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 who used political, entertainment, and social connections to mine information and rumors, which he then either published in his column "On Broadway", or used for trade or blackmail, to accumulate more power. He became "the most feared journalist" of his era. In Hollywood's "golden age" in the 1930s and 1940s, gossip columnists were courted by the movie studios, so that the studios could use gossip columns as a powerful publicity tool. During this period, the major film studios had "stables" of contractually obligated actors, and the studios controlled nearly all aspects of the lives of their movie stars. From the