Gossip columnist 1930s through the 1950s, the two best-known - and competing - Hollywood gossip columnists were Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Well-timed leaks about a star's purported romantic adventures helped the studios to create and sustain the public's interest in the studios' star actors. As well, the movie studios' publicity agents acted as unnamed "well-informed inside sources" who provided misinformation and rumors to counteract whispers about celebrity secrets — such as homosexuality or an out-of-wedlock child — that could have severely damaged not only the reputation of the movie star in question, but the movie star's box office viability. Having fallen
Edward Hopper stage the East Coast premiere of Stewart Wallace's "Hopper’s Wife" – a 1997 chamber opera about an imagined marriage between Edward Hopper and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, at Harlem Stage from April 28 through May 1, 2016. British singer and songwriter Paul Weller's 2017 album A Kind Revolution features a track called Hopper, which pays its respects to the painter. Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is best known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both