Sidney Skolsky Sidney Skolsky Sidney Skolsky (2 May 1905 – 3 May 1983) was an American writer best known as a Hollywood gossip columnist. He ranked with Hedda Hopper (with whom he shared a birthday) and Louella Parsons as the premier Hollywood gossip columnists of the first three decades of the sound picture era. A radio personality in addition to having his own syndicated newspaper column, Skolsky also was a screenwriter and movie producer who occasionally acted in the radio and in the movies. Skolsky claimed to be the person who gave the nickname "Oscar" to the Academy Award and was credited
Hedda Hopper Jr. recalled in his memoirs "Salad Days" that he was already in uniform serving in the United States Navy, and despised Hopper for her insinuations. Actor Kirk Douglas recounted an interaction between Hopper and Elizabeth Taylor. At the 1965 premiere of Taylor and husband Richard Burton's film "The Sandpiper", Hopper began to complain when she saw screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's screen credit (she had led the charge in blacklisting Trumbo for his Communist party membership). This led Taylor to turn around and say "Hedda, why don't you just shut the f*** up?" In 1958, Hopper made racist remarks to African American