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
Joyce Haber Joyce Haber Joyce Haber (1931–1993) was an American gossip columnist who worked for the "Los Angeles Times". Haber was one of Hollywood's last powerful gossip columnists who "were capable of canonizing a film or destroying a star". She took over the old job of famed Hedda Hopper. Haber left the "Times" in 1976 to write a roman a clef titled "The Users". It was her only novel, rose to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List, and was made into a tele-film with the same name. Haber was instrumental in an FBI black-op that directly led to the