Gossip Gathering
Louella Parsons, one of the real-life gossip columnists who features in my Hollywood novel Gossip Column, is pictured here on the left at a celebrity function. She appears to be eavesdropping on the two stars to the right of the photograph, Barbara Stanwyck and Natalie Wood. Louella, together with her great adversary, Hedda Hopper, held enormous power over personalities in the movie business, chiefly during the 1930s and 1940s. This power included the making or breaking of many careers.
Posted on March 31st, 2007 by Pat Turner
Filed under: Hollywood Snippets
I remem ber Hedda Hopper’s column in the old New York Post. She went on, I think after Louella retired. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s girl friend, Sheilah Graham, had a column too, I believe.
That’s interesting Connie. I would like to be able to read some of Shelia Graham’s columns. I must look up some of the old NYP issues.
I think there is also an autobiography of her, or a bio or something. I don’t remember the name of it. She talks about her life with F.Scott.
Thanks Connie, I look out for the biog.
Helo Connie and Pat,
The autobiography might be “Beloved Infidel : the education of a woman”. (first pub. Holt, 1958)
Other books about F. Scott Fitzgerald by Sheilah Graham are
College of One (Viking Press, 1967)
The Rest of the Story (Coward-McCann, 1964)
The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald (Grosset & Dunlap, 1976)
and one by her son, Robert Westbrook :
Intimate Lies (Harper Collins, 1995
Thanks for all that information, Marilyn. I will check those books out. By the way, congratulations on your story ‘Freedom Angel’ in WomanScapes . It was terrific.