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
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