Final Post: Hedda Hopper & Luella Parsons

Thinking about Hollywood culture, gossip, and celebrities, its safe to say that America is obsessed with knowing every detail. 

However, it wasn't always this way. Two women created this dynamic and relationship we see today between celebrities and the people. 

Louella Parsons: 

Louella Parsons (1881-1972) started her writing career while she was still in high school. She was a drama editor for the Dixon Morning Star. This gave her the experience needed to start something America has 

never seen before- a movie critic column. 

She started writing for the Chicago Record Herald in 1914 with her movie critic column. However, it was bought out by William Randolph Hearst, an extremely famous newspaper publisher, four years later, putting Parsons out of a job. This set-back cause Parsons to make a major life decision.

She moved to New York City. 

Here, she started a similar movie critic column in the New York Morning Telegraph. Parsons began to create a name for herself and establish a solid reputation in the industry, which caught the attention of Hearst, the man who originally bought her out of her job. In 1922, he offered her a column in the New York America. 

However, three years later, Parsons would received a devastating diagnosis. 

She has tuberculosis and six months to live. 

She decided to spend the remainder of her life in sunny California - which ended up changing her life. 

Miraculously, her tuberculosis went into remission and her career took off with the help of Hollywood. Parsons attempted to start a radio show, Hotel Hollywood, but it took some years for it to be successful. On this show, she would interview actors and other celebrities. Additionally, she had a social and professional align with Hearst which added to her success and made others fearful of what she had to say as the "First Lady of Hollywood'. She also had a gossip column which reached over 400 newspapers and had tens of millions of readers during her peak. 

She was more than influential. 

Similarly to Parsons, there was another impactful woman in Hollywood. 

Her name was Hedda Hopper. 

Hedda Hopper: 

Hopper was originally from Pennsylvania, but ran away to New York City to start an acting career. She

started off as a Broadway chorus girl and was in the background of many productions which allowed her to tour the country with her future husband, DeWolf Hopper, which was the reason she changed her name to Hedda.  

Her birth name, Elda, was too similar to his ex-wives' (plural), names and he would get confused. 

They later split. 

However, with the help of her husband, who was a successful actor, she moved to Hollywood to continue her career in 1923 but it severely decline in 1930, which is when she decided to start her gossip column. 

To start her writing career, Hopper started to write in The Washington Herald with a weekly gossip column but quickly lost this opportunity four months later when Hopper refused to take a pay cut. Two years later, in 1937, she started Hedda Hopper's Hollywood in The Los Angeles Times. 

Almost immediately, Hopper's column had success and she was writing gossip about famous celebrities. Her first big story, which was published in 1939, was about Franklin Roosevelt's son, James, was having an affair and getting a divorce. 

Hopper would continue to publish pieces that would damage reputations and relationships between celebrities, which made her feared. 

And hated. 

She would receive libel lawsuits, threats, and attacks because of what she had to say. Even so, she was wildly popular, reaching about 35 million readers during her peak and a salary of $250,000, which is over five million today. 

Impact: 

These two women changed journalism and Hollywood culture. Hopper and Parsons made the American people care about celebrities past their artwork- suddenly people cared about their personal lives and relationships. 

Parsons created something America had not yet realized, that movies could be seen as news worthy, which we see see in American culture today.