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
William Hickey (columnist) William Hickey (columnist) "William Hickey" is the pseudonymous byline of a gossip column published in the "Daily Express", a British newspaper. It was named after the eighteenth-century diarist William Hickey. The column was first established by Tom Driberg in May 1933. An existing gossip column was relaunched following the intervention of the "Express"'s proprietor Lord Beaverbrook. It was titled "These Names Make News". Driberg described the new feature as "...an intimate biographical column about ... men and women who matter. Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers..." Historian David Kynaston calls Driberg the "founder of the modern gossip column", which moved