Brown Derby is said to have proposed to Carole Lombard there. Rival gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper are recorded as regular patrons. In "L.A. at Last", the first of the Hollywood episodes of "I Love Lucy", Lucy (Lucille Ball), Ethel (Vivian Vance), and Fred (William Frawley) have lunch at the Brown Derby. During the misadventure, the trio dines in a booth with Eve Arden on one side and William Holden (who orders a Cobb Salad) on the other. This leads to the famous disaster scene in which Lucy inadvertently causes a waiter to hit Holden in the face with a
Hedda Hopper actor Sidney Poitier. While interviewing him, she asked if he could sing, because "so many of your people do". When he replied that he could not, she said: You're the first one I've ever met who says he can't sing. I've never known any of your people who couldn't sing. In 1963, Hopper complained in her column that three out of five Best Actor Oscar nominees were British and only two were American: The weather's so foul on that tight little isle that, to get in out of the rain, they all gather in theatres and practise Hamlet on each