For nearly 30 years, two women ruled Hollywood with more power from their typewriters than the heads of most studios: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. A feud petty, vicious, glamorous and historic, their saga was a show almost as thrilling as the films they chronicled. To read Hollywood gossip during its Golden Age was to watch a battle royale between two queens battling for the right to wear a crown of unchallenged supremacy.
By Allan R. Ellenberger for The Hollywoodland Revue
Queen Number 1: Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons was the first to arrive. A Midwestern newspaperwoman born in 1881, she made her way to the offices of William Randolph Hearst where her column was picked up for national syndication. Hearst was her idol. And with Hearst in her corner, Parsons was able to rule the roost for decades with longevity, access, and immunity. If Louella liked you, your career could be saved. If you crossed her, you knew it, but she had a velvet glove on that iron fist and many had a reason to stay in her good graces. Hollywood was in the hands of the kind and generous autocrat.
By the mid-1930s, there was no competition. Louella was Gossip Goddess Numero Uno. Until Hedda Hopper entered the scene.
The Challenger: Hedda Hopper
Hedda came on like a storm—smart-mouthed, politically combative, power-hungry. Hedda didn’t whisper gossip; she used it as a weapon. Louella had the velvet-glove treatment as an insider. Hedda was the outside crusader, a moral cop with a column that would tell you the truth, even when it stung.
Her first blockbuster—Norma Shearer and George Cukor at war over Romeo and Juliet—rocked the town. Louella had been trumped at her own game.
And Louella never forgave her.
Battle Lines Drawn
The war was personal now. Protected by the full might of the Hearst empire, Louella Parsons sat on a comfortable and well-entrenched throne in Hollywood's gossip kingdom. Older and more established than her rivals, she had made her peace with cozy partnerships with the studios rather than challenge them to all-out war, and her column had long been a velvet-gloved extension of the industry's own publicity machine. She had her favorites (none more loyal than Marion Davies), and when something came along to threaten her golden darlings, Parsons didn't very often take to the field in public combat. She preferred to deal with her enemies the old-fashioned way: by phone, by whisper, with the invisible fist of someone who knew that true power didn't have to roar.
Working for herself, not beholden to any studio, Hopper became a favorite of anti-Communist conservatives. She was seen as a brash individualist, willing to say what others would not. Hopper enjoyed the public embarrassment of celebrities and considered scandal both entertainment and a weapon. Hedda's hats became part of her "look" and message. Bold and outrageous, her hats became a visual way of saying she could not be ignored. Hopper also knew that fear was a weapon and she had no qualms about using it. She wanted her Hollywood subjects to live in fear of what she might write, and she sought to keep them that way.
One took refuge in the kitchens of Chasen’s, where Louella listened for gossip over a plate of chicken-in-the-pot. The other manned her post from the patio of her Benedict Canyon house, where Hedda allowed stars to enter only after sundown, if at all, to swap intelligence. On and off for decades, they waged a personal Cold War: frequent skirmishes, the slow build of hostilities, and the threat of annihilation at any moment.
The Famous Battles: The Ingrid Bergman Scandal
When Bergman became pregnant by Italian director Roberto Rossellini, Hedda unleashed a moral firestorm, calling the actress “a powerful influence for evil.” Louella, usually protective of major stars, attempted to soften the backlash—only to watch Hedda dominate national headlines.
The Charlie Chaplin Assault
Both columnists despised Chaplin’s politics and personal life, but Hedda led the crusade. She fueled public outrage over his paternity scandals and leftist sympathies until he was effectively exiled from America. Louella joined in, but it was Hedda’s venom that finally tipped public sentiment.
The Reader Wars
By the 1940s, gossip readers openly took sides: Team Louella favored warmth and tradition. Team Hedda relished scandals, takedowns, and patriotism.
Studios were forced to play both sides, feeding each woman stories to stay in their good graces—sometimes the same tip packaged differently for each ego.
Mutual Destruction
Ironically, the two women needed each other. Their rivalry turned gossip into a national pastime, with their columns appearing in more than 45 million newspapers combined. But the post-war world brought them new enemies: television, new morals, and a new generation of stars who cared nothing for the old rules. By the mid-1950s, both women's influence began to decline. Louella, older and ailing, retired first. Hedda clung on a little longer, spurred by politics and her usual self-righteousness. By 1965, the era they had ruled with fear was over. The new Hollywood—loud-mouthed, rebellious, and more impossible to control—left no place for gossip queens with moral crusades.
How It Ended
Hedda died in 1966, and Louella—who pointedly skipped the funeral—followed her six years later.
The war between Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons outlived them both. As the years passed, it became legend. The tale of power and ego and the self-destructive pleasures of gossip and the loudest, snarkiest columnists cashing in on them all.
Legacy
In our modern age, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons are remembered not just as gossip columnists but as the progenitors of modern celebrity culture. It was they who created the paparazzi’s blueprint, tabloid journalism, and entertainment news in general.
A blueprint Hollywood still pays homage to today, for they understood a Hollywood truth that has endured through the decades: Movies don’t make a star. Print does. Their feud built the mythology of Old Hollywood as indelibly as any star themselves. Hollywood never saw their like again.
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