she heard I’d seen the picture already and that, contrary to the
assurances she’d given him, it had a great deal to do with the chief’s
affairs, the sky fell in on her. He commanded her to have it screened
for Oscar Lawler and herself. After the showing she begged the attorney
to go home with her to help describe to Hearst what they had seen, but
he declined. She had to get on the telephone herself to San Simeon,
just as later she made many calls, including one to Nelson Rockefeller,
in a battle royal to keep _Citizen Kane_ out of Radio City Music Hall,
which is part of Rockefeller Center, and every other movie theater.
If W.R. had taken Oscar Lawler’s advice to ignore _Kane_, it might
never have received the attention it won when, breaking the boycott
ten months later, it was shown around the world, won a Best Picture of
the Year award, and, as late as 1958, was named as one of the greatest
movies ever made. But on W.R.’s orders Orson Welles’ name went on the
Hearst Silent List of people about whom Louella could never say a kind
word.
The black list constantly makes its presence felt. When Nunnally
Johnson aided and abetted in a blistering article about her that
appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_, she hit back at his wife.
“I ran into Dorris Bowdon last night,” she wrote. “She used to be such
a pretty girl before she married.” Joan Crawford, Nelson Eddy, Jimmy
Cagney, and Ava Gardner have all had the treatment.
Bette Davis and I were administered a slap on the wrist after I
tracked her down to Laguna, where she holed up, refusing to talk to
newspapers, following the birth of her May Day baby in 1947. The door
of the cottage was open, so I walked in, and we talked for hours. The
next week Louella wrote: “Since Bette Davis has had so many unwelcome
visitors, she has had to have her gate padlocked.”
As a present for the baby, Jack Warner sent Bette an add-a-pearl
necklace with five pearls on it and space for the donor to add another
each birthday. Recently I asked Bette if her daughter’s necklace was
still growing. She gave that raucous laugh of hers and replied: “It’s
just the size it was the day you came to visit me.”
Personally, like Louella, I’ve found that silence is the greatest blow
you can deliver to a Hollywood ego when it needs whacking down to size.
Not to mention the name of a star drives him half out of his mind;
they live and die by publicity. Not even producers are immune, as Sam
Goldwyn demonstrated. He cabled me once from Hawaii, where my day’s
eight hundred words apparently were read so faithfully that even when
wartime restrictions limited the paper there to four pages, I had to
be squeezed in somehow. Sam complained: NAME NOT IN COLUMN FOR WEEK
STOP THEY DO NOT THINK I’M IMPORTANT OVER HERE STOP PLEASE DO SOMETHING
ABOUT IT.
Ginger Rogers and Ronald Colman were both excommunicated by Louella for
years for their effrontery in refusing to appear on her former radio
show, “Hollywood Hotel.” As mistress of ceremonies, she collected $2500
a week and the stars appeared free. If any star balked, the producers
hastened to Louella’s aid by putting the pressure on until that star
was convinced of the error of his ways. Total value of the free talent
has been estimated by better mathematicians than I at $2,000,000. For a
while, her sponsor, a soup company, was delighted to pay a weekly tab
of about $12,000 for a show which, without her, would have cost well
over $30,000.
But after the soup maker had been replaced by a soap maker and the show
had been restyled as “Hollywood Premieres,” the Screen Actors Guild
plucked up its corporate courage to do what only Ginger and Colman had
dared. The Guild ruled that Louella had to pay her guests, and thirteen
weeks later the program was off the air.
She showed her power when Mary Pickford organized a radio spectacular,
to be sponsored by a milk company, to benefit the Motion Picture Home,
where poverty drives so many veterans of the movie business. Gable and
dozens of other stars wanted to appear, but Louella got busy on her
telephones. Mary had to back down and cancel the program with the stars
in her living room waiting to go on.
For one of my radio series I wanted to hit up the competitive theme,
which press agents had originally invented. They rubbed their hands
when I got started because, by having us fight, they thought they could
get double space and play off one columnist against the other.
Louella didn’t seem to sense what they were up to. I said: “Let’s take
a tip from Jack Benny and Fred Allen and whip up a feud. We could have
a mountain of fun. It would increase our audience ratings, and we might
get a salary increase out of it. Supposing on the first show we staged
a battle royal and both got carried out on stretchers....” But Louella
wouldn’t play.
Habit dies hard with her if she is invited to appear with me for a
photograph, still shot, or movie. When Charles Brackett and Billy
Wilder wanted us to appear together in _Sunset Boulevard_ as reporters
breaking the news of the murder, they extended the first bid to me. I
began scheming a scene in which she and I would rush for a telephone
simultaneously. Then I would trip and say sweetly: “After you,
Louella.”
When she got her invitation and was told I had already been signed, she
stormed: “Get her off. I won’t be in it if she is.” They would have
none of that, so Miss Parsons did not appear in _Sunset Boulevard_. And
she didn’t mention the picture in her column for months.
She didn’t know what to do when _Time_ ran a cover story and a cover
portrait along with ten columns of some highly flattering prose
about yours sincerely. (Hopper “is a self-appointed judge and censor
of all that goes on in Hollywood,” said _Time_, “and she carries
out her assignment with a hey nonny-nonny and the old one-two.”) In
frustration, Louella took to her bed.
The studios were in a panic. They couldn’t afford to have Louella out
of action. She’s too useful to them. They know how to handle her, where
I’m a tougher nut to crack. If she lays hold of a scandal, she does
not print it unless the studio involved is willing. When scandal comes
in range of my telescope, I’ll print it so long as it’s news and true.
Press agents can’t stand it; the business they’re in should be called
suppress agentry. They’ve suppressed far more than they’ve ever passed
out as news. In the olden days, when Louella reigned alone, there was a
mighty load to suppress, too.
As she slid into a decline through sheer aggravation over _Time_, her
spirits were rapidly restored by a suggestion put up by Adela Rogers
St. John, the magazine writer: “Give Louella the most wonderful dinner
party Hollywood has seen, then maybe she’ll forget about the cover
story.”
Now Louella has accepted every conceivable and inconceivable degree,
doctorate, scroll, and plaque held out by college or corporation.
Testimonial dinners to her are routine, though Eddie Cantor may have
said a little more than he meant at a Masquers Club event celebrating
her thirtieth anniversary as a columnist when he conceded: “I am here
for the same reason everybody else is--we were afraid not to come.”
The idea of putting on a super-size testimonial caught on with every
producer who heard about it. The Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove was
hired and treated to a face lift for the big event. It was originally
planned to collect $25 from each of the hundreds of guests who sat
among the papier-mâché monkeys and imitation palm trees, but when
Hearst heard about it, he footed the whole bill.
_Daily Variety_ did the evening up proud: “The guest list was the
Who’s Who of motion pictures, and even the oldest old-timer could not
recall when so many reigning stars of the past, present, and future, in
toto, as well as agents, press agents, producers, directors, authors,
distributors, studio chiefs, maîtres d’hôtel, the mayor, and governor
all got together in one room. Flanked by industry leaders, Miss Parsons
sat on a garland-strewn dais and listened to oratory in which no
adjectives were spared.”
As a climax, Louella collected a gold plaque with an engraved
inscription to her “courage, accuracy, fairness and curiosity.”
_Time’s_ account noted: “Such well-established stars as Clark Gable and
Cary Grant allowed themselves the liberty of not attending.”
All I know about it, I read in the papers. I wasn’t invited. Neither
was Adela Rogers St. John.
My modest contribution to the welfare of Louella and her family took
the form of some column paragraphs that appeared soon after the
Cocoanut Grove whingding: “_I Remember Mama_, and you will, too, when
you have seen the film. With all the elements of good theater and good
cinema, humor, humanity and hominess, it will be hard to forget ... to
Harriet Parsons, who found the story and produced the picture, must go
a lot of credit....”
That was the final chapter in a story that had started four years
earlier. Harriet is an only child; her father was John Parsons, who
died following the breakup of Louella’s first marriage, before Docky
came on the scene. RKO had signed Harriet as a producer, and she set to
work delving into the studio’s files, looking for likely properties.
She dug out _The Enchanted Cottage_, had it prepared for the screen,
arranged a deal with Sam Goldwyn to borrow Teresa Wright as the
heroine. Then suddenly it was snatched away from her and given to
another writer-producer.
Undeterred, she went back to the files and excavated a story called
_Mama’s Bank Account_, which was retitled _I Remember Mama_, and lined
up Katina Paxinou to play in it. That, too, was grabbed from her by
RKO. At that point, I stepped in with a column item relating Harriet’s
misfortunes and asking: “What goes on? Harriet’s clever, and I think
this is shabby treatment, even for Hollywood.”
The day after the item appeared _The Enchanted Cottage_ was returned to
her--it was a big success when she produced it--and she got _I Remember
Mama_ back, too. Louella had been restored in health and spirit in time
to attend the preview, though in a seat removed from mine. “I expect
Harriet’s picture will be very good,” she confided to a friend, “but I
know one person here who won’t give it a good review.”
Harriet was in New York, where she read my notice in the News. She
telephoned her mother. “Have you read Hedda’s column?”
“No, I never read that column,” Louella sniffed.
“She’s done what nobody else would do for me. I want you to call her
and thank her for me.” Louella did, and we arranged a peace parley over
a luncheon table at Romanoff’s for one o’clock the following day. When
she walked in, a bit late as usual, every chin in the place dropped.
Hasty telephone calls brought in a mob of patrons who stood six deep at
the bar to witness our version of the signing of the Versailles Peace
Treaty. Nobody moved until we left arm in arm two hours later.
Harriet, whom I’ll always like, wired: YOU AND MA WOULD MANAGE TO TOP
ME STOP YOUR HISTORIC LUNCH HAS NOW CROWDED I REMEMBER MAMA OFF THE
FRONT PAGE STOP YOU GALS MIGHT HAVE WAITED FOR BABY. After that, she
won a ten-year contract at RKO. But peace between Louella and me wasn’t
wonderful enough to last very long.
The flames of our relationship blazed merrily one Christmas when a
studio head unwittingly poured fuel oil on. Louella and I are on the
same list for good-will offerings from studios, which fill my living
room from floor to ceiling every season.
One Christmas just before Ernie Pyle went off on his last visit to the
South Pacific, he came to call on me with some friends. After a few
drinks in the den, I said: “Ernie, do you want to see what fear can
bring a female in this town?”
We went into my living room. He looked in wonder at the loot and said
softly: “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”
Not every female star gets carried away with generosity. Doris Day
once sent me boxes of gift-wrapped chocolate-covered pretzels, and
Rosalind Russell a fist-sized hunk of coral such as you’d find in a
fish bowl. Louella’s loot exceeds mine. Once, I’m told, she collected
an automobile.
One unlucky studio chief had bought expensive handbags for each of us,
but they got switched in delivery. When I telephoned to thank him and
included a glowing description of the bag, I could hear his face fall.
“But that’s Louella’s,” he moaned. “Will you be a doll and send it on
to her and explain?”
“Like the devil I will,” I countered crisply. Louella is certain to
this day that I got a better present than she did. Another store’s
mistake brought me two handsome cut-crystal decanters for another
Yuletide, one engraved HH, the other LOP. “Would you return hers to
me?” said their donor.
“Not for the world. It makes such a gay conversation piece when I
can ask a guest: ‘Would you like some Jack Daniels out of Louella’s
bottle?’”
I regard her ungrudgingly as a good reporter, though she doesn’t always
get her facts straight where I’m concerned. (Nor do I sometimes.)
She invariably pretends that I am published only in the Los Angeles
_Times_, so her followers won’t know about the syndicate, which gives
Hopper a considerable edge in readership.
She has sometimes been tripped by her own prose. When Warners years
ago chose Alan Mowbray to play George Washington in _Alexander
Hamilton_, she took aim and fired: “It seems strange to me that an
Englishman would be cast as the father of our country.” During the
days when Mussolini invaded Albania and lives were snuffed out by the
thousands, she decided: “The deadly dullness of the past week was
lifted today when Darryl Zanuck announced he had bought all rights to
_The Blue Bird_ for Shirley Temple.”
In a reminiscent mood she noted: “I don’t know how many of my readers
remember John Barrymore and Dolores Costello in _Trilby_, the George
Du Maunier story, but my mind goes back to John just loving the part
of Svengali, wearing a black beard and hypnotizing the artist’s model
who could only sing when he cast his baleful eye on her.” As Irving
Hoffman recalled: “There wasn’t a thing wrong in the story except that
the name of the picture was _Svengali_, not _Trilby_, the leading lady
was Marian Marsh, not Dolores Costello ... du Maurier wrote it, not Du
Maunier.”
Louella left me with egg on my face with her exclusive story that
Ingrid Bergman was going to have a baby by Roberto Rossellini while she
was still the wife of Dr. Peter Lindstrom. This, a few months after I’d
interviewed Bergman at the scene of the crime and left Rome convinced
by her that Italian newspapers had lied in their linotypes when they
called her pregnant.
I will always believe that Joe Steele (the press agent employed both by
her and her studio boss, Howard Hughes) subsequently told the truth to
Louella. When her scoop appeared and the newspapers were hunting for
Joe, they couldn’t find him. Seems she had persuaded him he was in bad
shape, made sure he didn’t suffer thirst or hunger, then kept him safe
and sound for three days away from her competitors.
After her story had been spread to the world, it seemed like a good
idea to do something to help Ingrid, who wanted a quick divorce so
that her baby could be spared at least a part of the stigma. I thought
that perhaps she could be smuggled by plane out of Italy to some other
country, where only friends would know exactly when or if the child
was born.
Plans were going beautifully when the plan was broached to Ingrid.
She refused to have anything to do with it. She would have her child
proudly, she said, and if anyone didn’t like the idea he could lump it.
In 1951, Docky Martin died of cancer in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. It
was a crushing blow for Louella. Not long ago, she found herself there,
too, for an operation. The feebleness in her voice alarmed me. “I’m so
tired of this place,” she said, “and I’m so sick.”
I had a word with Harry Brand, publicity director of Twentieth
Century-Fox and a good friend to Louella and Docky: “If you want her to
live, you’d better get her out of that hospital. Either she’s in the
same room that Docky had or one exactly like it. She’ll never recover
until she’s moved.”
Nobody apparently had thought of that. She was out of there and into
the Beverly Hills Hotel the next day. Her column power is still potent,
but the times and temper of Hollywood have changed. Though she doesn’t
change, you can’t help but feel sorry for her. She still belabors her
enemies and coos over her intimates: Mervyn LeRoy, Jimmy McHugh, Cobina
Wright, all the Catholic “A” group that includes Loretta Young, Irene
Dunne, Dolores Hope. She still pretends not to read Hopper, but when I
broke the news of Kay Gable’s pregnancy, on the strength of a tip from
a crew member on _The Misfits_, Louella must have read the item and put
in a call instantly to Kay, begging to be the child’s godmother. At the
baptism her hands were so shaky we were scared stiff she’d let young
John Clark Gable fall on the floor by the font.
Louella claims that the people she writes about are all her dear, dear
friends, a total she once estimated at 312. My taste runs closer to
that of Dema Harshbarger, my manager, whom I have known since she first
put me on radio. “I have three friends in the world,” says Dema, “and
I don’t want any more. The average Hollywood friendship today wouldn’t
buy you a ham sandwich.”
_Five_
One of the legends that haunts the typewriters of most of Hollywood’s
five hundred resident reporters and columnists insists that our town
is just like Podunk, a typical American community with a heart as big
as Cinerama. (Are you there, Louella?) This is true, of course--give
or take a few billion dollars a year. Provided Podunk can muster three
dozen and more Rolls-Royces outside a movie house for a new picture
opening. And pay a good cook $500 a week to steal her away from the
best friend. And produce half a dozen houses with built-in pipe organs
and one with wood-burning fireplaces in both the master and children’s
bathrooms--it used to belong to Maggie Sullavan and Leland Hayward but
Fred MacMurray owns it now.
If the majority of people in Podunk worship money like a god, then
there isn’t much to choose between us. Take a man like Dean Martin. If
Podunkians judge their fellows by how many dollars they earn, then Dean
would be right at home. There was the day he got to arguing with his
press agent about Albert Einstein.
“I made $20,000 last week,” Dean said. “What do you think he made?”
“You’re right,” said the press agent, a thoughtful soul. “That
Einstein’s a dummy. I bet he never earned more than $12,000 a year in
his whole life. He’s got to be an idiot.” Dean had the grace to grin.
In Hollywood, where the love of money can change people’s nature every
bit as fast as in Podunk, he has a reputation for cool blood behind his
beaming Italian charm.
He isn’t alone in his class. It’s an obvious weakness among singers.
Perry Como, for instance, sets few records for making appearances for
charity. Bing Crosby, who enjoys almost nothing about his profession
except the income it brings him, can’t be dragged to a benefit. It took
his fiery little Irish mother, Kate, to push him out of his house to
one Academy Awards show when he was at the top of his career. “You’ll
go,” she threatened, “or you’ll never hear the last of it from me.”
Kate was a woman to be reckoned with and still is. That was the night
Bing got his Oscar for _Going My Way_.
Jerry Lewis on one occasion begged one big star to join him in New York
on an all-night telethon to raise funds in a muscular-dystrophy drive.
“You know what you can do with those crippled kids,” was the response
he received from this father of a big family, who has a reputation for
charming birds off trees.
Some of our inhabitants cherish the quaint idea that the number of
charity performances he gives is an accurate yardstick for measuring
an entertainer’s heart. More accurate, anyway, than the size of his
bank account. It’s easy to sing a song or two, harder to stand up and
be funny for half an hour. Yet the comics measure up well; Jack Benny,
Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, George Burns--all knock themselves out in the
sweet cause of charity.
Our number-one citizen on that score is Bob Hope, and we’re proud as
peacocks of him. There isn’t a place in the world he wouldn’t fly to
for charity and work without drawing a nickel. He’s ham enough to love
the publicity it brings him, but he does a monumental amount of good.
Bob has literally made the millions that everybody believes Bing has
stashed away in the vaults.
Money is talked about in our town more than elsewhere, perhaps, because
there’s more of it around. Bob, who could safely be called thrifty,
has splurged on a private three-hole golf course valued at more than
$100,000. Elvis Presley owns fifteen automobiles, including an all-pink
Cadillac with a television and hi-fi set. Beverly Hills High School has
an oil well on its campus which brings in $18,000 a year.
Beverly Hills is an oasis of thirty thousand inhabitants and thirty
thousand trees set in the steppes of Los Angeles. Many of its people
earn their living in the entertainment industry or as doctors, lawyers,
agents, soothsayers and headshrinkers, living on the backs of the
others. Most of the trees that line the sidewalks are palms, though
magnolias, eucalyptus, and acacias thrive in the gardens, and the
evening scent of pittosporum drifts over the streets as sweet as the
song of nightingales.
It’s a separate community with its own schools, police, firemen, and
local government. As a contented resident, I’m happy to say that it
enjoys the lowest tax rate for miles around. I am not so happy to
report that in our town, where there’s at least one Olympic-size pool
to the block, and sometimes five, Esther Williams found nobody she
asked would give her the regular use of one for classes in teaching
blind children to swim. She finally found a pool in Santa Monica,
thirty minutes’ drive away, two days a week.
Acting as a kind of buffer between Beverly Hills and Los Angeles proper
is Hollywood, with a population of some quarter of a million, which is
the workplace of most of the stars who live in Beverly Hills. The rest
of our population seems to be Texans, who are flocking in and who can
usually leave the movie colony standing with dust on their faces when
it comes to worshiping the golden calf.
Up until the early days of this century, Beverly Hills saw more
coyotes than dollar bills. It was a Spanish-owned wilderness of remote
canyons and tumbleweed. Then in 1906 it was bought for $670,000 by its
American founders, who sold off lots at $1000 apiece on the installment
plan, $800 if you paid cash; those lots sell now for $50,000. The big
spending didn’t start until soon after World War I ended, but long
before that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had bought a whole
hilltop on Summit Drive together with the hunting lodge that stood
there. They spent hundreds of thousands on the place that we called
“The White House”--Pickfair.
Doug itched to put a wall all the way around Beverly Hills, but he
compromised by simply encircling their estate. He and Mary literally
made their home a palace. They were America’s royalty and were treated
as such in their own country and overseas. Kings and queens entertained
them; they rode in Mussolini’s private train. At Pickfair they
entertained visiting bluebloods.
The Duke and Duchess of Alba stayed there, but they left a week early
because the duke discovered, to his chagrin, that the armfuls of cuddly
Hollywood blondes he’d been expecting were not permitted through
Pickfair’s portals.
Pickfair had some rich neighbors. Carl Laemmle, the half-pint immigrant
from Bavaria who founded Universal-International, built an estate.
So did Will Rogers, Gloria Swanson, Charles Chaplin. Chaplin is
notoriously tight-fisted. After he’d furnished most of his home on
Summit Drive, including his own bedroom, four or five other bedrooms
remained empty. He had the head decorator of our biggest furniture
store come to see the rooms and suggest their decor. Charlie had
all the recommended furniture delivered and kept it for six months,
ignoring the bills. Finally, the store repossessed everything it had
“lent” him. He applied the same treatment to another store, with the
same final result.
During this period, a titled Englishman with wife and entourage wired
the Douglas Fairbankses that they’d be arriving at Pickfair with ten in
party; could they be accommodated? Pickfair hadn’t room for everybody,
so Mary telephoned Charlie, who said he’d take in six of the visitors.