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| 17 1 The Making of a Celebrity Gossip On October 22, 1939, Hedda Hopper broke a story that made the front page of the Los Angeles Times and her career as a gossip columnist. In an “exclusive” interview with James Roosevelt, eldest son of the sitting president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a producer and executive vice president at Samuel Goldwyn Studios, Hopper confronted “Jimmy” about the state of his marriage. “Is it true,” she asked, “that you and your wife are going to be divorced?” Roosevelt “refused to deny or affirm” the truth of Hopper’s question, giving her the answer, or rather non-answer, she wanted, and her story went on to detail his geographic separation from his wife, his public appearances with another woman, and his moves toward divorce.1 Hopper’s “first big scoop” was picked up by news media throughout the country. When it turned out that Hopper’s interview had occurred at 11:15 p.m. on a Saturday night outside Roosevelt’s Beverly Hills home, as a “disheveled . . . Jimmy came out in bare feet and bathrobe,” Time magazine noted the up-and-coming celebrity gossip had “set a new record for keyhole journalism.”2 The James Roosevelt divorce story not only proved Hopper an aggressive player in the competitive world of celebrity journalism and triggered her decades-long feud with Louella Parsons, but also demonstrated Hopper ’s dual interest in entertainment and politics.3 Roosevelt operated in both the capitals of “power and glitter,” Washington and Hollywood, and the bulk of Hopper’s article detailed his public life and work, including campaigning for his father in the 1932 and 1936 elections and assisting in the White House. Although on friendly terms with him, Hopper delighted in facing “the young scion of the No. 1 political family in America,” as she put it, and tarnishing the moral reputation of her political opponents, the Roosevelts of the Democratic Party.4 From the very start of her career, Hopper publicized private talk to ends both political and partisan. 18 | The Making of a Celebrity Gossip A Columnist Is Born Following her Roosevelt divorce scoop, Hedda Hopper’s gossip career took off. Crucial to her career were syndication services, which provided newspapers with articles, stories, and columns, and by the 1890s had laid the foundation for national celebrity by carrying entertainment news and features.5 In 1940, Hopper moved her column, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” from the Esquire FeaturesSyndicatetotheDesMoinesRegister –TribuneSyndicate,andthenin1942 she signed with the much larger and more prominent Chicago Tribune–New York News Syndicate, nearly tripling the number of her readers. “THE QUEEN ISDEAD,LONGLIVETHEQUEEN!”headlinedVariety,but“Queen”Louella Parsons was far from dead. With the power of the Hearst press behind her, she still had 17 million readers through hundreds of newspapers, while Hopper’s column, appearing in less than one hundred papers and reaching 5.75 million daily readers and 7.5 million on Sunday, had about a third of Parsons’s circulation .6 Even so, Hopper’s numbers grew quickly. Within five years, her column reportedly appeared in 110 newspapers with a total circulation of 22.8 million.7 Newspapers carrying her column included most prominently the Los Angeles Times and the papers heading her syndicate, the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, but also major metropolitan newspapers across the country and overseas. Within a few years of launching her column, Hopper had mastered the long-standing conventions of celebrity journalism, marketed her attention-getting gossip columnist persona, and risen “to the top of this inkstained pile of professional reporters” who covered Hollywood.8 Hopper’s accomplishment did not go unnoticed, particularly by her rivals. In changing careers from acting to gossip, Hopper had left one crowded and competitive field for another. When she began her gossip career, an estimated 325 columnists, fan magazine writers, and reporters for American, foreign, and trade newspapers worked the “Hollywood beat,” more than in any other U.S. city except New York and Washington, D.C.9 The number of Hollywood columnists alone was great, and prominent figures—beyond Louella Parsons—included Sheilah Graham, Jimmie Fidler, Sidney Skolsky, and Edith Gwynne. Moreover, New York–based columnists such as Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan published movie news and gossip. Newspapers and syndication services often carried more than one Hollywood columnist. In the Los Angeles Times, for example, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood” appeared early on with Edwin Schallert’s “Town Called Hollywood” and Reed Kendall’s “Around...

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