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
New York City Opera Appel Room in Jazz at Lincoln Center was inaugurated with the premiere of David Hertzberg's "Sunday Morning". A work for soprano and small ensemble, it featured soprano Sarah Shafer and mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chávez. That was followed by the East Coast premiere of composer Stewart Wallace's and librettist Michael Korie's "Hopper's Wife" – a surreal, erotically-charged 90-minute 1997 chamber opera fantasy about an imagined marriage between the painter Edward Hopper and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. It was directed by Andreas Mitisek at Harlem Stage from April 28 through May 1, 2016, in his New York City directorial debut. Third, the