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
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