Hedda Hopper Hedda Hopper Hedda Hopper (born Elda Furry; May 2, 1885February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, notorious for feuding with her arch-rival Louella Parsons. She had been a moderately successful actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write the column "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" for the "Los Angeles Times" in 1938. At the height of her power in the 1940s she commanded a 35 million strong readership. She was well known for her political conservatism, and during the McCarthy era she named suspected communists. Hopper continued to write gossip until the end,
Gossip columnist romantic relationships, affairs, and purported personal problems. Gossip columnists have a reciprocal relationship with the celebrities whose private lives are splashed about in the gossip column's pages. While gossip columnists sometimes engage in (borderline) defamatory conduct, spreading innuendo about alleged immoral or illegal conduct that can injure celebrities' reputations, they also are an important part of the "Star System" publicity machine that turns movie actors and musicians into celebrities and superstars that are the objects of the public's obsessive attention and interest. The publicity agents of celebrities often provide or "leak" information or rumors to gossip columnists to publicize the