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| 45 2 Readers, Respondents, and Fans “My dear Mrs. Hopper,” wrote one of Hedda Hopper’s respondents. “Since I am a reader of your column, one of the few I consider worth reading pertaining to Hollywood, I would like to take some of my time and also some of yours to give you some views my friends and I have reached concerning movies, etc.” She then went on to describe herself. “I am 25 years old, married 9 years, and the mother of 3 children . . . just an average housewife who used to like to go to the movies.” This letter was characteristic of those saved by Hopper. In demographic terms, the letter writer was a woman, married , with children, a homemaker, and from a city, in this case Oklahoma City. Moreover, the letter’s content fit with how Hopper’s fans represented their experience and understanding of Hollywood gossip.1 A warm relationship with Hopper, the value assigned to reading Hopper’s column, an interest in the movies and the movie industry, a desire to offer opinions, recognition of Hopper’s column as a forum for expression, and community connections and conversations appeared in other extant letters to Hopper. This reader’s primary purpose in writing also appeared in her letter. “But lately we would rather stay home,” she told Hopper. “Why? I’ll tell you it’s because of the personal lives of most of the Top Stars. They behave so disgustingly in public that frankly we do not wish to use our money [in] support .” “Perhaps if enough people stay away,” she advocated, “the men who make the movies will insist on Stars with clean morals. Then I shall be happy to return to the Movies.”2 For this reader, Hollywood gossip offered the public exposure of private acts, a place to express moral condemnation, and a spur to political action, in this case a consumer boycott to bring about change in Hollywood. Letters such as this one were prompted, published, and prized by Hopper to demonstrate her significance and support among her readers, but they also recounted how some members of her audience read and made meaning out of Hollywood gossip within the context of their own lives and experiences . For historians familiar with limited access to sources from actual, his- 46 | Readers, Respondents, and Fans torical consumers of popular culture, the extant letters to Hopper constitute a large collection, perhaps a thousand. Yet this reader response is only a very small number of the letters Hopper likely received during her twenty-eightyear career, given the volume sent to other gossip columnists. In the 1920s, Louella Parsons received over a thousand letters per week, while in the 1940s Jimmie Fidler got seven hundred letters per week when writing his column and three thousand to five thousand when his radio program aired.3 Given the small proportion of letters saved and safeguarded, this collection cannot be considered representative of Hollywood filmgoers, Hopper’s readers, or even her respondents generally. Instead, these are the letters Hopper or her staff selected to keep and archivists managed to preserve. Moreover, the oftentimes substantive and political content of these letters indicates that these qualities must have been emphasized in the initial selection process; certainly, these qualities can be found in the portion Hopper felt worthy of publication. With awareness of the highly selective, partial, and constructed nature of these published and unpublished letters, they illuminate the practice of Hollywood gossip among Hopper’s respondents, particularly women. Together with Hopper, these reader-respondents made her column part of the public sphere where they exchanged information, debated issues, advocated action about both entertainment and politics, and transformed their cinema spectatorship into new forms of citizenship. While Hopper’s respondents engaged in public sphere activities, they also were participating openly and explicitly in what scholars define as “fandom,” a collectivity of active, enthusiastic cultural consumers or, in the words of theorist John Fiske, “excessive readers ” who differ “in degree rather than kind” from ordinary spectators.4 Many of Hopper’s respondents embraced identities as fans, signing their letters “A ‘Fan’ of Yours” or “A Movie Fan,” but a striking number denied they were fans of Hopper or the movies. They included statements such as “I have never written a fan letter,” “I am writing my very first ‘fan letter,’” and “I have never been a so-called ‘fan.’” Both groups often put “fan” in quotation marks. The term “fan” in the context of the movies...

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