Oona O'Neill and assistant, Harry Crocker. Crocker photographed the event for gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Chaplin had given exclusive rights to publicize news of the marriage in the hopes that she would write a more positive article about it than her rival, Hedda Hopper, who strongly disliked him. The elopement received a large amount of media attention due to the 36-year age gap between O'Neill and Chaplin, and because his ex-girlfriend, Joan Barry, had filed a paternity suit against him only two weeks earlier. Although Agnes had given the union her blessing, it cemented O'Neill's estrangement from her father, who
Stewart Wallace Memorial Opera House of the San Francisco Opera in 2008. The New York City Opera announced that it would stage the East Coast premiere of Wallace's “Hopper’s Wife” — a 1997 chamber opera about an imagined marriage between the painter Edward Hopper and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper—at Harlem Stage from April 28 through May 1, 2016. Stewart Wallace Stewart Wallace (born 1960) is an American composer and cantor. Wallace was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has spent much of his career composing experimental operas, from the dance-centered "Kabbalah" (1989) to the surrealist "Hopper's Wife" (1992). Two of his operas