Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today we are
Speaker 1: talking about Head of Hopper. And although she started out acting,
Speaker 1: what really made her famous was her work in newspapers.
Speaker 1: For several decades, she literally could make or break a
Speaker 1: movie career with her gossip column sending statements to print,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether there was any actual proof of what
Speaker 1: she claimed or the behavior she alleged that people are
Speaker 1: participating in or not. I find her super fascinating. I
Speaker 1: read both of her books growing up. She has been
Speaker 1: in a kajillion movie and TV projects. Most recently was
Speaker 1: the show Feud, which is a Ryan Murphy show, But
Speaker 1: it's largely a lot of her. Discussion of her is
Speaker 1: about her and Luella Parsons because they were kind of
Speaker 1: the two big power players in terms of gossip columns
Speaker 1: in Hollywood in the early part of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And I am forever just I marvel at the power
Speaker 1: that they both had and how much they created ways
Speaker 1: of consuming information about movies and movie stars that we
Speaker 1: are still wrapped up in today, even though they're kind
Speaker 1: of nonsensical. We could talk about this more behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: because I feel like I have Chicken or the Egg
Speaker 1: thoughts about the movie industry and how it has developed
Speaker 1: in this way. But she just is like a wild
Speaker 1: story of her own. So I thought we would talk
Speaker 1: about her today. We may do an episode on Luella
Speaker 1: Parsons in the future because she's also pretty interesting, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about her some on this, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to go into her backstory. They are often, as
Speaker 1: I said, discussed kind of as a payer. Even one
Speaker 1: of the biographies I read is a simultaneous biography of
Speaker 1: the two of them that came out in the seventies.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so we'll talk about Luella some today, but
Speaker 1: really we're going to talk about head of Hopper and
Speaker 1: how she got to this point pretty late in her
Speaker 1: life of being a gossip columnist and having just such influence,
Speaker 1: and also how she used that influence sometimes in just
Speaker 1: really cruel ways. So she started life with a completely
Speaker 1: different name, which was Elda Furry. She was born June second,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. She described that sort
Speaker 1: of as a suburb of Altoona, Pennsylvania. Later on, she
Speaker 1: wrote that she was born during an electrical storm, and
Speaker 1: she also fudged her age and routinely said she was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen ninety. Her father was a butcher, and
Speaker 1: she described her upbringing as hard. She had eight siblings,
Speaker 1: although not all of them lived to adulthood, and she
Speaker 1: made it sound as though she never really got much
Speaker 1: praise or encouragement. When her brother sherman got hired away
Speaker 1: from their father's butcher shop, she was made to pick
Speaker 1: up his duties, and this is something that she said
Speaker 1: made her tough enough to be unafraid of anyone in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Later in her life, while she was still a teenager
Speaker 1: in Altoona, Elda acquired an accessory which defined her style
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. She bought herself a
Speaker 1: hat with her own money, and she wrote of that
Speaker 1: hat quote, it was a thing of beauty, of bright
Speaker 1: green straw with red velvet geraniums. It made me feel
Speaker 1: rich as a queen. That hat was a greater attraction
Speaker 1: on Easter morning than the choir or the preacher's sermon.
Speaker 1: I said, if a hat can get the attention of
Speaker 1: this many people, I'll never go bareheaded, and she stuck
Speaker 1: to that because she was known for her hat collection
Speaker 1: and the money she spent on it throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. When she was seventeen, Elda saw a
Speaker 1: touring company performed the play Captain Jinks of the Horse
Speaker 1: Marines that involves a love triangle with a bet and
Speaker 1: an opera star and a lot of complications before a
Speaker 1: happy ending. Ethel Barrymore starred in the play. It's often
Speaker 1: credited with being the show that made her famous, and
Speaker 1: Elderfurry thought that this was amazing, and after seeing the play,
Speaker 1: she knew she wanted to act, so in nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 1: she left Pennsylvania for New York, intent on a stage career.
Speaker 1: In her autobiography, she describes this exit from Pennsylvania as quote,
Speaker 1: when life became intolerable at home, I ran away to
Speaker 1: New York and went on the stage. But really, and
Speaker 1: you'll often see like she saw this play and then
Speaker 1: she left, But really she took some time before that
Speaker 1: to get some education that was going to benefit her
Speaker 1: in her acting career. She didn't actually get formal education
Speaker 1: past eighth grade because she had to work in the
Speaker 1: family business. But once she got the acting bug. She
Speaker 1: did manage to get her father to let her enroll
Speaker 1: in music school in Pittsburgh, so she did that for
Speaker 1: a while. But she did make that move from Opportunity
Speaker 1: to New York, kind of in a spur of the moment,
Speaker 1: way after an incident in which, according to her, her
Speaker 1: brother broke her favorite chair, and that was just the
Speaker 1: last straw for her. She had been secretly saving up money,
Speaker 1: and she got that money. She packed a suitcase and
Speaker 1: she left without telling anyone. And she wasn't though, without
Speaker 1: a place to go in New York, because her uncle
Speaker 1: lived there and she just kind of showed up on
Speaker 1: his doorstep. In New York, she got a job working
Speaker 1: as a chorus girl with the Aborn Opera Company. She
Speaker 1: was not naturally talented, but she was determined. As she
Speaker 1: moved in the social circles of the theater, she met
Speaker 1: one of the most successful actors of the day, de
Speaker 1: Wolf Hopper. He's most famously remembered today for his recitation
Speaker 1: of the Ernest Lawrence Thayer baseball poem Casey at the Bat.
Speaker 1: Hopper was twenty seven years older than Elda, and he
Speaker 1: clearly captivated her. She later wrote quote. To me, Hopper
Speaker 1: was something special, something new under the sun. His massive size,
Speaker 1: his voice, his storytelling gift. Wolfe was a six foot
Speaker 1: three riot. From the moment I saw him, he fascinated me.
Speaker 1: She wrote a lot of very adoring things about him,
Speaker 1: even long after the marriage had ended, describing how his
Speaker 1: voice was something you couldn't help but fall in love with,
Speaker 1: and describing it as sounding quote like some great church organ.
Speaker 1: Hopper had his own acting company and Elda joined it,
Speaker 1: and though they soon started a romance, they were really
Speaker 1: not open about it. No, he had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a history with women. He had already been married
Speaker 1: a divorce four times at this point. She was so
Speaker 1: much younger. They just kind of kept it quiet initially,
Speaker 1: And when Elda, who had gotten frustrated with chorus rolls,
Speaker 1: managed to land a lead part in a touring production
Speaker 1: of The Country Boy, which meant she no longer with
Speaker 1: de Wolf's company, he sent her letters throughout her eight
Speaker 1: month tour, and then when that tour ended, she decided
Speaker 1: she also wanted to be in musical theater. Instead of
Speaker 1: doing straight acting again, not as chorus girl. She wanted
Speaker 1: to be a main player, and so she started studying voice,
Speaker 1: and then she landed a role in The Quaker Girl,
Speaker 1: so once again she went back on tour, and again
Speaker 1: Wolfy wrote to her constantly. She continued to keep the
Speaker 1: secret of their romance, even as her colleagues asked who
Speaker 1: this man was who so dutifully wrote to her and
Speaker 1: was obviously just adoring of her, And she later said
Speaker 1: that the strain of keeping this secret of their romance
Speaker 1: was so great that she was never able to keep another.
Speaker 1: By the time the tour of The Quaker Girl ended,
Speaker 1: Elda and Wolfe were secretly engaged. She went to a
Speaker 1: jewelry store and bought her own ring by herself, and
Speaker 1: the next morning she took the earliest train from Albany
Speaker 1: to Grand Central station, where De wolf and his chauffeur
Speaker 1: were waiting. The couple headed to New Jersey and they
Speaker 1: got me read in secret. They only told the manager
Speaker 1: of the Algonquin Hotel where mister Hopper was living, so
Speaker 1: that he could arrange for Elda to have separate but
Speaker 1: adjoining rooms with her new husband. As Holly said earlier,
Speaker 1: this was De Wolfe's fifth marriage. As they started telling people,
Speaker 1: Elda told one of the couple's closest friends, Alice Miller,
Speaker 1: and the response was that she burst into tears because
Speaker 1: she was worried about what her young friend had done.
Speaker 1: Their other close friends, who were slowly let in on
Speaker 1: the secret, ended up celebrating with a private dinner, and
Speaker 1: eventually Elda telegraphed her parents and her father, who was
Speaker 1: several years younger than her new husbandd wolf was so
Speaker 1: angry that he put out a statement to the press
Speaker 1: that the marriage quote pains me greatly. Essentially, everyone kind
Speaker 1: of thought that de wolf had taken up with such
Speaker 1: a young woman to stroke his own ego, and that
Speaker 1: he was going to soon cast her aside. The family
Speaker 1: statement meant that soon that news was everywhere. There was
Speaker 1: no keeping any kind of secret, and the newly weds
Speaker 1: were suddenly having to patch up a lot of friendships
Speaker 1: with people who were shocked by this news or just
Speaker 1: kind of hurt at having been left out of the loop.
Speaker 1: De Wolfe's previous wives had been named Ella, Ida, Edna,
Speaker 1: and Nella, and she found that their similarities led to
Speaker 1: her new husband calling her by all of their names
Speaker 1: and not her own. She wrote, quote, I didn't have
Speaker 1: much personality of my own then, but I'd be darned
Speaker 1: if I was going to give up the shred I
Speaker 1: did possess. So she consulted a numerologist who came up
Speaker 1: with the name Heda de wolf Hopper did not like this,
Speaker 1: but she said he never called her the wrong name again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she loved it and he was not pleased, but it
Speaker 1: worked out, I guess. On January twenty sixth, nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: Hedda and De Wolf had a son, William de wolf
Speaker 1: Hopper Junior. She had been touring Withdwolf on his current tour,
Speaker 1: but she returned to New York early because her pregnancy,
Speaker 1: which they had also kept secret, had just become too
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for life on the road. The birth of their
Speaker 1: son came several weeks early, and De Wolf was not
Speaker 1: in New York with her at the time. He actually
Speaker 1: found out that she had had the child while he
Speaker 1: was on stage in Chicago, and then once he returned home,
Speaker 1: the family traveled with a nanny to Nantucket and there
Speaker 1: they spent the summer. Later that same year, the couple
Speaker 1: decided to move to Hollywood, something a lot of stage
Speaker 1: actors were doing to try to get into the new
Speaker 1: and growing film industry. De wolf had been offered a
Speaker 1: contract with Triangle Film Corporation. Initially, do wolf had wanted
Speaker 1: Heda to give up her career when they married, and
Speaker 1: she acquiesced, but then she took a part, allegedly as
Speaker 1: a favor to their friend William Farnham. In nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: she made her on screen debut in the film Battle
Speaker 1: of Hearts. It was the first of many movies for her.
Speaker 1: By the end of the nineteeneen, she had been in
Speaker 1: eleven films and the work continued to come. This was
Speaker 1: good because de Wolfe's talent didn't really translate to the screen.
Speaker 1: His best feature was his voice, and the films were silent.
Speaker 1: Plus he was old enough that he just didn't look
Speaker 1: good on film, according to Heada's account. Later, when his
Speaker 1: contract was up, he went to New York and she
Speaker 1: stayed in California, where the work was steady for her.
Speaker 1: She did eventually go back to New York, and the
Speaker 1: Hoppers bought a house on Long Island so that their
Speaker 1: son could have a home outside of the city. De
Speaker 1: Wolfe had gone back to acting on the stage, and
Speaker 1: Hetta also did some stage work too, and then Sam
Speaker 1: Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn opened a studio in Fort Lee,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, to make movies, and they called headed to
Speaker 1: see if she'd like to make some films on the
Speaker 1: East Coast, and she did, and she also established her
Speaker 1: reputation as a woman with a sharp tongue very early
Speaker 1: on in these movies. In nineteen eighteen, she appeared in
Speaker 1: the film Virtuous Wives that was actually the first film
Speaker 1: made by Lewis B. Mayer. She tells this story in
Speaker 1: her book about how there was this weird guy kind
Speaker 1: of lurking around the set and they kept having to
Speaker 1: tell him to get out of the shot, and nobody
Speaker 1: realized it was Lewis B. Mayer and he had to
Speaker 1: tell people at the end, like, oh, I'm the producer.
Speaker 1: But Elda, who at this point was going by Heada,
Speaker 1: but she was also being billed as Missus d wolf Hopper,
Speaker 1: which is how she's credited in that film, fought constantly
Speaker 1: with her co star Anita Stewart. Hedda made a point
Speaker 1: to have custom clothing made for every scene out of
Speaker 1: her own pocket. She spent her entire salary, which is
Speaker 1: quoted as five thousand dollars for this project on new
Speaker 1: clothes and it upstaged the much more famous Stuart with
Speaker 1: her wardrobe, and this caused a huge calamity. In a moment,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the end of Heada's marriage and her
Speaker 1: life after De Wolfe, but first we will take a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break. According to Hedda's account, she began to
Speaker 1: fall out of love with her husband when she told
Speaker 1: him that she had gotten a raise the studio and
Speaker 1: was finally making the same amount of money as he was.
Speaker 1: His response to this was anger instead of happiness, and
Speaker 1: he said some very insulting things. They had already been
Speaker 1: living on very different schedules and not spending as much
Speaker 1: time together, and then Hadda started to find evidence that
Speaker 1: he was having an affair or multiple affairs. She eventually
Speaker 1: caught him in one of these, and she filed for divorce.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two. D Wolfe Hopper got married again
Speaker 1: to his sixth wife, Lily and Glacier, right after the
Speaker 1: divorce was final. Soon after, Hetta was offered a year
Speaker 1: long contract in Hollywood and she took it. She was
Speaker 1: in a lot of projects, but was always a supporting player.
Speaker 1: Over time, she found she wasn't getting offered contracts and
Speaker 1: she needed to figure out what to do. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: during this time, she was friends with the woman who
Speaker 1: would later become her most bitter rival, Luella Parsons, and
Speaker 1: would sometimes slipper information for her gossip column in exchange
Speaker 1: for a little good press. For a while, Hopper jumped
Speaker 1: from job to job, just trying to make a living
Speaker 1: and support herself and her son. In nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: she made a move into a new arena, and that
Speaker 1: was politics. She ran for Los Angeles City Council that year.
Speaker 1: She did not win, but she did remain politically interested,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that interest became part of her columns. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that a lot more in a minute.
Speaker 1: After foundering for a bit, Heda got a radio agent
Speaker 1: and they worked on getting a show together. But her
Speaker 1: first effort was bad. She wasn't used to being on
Speaker 1: mike rather than on a stage, and she ended up
Speaker 1: using an affected British sounding accent. But she worked on
Speaker 1: it and in nineteen thirty six had us started a
Speaker 1: radio show, The Head of Hopper Show, which was a
Speaker 1: short form gossip program. Mostly she cataloged Hollywood divorces and weddings,
Speaker 1: using her connections in the industry for insider information. Luella
Speaker 1: Parson's show A Hollywood Hotel had debuted two years earlier,
Speaker 1: and based on the head of Hopper Show, Heda was
Speaker 1: offered a column by the Esquire syndicate. They specifically wanted
Speaker 1: a gossip column to compete with the one written by
Speaker 1: Lluella Parsons. Hedda couldn't type, but she could dictate, and
Speaker 1: soon her column, HEADA Hopper's Hollywood, was running in more
Speaker 1: than a dozen papers. She soon was writing seven columns
Speaker 1: a week and still doing her radio show. She got
Speaker 1: busy and successful enough to move her work out of
Speaker 1: her house to an office on Hollywood Boulevard. She kept
Speaker 1: that office, I think for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: She listed her number and address so people could drop
Speaker 1: in or call if they had a hot tip or
Speaker 1: any inside information, and they did, and she shared it
Speaker 1: all without fact checking, later saying she didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about libel laws. But her radio show was with CBS,
Speaker 1: and their legal team would actually cut her scripts before
Speaker 1: she went on the air. They would review it and
Speaker 1: edit them if they thought something was unverifiable or could
Speaker 1: get them trouble. But she kind of found a way
Speaker 1: to work around that. Problem by using her delivery to
Speaker 1: suggest when she was hinting at something salacious, even if
Speaker 1: she couldn't say it. Hetta's work was, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: not known for fact checking. The New York Times wrote
Speaker 1: of her after her death, quote, Ordinarily, there was a
Speaker 1: fake quality to miss Hopper's columns, tracing perhaps to the
Speaker 1: fact that she did not like to have her staff
Speaker 1: tamper with her dictated output, and to the fact that
Speaker 1: she did not always check out her information. The result
Speaker 1: was that she got names confused, such as Switching Shirley
Speaker 1: Temple and and Shirley and Judy Garland and Judy Canova.
Speaker 1: She sometimes misattributed pregnancies or engagements or love affairs. Uh,
Speaker 1: this gets a yikes. Yeah. I mean that's a pretty
Speaker 1: fast way for somebody to like have their phone ring
Speaker 1: and be like, I didn't know you were having an affair,
Speaker 1: to be like, what are you even talking about? That's
Speaker 1: not me, but it's in print, and people will start
Speaker 1: to believe it. That's a problem. Right. In nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: Hopper's writing had become so popular that she was able
Speaker 1: to take a more lucrative offer at the Des Moines Register.
Speaker 1: In Tribune syndicate, but they released her from it when
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune New York News syndicate made her a
Speaker 1: better offer. This was just after Hedda had pulled off
Speaker 1: something that seemed unthinkable. She had scooped Luella Parsons that
Speaker 1: was regarding the divorce of Jimmy Roosevelt, the President's son,
Speaker 1: And this was hot gossip because Jimmy, who worked for
Speaker 1: the Goldwyn Studio, was having an affair that precipitated that divorce.
Speaker 1: It made front page news all over the US, and
Speaker 1: it sparked a feud between Hopper and Parsons that persisted
Speaker 1: for decades. By the early nineteen forties, the column was
Speaker 1: getting so much mail from readers that Hopper needed two
Speaker 1: full time assistants to wade through it all. Hedda became
Speaker 1: an integral part of the studio star system. That system
Speaker 1: is something we've brushed up against on the show before,
Speaker 1: but we've never really talked about it in depth. Basically,
Speaker 1: being an actor in Hollywood from the nineteen twenties to
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties usually involved going in for a screen test,
Speaker 1: and if the studio liked what it saw, that actor
Speaker 1: would be signed to a contract. The contracts were often
Speaker 1: seven years long, and during that time the actor was
Speaker 1: essentially an employee of the movie studio. They acted in
Speaker 1: the films they were assigned. They were usually held to
Speaker 1: morality clauses that were meant to curb any reckless, lascivious,
Speaker 1: or other behavior that could embarrass the studio, and in return,
Speaker 1: the studio made that actor a star. This usually meant
Speaker 1: the concoction of a false backstory and name, essentially meaning
Speaker 1: that that actor had to play a character anytime they
Speaker 1: were out in public, and part of that system was,
Speaker 1: of course, pr The studio essentially introduced these actors as stars,
Speaker 1: and gossip columns became a way to get the word
Speaker 1: out about their doings that were wholesome and image affirming.
Speaker 1: For example, Clark Gable was one of the stars who
Speaker 1: became famous in the star system. He was already famous
Speaker 1: by the time we're using this example, but it shows
Speaker 1: how this whole thing worked. In nineteen thirty eight, so
Speaker 1: that was the year Too Hot to Handle came out,
Speaker 1: and while plans were being laid for Gone with the Wind,
Speaker 1: a breezy mention of the already well known actor appeared
Speaker 1: in head of Hopper's Hollywood. It read quote Clark Gable
Speaker 1: is taking all his pals up to the rodeo in Victorville,
Speaker 1: October fourteenth, long before he knew Carol Lombard. Yuko Lomo
Speaker 1: was his old camping ground. He'd go out every night
Speaker 1: rabbit shooting with all the kids. When celebrity seekers found
Speaker 1: out about it, Clark moved on. Nice to know he's
Speaker 1: going back because the gang up there adore him. So
Speaker 1: it's basically like, isn't he the best guy ever? We
Speaker 1: all think he's amazing, which just Garner's more public favor
Speaker 1: for that actor so that when their films come out,
Speaker 1: people want to go see it. On the flip side,
Speaker 1: if a star was caught in a scandal and it
Speaker 1: was about to go to press, the studio would pay
Speaker 1: off papers or the columnists to suppress this story. There's
Speaker 1: one story about Luella Parsons where they bought a screenplay
Speaker 1: from her to suppress the story that never got made,
Speaker 1: but she basically got a big hunk of money to
Speaker 1: not talk about something she knew about an actor. This
Speaker 1: all meant that Hetta and her rival Luella Parsons were
Speaker 1: able to wield an incredible amount of power. If an
Speaker 1: actor did something that one of them didn't like, they
Speaker 1: could easily tank their careers by reporting it or even
Speaker 1: fabricating unfounded gossip in the guise of an inside tip.
Speaker 1: Actors who violated the morality clauses in their contracts were
Speaker 1: fired and left with no real recourse. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven interview with Vanity Fair, actor Roddy McDowell noted
Speaker 1: that being mentioned positively by Hetta or Parsons was a
Speaker 1: sort of currency, and actors saved their clippings and showed
Speaker 1: them to studios, so they were a negotiating tool to
Speaker 1: prove the value of the actor. Hetta Hopper's sometimes manifested
Speaker 1: in ways that were actively harmful to the people she
Speaker 1: wrote about. Both she and Parsons could be incredibly conniving
Speaker 1: in ways that are kind of hard to stomach for
Speaker 1: anyone with scruples. Frankly, after Orson Wells had convinced Luella
Speaker 1: Parsons that his upcoming film Citizen Kane was not based
Speaker 1: on her boss William Randolph Hurst, Hetta was able to
Speaker 1: see an early screening and immediately reported to Hurst that
Speaker 1: it was obviously based on him, and that she was
Speaker 1: surprised Luella had not given him a heads up. Hurst
Speaker 1: was so angry he commanded Luella to launch a full
Speaker 1: scale attack on the film. To squash it. Parsons threatened
Speaker 1: to expose all of the secrets she knew about RKO executives,
Speaker 1: that was the studio where it was made, and that
Speaker 1: she would black out any coverage of it or Radio
Speaker 1: City Music Hall where it was set to premiere, and
Speaker 1: as a consequence that premiere was canceled. There is more
Speaker 1: to this story. There are so many ins and outs
Speaker 1: of just cruel and unkind behavior and canniming, but the
Speaker 1: short version is that citizen Kane tanked initially due to
Speaker 1: the work of Parsons at the behest of Hurst, which
Speaker 1: he started with a tip off from head of Hopper,
Speaker 1: and although HEADA Hopper did not work for her. She
Speaker 1: called the movie quote a vicious and irresponsible attack on
Speaker 1: a great man. Writing for the Australasian Journal of American
Speaker 1: Studies in two thousand and seven, Jennifer Frost described the
Speaker 1: way that Hopper used her column to blur the lines
Speaker 1: of public, private, and political. Quote gossip was understood to
Speaker 1: be private talk talk about those things which ought to
Speaker 1: be kept private, voiced often illegitimately in the public realm.
Speaker 1: Yet as in traditional societies, Hollywood gossip also had a
Speaker 1: public function. It shared information and knowledge, contributed to a
Speaker 1: sense of community among moviegoers, and, in Hopper's case, provided
Speaker 1: a platform and an audience for her political views. As
Speaker 1: practiced by and her reader's, Hollywood Gossip became an arena
Speaker 1: for discussion and debate about significant and contested issues of
Speaker 1: public and private life and their intersection in mid twentieth
Speaker 1: century America. So coming up, we will talk about the
Speaker 1: way head of Hopper used this whole function of her
Speaker 1: writing to target Charlie Chaplin in her column. But first
Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a sponsor break. The most
Speaker 1: famous victim of Heada's poison pen was Charlie Chaplin. She
Speaker 1: had many times written about other celebrities with a good
Speaker 1: bit of venom, but Chaplin was someone she targeted repeatedly
Speaker 1: in what has often been called a decades long campaign
Speaker 1: against him. Some of her write ups were honestly the
Speaker 1: sort of boring critiques of his films that may have
Speaker 1: been an irritant, like she would say he's a good actor,
Speaker 1: but his films are bad, but soon she started attacking
Speaker 1: him on a personal level. Some of this seems to
Speaker 1: have largely been initiated as a grudge for Chaplain not
Speaker 1: really caring about Hollywood gossip or playing the games that
Speaker 1: she typically required of stars if they wanted to stay
Speaker 1: in the good graces of her column. He also was
Speaker 1: mora aligned a little bit with Luella Parsons. There are
Speaker 1: things that place him socially near Luella Parsons, which of
Speaker 1: course she would not have liked. He also didn't work
Speaker 1: within the Hollywood system right He was making his films independently,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't as though his job was in danger
Speaker 1: if he didn't play nice with her, at least not directly.
Speaker 1: Chaplain was very liberal in his politics, and Hopper was
Speaker 1: very conservative, and she characterized his every move as suspicious.
Speaker 1: He also was and is notorious for his pursuit of
Speaker 1: underage girls and his extremely poor treatment of them. This
Speaker 1: is not a matter of dispute, but Hopper seemed to
Speaker 1: conveniently forget while lambasting him for that behavior, that her
Speaker 1: own husband, who was much older, had started seeing her
Speaker 1: when she was still very young, and that he was
Speaker 1: married six times. She often referred to Chaplin as quote
Speaker 1: the man who came to dinner and stayed forty years,
Speaker 1: as a way to criticize the fact that he lived
Speaker 1: and worked in the US but never became a citizen.
Speaker 1: She also made antisemitic comments about him. He wasn't Jewish,
Speaker 1: but she made the case that he seemed Jewish and
Speaker 1: was hiding it. There were a couple of major and
Speaker 1: deeply damaging moments in Hopper's print attacks on Chaplain. The
Speaker 1: first was when she broke the story of a paternity lawsuit.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen forty three, an actor named Joan
Speaker 1: Berry had approached Hopper and told her that she had
Speaker 1: a sexual relationship with Chaplain. That was true, and that
Speaker 1: he had broken up with her, which was also true,
Speaker 1: and that she had gotten pregnant by him. That was
Speaker 1: not true, and blood tests proved it, but Hopper had
Speaker 1: gone full force against him, characterizing him as having abandoned
Speaker 1: a pregnant Joan Berry. In the early nineteen forties, blood
Speaker 1: tests were not admissible evidence in California praternity lawsuits. That
Speaker 1: is a little mind blowing, and while the first trial
Speaker 1: ended in a hung jury, a second trial found in
Speaker 1: favor of Barry, and Chaplain was ordered to pay support
Speaker 1: for a child that was not his own. Throughout this
Speaker 1: entire thing, Hopper had stoked public opinion against him as
Speaker 1: immoral and irresponsible, and that deeply hurt his reputation with audiences.
Speaker 1: That was not the end of the Joan Berry problems
Speaker 1: for Chaplain. Hopper also helped get Chaplin indicted under the
Speaker 1: Man Act that made it illegal to transport a woman
Speaker 1: across state lines with immoral intent. We've talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show before. It pretty much only applied to
Speaker 1: white women. Chaplain had paid for cross country train fare
Speaker 1: for Barry at one point and had a testified against
Speaker 1: him before a grand jury after she had already fed
Speaker 1: the FBI information about his activities with Barry. When the
Speaker 1: case went to trial, she covered every moment in her column.
Speaker 1: Chaplin was acquitted, but had a Hopper did not print
Speaker 1: that particular detail. During the Cold War, Hopper, noting Chaplain's
Speaker 1: leftist politics, accused him of being a communist and of
Speaker 1: donating huge sums of money to the Communist Party. She
Speaker 1: also stated that he was slyly including communist propaganda in
Speaker 1: his films. Chaplin was subpoena to appear before the House
Speaker 1: an American Activities Committee in fall of nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: although he was never actually called to testify. Simultaneously, his
Speaker 1: film Monsieur Verdeu was released, and Hopper and the FBI
Speaker 1: both called it Soviet propaganda, which led to picketing and
Speaker 1: boycotts and a massive failure for the film at the
Speaker 1: box office. The FBI's investigation ended. Chaplain ultimately turned up
Speaker 1: no connections to the Communist Party, but Hopper had already
Speaker 1: convinced a girl great many of her readers that the
Speaker 1: actor director was in fact a Communist or Communist sympathizer,
Speaker 1: so findings otherwise just kind of fed into this idea
Speaker 1: that there might be a conspiracy at work. Hopper's last
Speaker 1: major blow to Chaplain came in nineteen fifty two, when
Speaker 1: her work to paint him as a danger to the
Speaker 1: United States led to his permit to return to the
Speaker 1: US being revoked after he'd been abroad. He had gone
Speaker 1: to Europe to promote the film Limelight, and Hopper had
Speaker 1: suggested that the Truman administration, which was democratic, had given
Speaker 1: him special treatment in giving him a permit to travel
Speaker 1: abroad and then return. They had not gotten his travel
Speaker 1: papers through any special channels, but because of Hopper's insinuation,
Speaker 1: the Attorney General stepped in and canceled his return permit.
Speaker 1: He never returned to the United States, although he tried
Speaker 1: to appeal the situation for a year before giving up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was kind of trying to subtly make this connection
Speaker 1: that not only was he a communist, she never gave
Speaker 1: up on that, but that also he was in cahoots
Speaker 1: with the Democratic Party who was sympathetic to communists, Like
Speaker 1: she was really building this entire house of cards around
Speaker 1: his identity. The flip side of her treatment of Charlie
Speaker 1: Chaplin and other stars that she thought should go on
Speaker 1: the Blacklist as communists was the way that she sometimes
Speaker 1: used her column to support stars that were accused of
Speaker 1: the very same thing we mentioned in our episode about
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball that she had also been accused of potential
Speaker 1: communist ties, and it was actually head of Hopper who
Speaker 1: published the rebuttal to that accusation, including the quote from
Speaker 1: Ball's husband Desi Arnez that stated quote, the only thing
Speaker 1: read about her is her hair, and even that is
Speaker 1: not legitimate. Incidentally, not long after that, Hopper got to
Speaker 1: appear on I Love Lucy playing herself I had It
Speaker 1: continued to be successful by writing about Hollywood. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, she had a reported readership of thirty five
Speaker 1: million people, with her column running in eighty five metropolitan
Speaker 1: newspap and thousands of smaller publications. Her autobiography, titled From
Speaker 1: Under My Hat, was published in nineteen fifty two. Maybe
Speaker 1: true to form, she opens it by not talking about
Speaker 1: herself exactly, but a family member and how she leveraged
Speaker 1: their unique characteristic for her own gain. It begins quote,
Speaker 1: once upon a time, there was a six toed cousin mine.
Speaker 1: When I first saw him, I knew I was in
Speaker 1: show business. Kids in the neighborhood couldn't afford pennies, but
Speaker 1: I made them pay five pins every time they got
Speaker 1: a look at him. It's not exactly a book where
Speaker 1: you can trust that all the facts are accurate, but
Speaker 1: it definitely makes her look good, but it also offers
Speaker 1: some insights into how she felt about herself and the
Speaker 1: people in her life. She wrote another book that sometimes
Speaker 1: categorized as an autobiography in nineteen sixty three that was
Speaker 1: titled The Whole Truth and Nothing But it's really more
Speaker 1: of a stream of consciousness, tell all of all the
Speaker 1: various people she knew in Hollywood. Yeah, she spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about all of Elizabeth Taylor's personal
Speaker 1: business because she had known her for years and years.
Speaker 1: On Friday, January twenty eighth, nineteen sixty six, Hedda came
Speaker 1: down with what seemed to be a bad cold or flu.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, she felt bad enough to go to the
Speaker 1: hospital two days later. She died on Tuesday, February first,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, of quote, double pneumonia with heart complications.
Speaker 1: Just days before her death, Hopper had told a friend
Speaker 1: that she heard Charlie Chaplin was trying to return to
Speaker 1: the US and that he had to be stopped. She
Speaker 1: had maintained her grudge against him all the way to
Speaker 1: the end. When Hopper died, her obituary in The New
Speaker 1: York Times ran under the subheader confidant of leading Stars,
Speaker 1: noted for flamboyant hats and caustic comments. That same write
Speaker 1: up also called her the movie colonies mad Hatter and
Speaker 1: described her work this way quote. With frequent disdain for grammar, logic,
Speaker 1: and often accuracy, Hedda Hopper produced a Hollywood gossip column
Speaker 1: for twenty eight years that contributed to the insecurity and
Speaker 1: vanity of the movie industry and to the titillation and
Speaker 1: amusement of millions of readers across the county. Yes, there
Speaker 1: is a bit of comedy that in the very same
Speaker 1: paragraph where the obituary writer criticized her work, there is
Speaker 1: a misspelling of county when it should be country. I
Speaker 1: feel like she might have laughed at that. Uh. That's
Speaker 1: a very brief version of heada hopper. She had her
Speaker 1: hand so deep in the Hollywood pie that I feel
Speaker 1: like you can do entire series of podcasts about her.
Speaker 1: It intersects with literally everyone we have ever talked about
Speaker 1: in Hollywood history, and she has many wild adventures in
Speaker 1: her life because of her connections to that industry and
Speaker 1: to the stage industry in New York. But that is
Speaker 1: our coverage of her for today. I have a light
Speaker 1: and fun listener. Oh good, This is from our listener, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: and it is about Advent Calendars. She writes, Hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I enjoyed your recent episode on Advent Calendars.
Speaker 1: As always, my twelve year old son has done a
Speaker 1: lego Star Wars Advent Calendar for the past few years,
Speaker 1: and they are so much fun and such a great
Speaker 1: way to take the edge off of the anticipation of
Speaker 1: Christmas Day. But my favorite thing about it is that
Speaker 1: he calls it microdosing Christmas. He's not wrong, and now
Speaker 1: we refer to it that way all the time. Thanks Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: I love this. That's a beautiful way to look at it.
Speaker 1: And I really had not This may sound foolish because
Speaker 1: I don't have kids. I had not thought about it
Speaker 1: as a way to kind of entertain kids, because I
Speaker 1: you know kids. I mean I remember I would get
Speaker 1: like fever pitch starting December fifth and just drive my
Speaker 1: parents crazy for the next twenty days. And so I
Speaker 1: had not thought about that function of Advent calendars, being like,
Speaker 1: here's a tiny gift, please go to your room. I
Speaker 1: can see this as like a blessing and a curse,
Speaker 1: because I remember the year my brother and I were
Speaker 1: getting new snowboots for Christmas and we were gonna go
Speaker 1: to a Christmas Eve service and the weather was awful
Speaker 1: and slushy and gross that day, and so my mom
Speaker 1: let us open that one present before we went to
Speaker 1: the service, and then that just became you let us
Speaker 1: open a Christmas Eve present last year. Now it's a requirement.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I finangled a Christmas Eve situation as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I do like the concept
Speaker 1: of microdocing Christmas. That makes me gagle. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, you can do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on social media as missed in History and if
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