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
Isabel Jewell FBI". In 1972, Jewell appeared opposite Edie Sedgwick in the film "Ciao! Manhattan". Her final film was the B movie "Sweet Kill" (1973), the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson, a future Academy Award winner. Jewell's first marriage (which "was not generally known during Jewell's lifetime ... [nor] mentioned in the press during her heyday in American films") occurred when she wed Lovell "Cowboy" Underwood when she was 19. In the mid to late 1930s, Jewell was seen at nightclubs with actor William Hopper. (He appeared on the "Perry Mason" TV series and was the son of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper