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
William Hickey (columnist) William Hickey (columnist) "William Hickey" is the pseudonymous byline of a gossip column published in the "Daily Express", a British newspaper. It was named after the eighteenth-century diarist William Hickey. The column was first established by Tom Driberg in May 1933. An existing gossip column was relaunched following the intervention of the "Express"'s proprietor Lord Beaverbrook. It was titled "These Names Make News". Driberg described the new feature as "...an intimate biographical column about ... men and women who matter. Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers..." Historian David Kynaston calls Driberg the "founder of the modern gossip column", which moved