days when I earned my living as a motion-picture actress, I was
one of Louella’s regular news contacts. I had an insatiable curiosity
about the town I’d known for years. I got around a lot, and lots of
people talked to me. I salted down stories by the barrel load.
Louella would call up and say: “I understand you went to so-and-so’s
party last night. Tell me something about it.” I was glad to oblige.
Payment came in kind, not cash, when she inserted my name in her
column, which helped a working actress.
She really was the First Lady of Hollywood then, for one good reason
which nobody was allowed to forget. She was William Randolph Hearst’s
movie columnist, and he was lavishing millions of dollars and acres
of publicity space on his motion-picture properties, bent on making
himself the greatest of all impresarios and Marion Davies the greatest
star.
With the Hearst newspaper empire behind her, Louella could wield power
like Catherine of Russia. Hollywood read every word she wrote as though
it was a revelation from San Simeon, if not from Mount Sinai. Stars
were terrified of her. If they crossed her, they were given the silent
treatment: no mention of their names in her column.
When Hearst let himself be lured by Louis B. Mayer into putting his own
production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, under MGM’s wing, Louella’s
power was apparently complete. She could get any story she wanted
front-paged in the Los Angeles _Examiner_ and all other Hearst papers,
none of them accustomed to making much distinction between real news
and flagrant publicity.
At San Simeon, Hearst’s $40,000,000 Shangri-La in San Luis Obispo
County, Louella mingled with the stream of visiting celebrities, stars,
and producers that poured every weekend into the fabulous, twin-towered
castle or the surrounding marble “bungalows” at the summons of W.R.
or Marion. So did I. At the fifty-four-foot table in the Renaissance
dining hall, you’d see Garbo, John Gilbert, Errol Flynn, Norma Shearer,
Nick Schenck, Beatrice Lillie, Cissy Patterson, Frank Knox, Bernard
Baruch. Name the biggest and they’d be there, including, on one
occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Cal Coolidge and Bernard Shaw.
Nobody would deny that Louella has talent. She showed at her best with
GBS, who was writing some articles for Hearst. All of us invited to
San Simeon that weekend had been warned against asking Shaw for an
interview. That didn’t stop Louella. He yielded to her persuasions
only on condition that he have the right to approve every word of her
article after he’d talked to her.
When she went back with the typescript he had her read it to him. After
the first few words, he interrupted sharply: “But I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, Mr. Shaw,” she said, batting her big brown eyes, “I’m so nervous
just being in your presence. What was it you said before?” He repeated
the sentence, which she carefully inserted, and then read another line
or two before the irate Irishman pulled her up short again.
This performance went on for some minutes longer before GBS took the
manuscript from her hand. “Give it to me--I’ll write it myself,” he
said firmly, proceeding to do just that. But Louella wasn’t through
yet. When he handed back the completed article to her, she asked: “Oh,
Mr. Shaw, won’t you please autograph it for me? It will be such a
wonderful keepsake for my daughter, Harriet.”
He couldn’t refuse; he was writing for Hearst, too. So Miss Parsons
scored in a triple-header. She collected the only interview Bernard
Shaw gave in the United States. She subsequently sold the article to a
Hearst magazine. And she has the autographed interview, which someday
will sell for another tidy sum.
Some of us San Simeon regulars discovered that Louella isn’t slow
to take credit. When W.R. and Marion went abroad on one of the many
voyages they made together, we decided to throw a party for them on
their return. We intended it as a gesture of thanks for all the parties
of theirs that we’d enjoyed. We put on a terrific evening at the
Ambassador Hotel, with its rooms crammed with flowers and cockatoos,
and split the bill between us: $175 apiece. Louella was one of the
party, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t write an article for a national
magazine taking credit for it.
She owed a lot to Marion Davies. It was an article praising Marion in
_When Knighthood Was in Flower_ that got Louella started with Hearst.
It caught W.R.’s eye and prompted him to hire her away from her $110 a
week as movie reporter on the New York _Telegraph_ into working for him
at more than twice the salary. Over the years Marion shielded Louella
from boss trouble more than once. After W.R. died in 1951, she was
among those who didn’t exactly hurry to give Marion sympathy.
She did ring the doorbell, however, immediately after Marion had
appeared on my television show. She arrived at her house bearing as a
gift a photograph of herself in a heavy silver frame. She proceeded
to place it in full view on a table in the front hall, taking star
position ahead of an autographed portrait of General Douglas MacArthur.
Marion asked me to take a look when I arrived soon after Louella had
left. I carried it back to the library, where Marion was sitting. “Do
you want this?”
“No,” she said quizzically. I took the frame home to substitute a
photograph of Marion standing beside me on the TV show, returning the
old frame and new picture to her the following day.
* * * * *
Louella didn’t regard me as a serious rival when I got started as a
columnist in 1938. Andy Harvey, in MGM’s publicity department, had
recommended me to Howard Denby of the _Esquire_ syndicate: “When we
want the low-down on our stars, we get it from Hedda Hopper.” I was
signed by Mr. Denby and sold to thirteen papers straightaway, the first
to buy being the Los Angeles _Times_.
The betting in town after column number one appeared was that I
wouldn’t last a week. My mistake was being too kind to everybody. I
didn’t tell the whole truth--only the good. I set out to write about my
fellows in terms of sweetness and light, not reality. I began:
Just twenty-three years ago my son was born. Since then I’ve
acted in Broadway plays. Sold Liberty Bonds in Grand Central
Station. Knitted socks for soldiers--which they wore as
sweaters. Made very bad speeches on the steps of the New York
Library. Helped build a snowman on Forty-second Street ... when
the streetcars were frozen solidly in their tracks. Earned
money for one year as a prima donna in _The Quaker Girl_ with
only two tones in my voice, high and low--very low. Played in
_Virtuous Wives_, Louis B. Mayer’s first motion picture.
I’ve worked with practically every star in Hollywood. Sold
real estate here--made it pay, too, but not lately. Was a
contributor to one of the monthly magazines. Did special
articles for the Washington _Herald_. With a friend, wrote a
one-act play. Through pull had it produced at the Writers’ Club
and was it panned! Ran for a political job here; thank goodness
the citizens had a better idea! Coached Jan Kiepura in diction.
Learned about the beauty business from Elizabeth Arden in her
Fifth Avenue salon. Made three trips abroad, one to England on
business. Put on fashion shows. Have a radio program.
And today I begin laboring in a new field and am hoping it
will bring me as much happiness as that major event which
took place twenty-three years ago. I can only write about
the Hollywood I know. About my neighbors and fellow workers.
Amazing stories have been written--many true. Hollywood is mad,
gay, heartbreakingly silly, but you can’t satirize a satire.
And that’s Hollywood....
I was green as grass, and the town jeered at me. Luckily, I had a
good friend at my side. Wonderful Ida Koverman carried the title of
executive assistant to Louis B. Mayer, but she was the real power
behind his throne. To all intent and purpose, she ran MGM. Two
months after my launching, when I was sinking slowly in an ocean of
kind words for everybody, she gave a hen party for me. On the guest
list were Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, singer Rosa Ponselle,
Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Sophie Tucker, press people,
public-relations people--every woman you could think of. There was only
one holdout--Louella.
It was a night to remember. A forest fire was blazing in the hills,
and the sky was lit with flame. I was burning, too. Ida had just set
me straight about column writing. “They’ve laughed at you long enough.
You’ve been too nice to people. Now start telling the truth.”
That was the best advice she ever gave me. It marked a turning point.
My telephone started ringing like a fire alarm every day soon after.
“Hedda,” the callers would moan, “how can you print such things about
me?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but you’re my friend. I didn’t think you’d tell.”
“I’m earning my living with my column. I’ve got to tell the truth. You
didn’t call when I wrote sweet nothings about you, did you? If you
can’t face facts, then I’m sorry.”
The column began to grow almost instantly, on the way up to its present
readership of 35,000,000 people, which came about after I switched
from _Esquire_ to the Des Moines _Register & Tribune_, then in 1942 to
Chicago _Tribune_-New York _News_ syndication. (If I stop to think of
that audience figure, I get so scared I can’t write a line until I’ve
pushed the arithmetic out of my mind.)
Louella prepared for a fight. She had an intelligence service
that included telegraph operators, telephone switchboard girls,
beauty-parlor assistants, hotel bus boys, doctors’ and dentists’
receptionists. Her medical-intelligence chief was her husband, Dr.
Harry Watson Martin. She called him Docky or Docky-Wocky. He was often
known as Lolly’s Pop. His special field earlier had been venereal
disease and urology, his hobby was show business, and he retired as
head of the Twentieth Century-Fox medical department.
Docky had the friendship of everybody, along with a certain
nonchalance. He once took a dive into the Bimini Bath pool when it
lacked a single drop of water, broke his neck, and lived to marry
Louella in 1929. He displayed a similar unconcern about water one
morning when Louella, dressed up to go ashore for Mass, made her
cautious way down the gangplank of a yacht in Catalina Harbor straight
into the sea. Docky was waiting in the dinghy, engrossed in the Sunday
papers. “Ready to go, dear?” he asked, not raising his head until her
splashing drew him to her rescue.
Leaving a party, Docky once fell flat on the floor and lay there,
comfortable enough. When a friend came forward to hoist him up, Louella
put out a restraining hand. “Oh, don’t touch him, please. He has to
operate at eight o’clock this morning.”
Through Docky’s good offices, Louella had a tie-in with testing
laboratories, notably those making rabbit tests for pregnancy. This
private line into the womb could give her news that a star was pregnant
before the girl knew it herself.
But I had sleuths on my side, too. As an actress, I knew directors,
producers, stars, and the men and women who worked on the other side
of the cameras. One special ally was Mark Hellinger, a hard-boiled
columnist for the New York _Daily News_ before he became a gentle,
kind, and great producer for Warner Brothers and Universal.
He called me over to his house for an off-the-record conference and
offered to help “because you’re going to need it.” He said: “I don’t
somehow care for what Miss Parsons stands for. Whenever I hear a story
at the studio, I’ll pass it on to you. I shan’t be able to call you
through the switchboard, so I’ll give it to you from a private booth.
There won’t be time for questions, but you’ll get the truth.”
The scoops I had on the affairs of Warner Brothers nearly drove Jack
Warner out of his cotton-picking mind. He could never make out how it
happened. When he reads this, he’ll know.
Louella watched her monopoly start to crack. If she was asked to a
party, she’d want to know whether I was going to be invited. If I was,
she’d demand that I be excluded “or else I certainly shan’t come.”
Some timid hostesses fell for that. I laughed in their faces for their
cowardice.
Anxious to break her hold, producers were steering my way more and
more of the items that had previously been hers alone--the news of
engagements, weddings, pregnancies, and divorces that made up a fat
share of her daily diet. An engagement announced first to Louella had
been good for six months of smiles for the happy couple. An exclusive
on a pregnancy was even better--the mother-to-be could count on nine
months’ favorable notice, which could be extended if she gave Lolly a
beat on the birth announcement, too.
The competition she was getting didn’t make her any fonder of me. When
Jean Parker was about to marry for the second time, she telephoned me:
“I want you to have this exclusively.”
“No,” I warned her, “you must tell Louella.”
“But I don’t want her to have it.”
“You can’t afford to give it to me alone. Call her and tell her I have
the news, too. For your career’s sake, you must.”
Ten minutes later she called back, weeping. “I did what you said and
told her I’d given it to you. She said: ‘Get it back from her, or I
won’t print it.’”
“Tell her she’s got it exclusively, if it means so much to her,” I
said. “What’s one story among friends--and you’ll need friends.”
If a studio passed along a story to me that Louella thought she should
have, she raised the roof, if necessary going over everybody involved
to the studio head himself: “Hopper was given that. I should have had
it. Don’t let it happen again.”
Even a producer as peppery as Darryl Zanuck had reservations about
doing anything that might antagonize her. Zanuck, at that time
Twentieth Century-Fox production chief, thought nothing of squaring
off and mixing it in a fist fight with a director who argued with him.
But when Bill Wellman, after three days of shooting on _Public Enemy_,
urged that Eddie Wood, who was the star, should be replaced in that
gangster epic by a newcomer who had the second lead, Jimmy Cagney, the
fiery Zanuck flinched.
“My God, we can’t do it, Bill. Eddie’s engaged to Harriet Parsons,
Louella’s daughter. Parsons will raise hell.”
“You son of a bitch,” answered Bill, who’s a flinty character. “You
mean you’re going to let that decide it?”
“Damn it, no,” said Zanuck, put on his metal. “You go and put Cagney
in.” And that’s how two men with guts turned an ex-chorus boy into a
star.
Harriet married not Eddie Wood but King Kennedy. There were more
stars in attendance than there are in the Milky Way when the two of
them became man and wife at Marsden Farms in the San Fernando Valley
in September 1939. Some of the guests were old-timers like Rudy
Vallee, Billy Haines, Aileen Pringle, Frances Marion, and myself. The
photographers ignored us completely, to the point where Billy got
spitting mad.
He went up to Hymie Fink, who had been the town’s best still
photographer since Valentino’s day. “We’ll each give you five bucks if
you’ll take a picture of us,” Billy offered. But Hymie couldn’t do it.
He had his orders, he said. After Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy were divorced in
1944, King came to work for me as leg man, covering the studios for a
while, but I insisted that he get Louella’s consent before I hired him.
Not many men had the courage of Bill Wellman and Darryl Zanuck. I was
in a roomful of faint hearts at a party the Gary Coopers gave when
Gene Tierney made a beeline for me: “I’ve been trying to get you all
afternoon to tell you I’m going to have another baby.”
That was wonderful news. Louella and I both knew that Gene’s first
child, a beautiful little girl, had been born with a sleeping mind--it
was one of the many blows that life dealt Gene, who finally cracked
under the torment and needed psychiatric care. I hustled to the
telephone, but it was tied up with a call to Henry Hathaway, who was
a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. By the time I
got through to the _Times_ night desk, Gene was nowhere to be found to
verify her news for the paper. But Louella had barged over to me and
was hanging on like a limpet.
Next morning I heard what had happened. Gene’s studio had given the
story of the forthcoming baby exclusively to Louella the previous
afternoon. When she heard Gene had told me, she had flounced over to
the poor girl and delivered a tongue lashing so violent that Gene had
collapsed into tears. Gary Cooper had been in another room and didn’t
hear it, but of the whole mob of Hollywood heroes who listened to
Louella, not one lifted a voice or a finger to help Gene. Fear of their
own precious skins kept them as dumb as mutes at a funeral.
Even Frank Sinatra had to come to terms with Louella in her heyday. He
stood high in her disfavor for months. It seemed there was nothing he
could do to stop the attacks she made on him. I thought I might be able
to help, so I suggested through Perry Charles, his agent, that Frank
should call Marion and arrange to meet Hearst. The meeting came about,
and Frank made a good impression. The order was passed down from San
Simeon, and Miss Parsons suddenly discovered that Sinatra was nowhere
near as black as she’d imagined him.
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard flouted the “first to know” rule
Louella had laid down when they set their wedding day to coincide
with Louella’s absence from town--she’d gone off on a trip to San
Francisco. She was on the train coming home when she got the news that
they were married. “It can’t be true,” she gasped. “They would have
told me first.”
But Clark had given the story to all newspapers simultaneously to avoid
any bickering over who should have first whack. She took such a dim
view of that, though, that the Gables felt they had to make up to her
by means of a distinctly unusual present: They had her bathroom done
over with mirrored walls and brand-new plumbing.
Orson Welles is one of the few who never gave a damn for her. When he
was making _Citizen Kane_, a picture with a striking resemblance to the
life of William Randolph Hearst, he persuaded Louella that the story
was something entirely unconnected with her chief. I wasn’t convinced
so easily, and Orson finally agreed to let me see the first screening
of the finished product in a private projection room of RKO. What I saw
appalled me.
W.R. had been a friend to me for years. So had Orson, ever since I’d
been a struggling actress and he’d gone out of his way to be kind to my
son Bill, who was a struggling young actor. When Hearst learned that
I’d been hired as a columnist, he said: “Why didn’t you come to me? I
didn’t know you wanted to write a column. I’d have given you one.”
“Have I ever asked you for anything?” “No,” he said. “What makes you
think I’d ask for anything as important as this is to me?”
“Everybody else asks for things. Why not you?”
“I don’t ask,” I said. Then he wrote me this, to which I didn’t reply:
My dear Hedda:
I am glad you are going to do some work for the _Esquire_
Syndicate. The _Esquire_ people are very clever. They produce a
fine publication and they know good stuff.
I always thought that the stuff you did for the Washington
paper was extremely good.
It was accurate, interesting, and high-grade. It appealed to
intelligent people, who like the movies--and there are lots
of them. So many moving-picture commentators write down to the
level of the movies, as they call it.
I always figure, however, that these commentators write down
because they cannot write up.
Best wishes. I will look for your column.
Sincerely,
(s) W.R.
After the screening Orson asked how I liked it. “You won’t get away
with it,” I said. But he arrogantly insisted that he would. It was his
arrogance that decided which of two friendships had to come out ahead.
I put in a call to Oscar Lawler, a great friend of mine and one of
W.R.’s attorneys, to tell him about _Citizen Kane_ and what Orson was
up to.