Louella's Rival

For the past year, Hedda Hopper has been the No. i aerial gossip of Hollywood. Thrice weekly over a CBS network she has broadcast tittle-tattle about celluloid hotshots, under the sponsorship of the California Fruit Growers Exchange. Supplementing her syndicated newspaper column, Hedda's program has helped her to move in on the domain of Louella Parsons, Hearst's quidnunc extraordinary, who used to have Hollywood in her pudgy palms. Last week Gossip Hopper went swirling to Manhattan to be lionessed at luncheons, ballyhooed all over town.

The fifth wife of the late, oft-wedded DeWolf Hopper, Hedda was born Elda Furry near Altoona, Pa., changed her first name as well as her last after marrying Hopper, partly to distinguish herself from her predecessors (Ella, Ida. Edna and Nella), partly to comply with the instructions of a numerologist. Her long connection with the cinema dates back 25 years. Credited with knowing more extramarital yarns about cinemagnates than even the relentless Louella. Hedda was signed up for a Hollywood column three years ago on the recommendation of M. G. M.'s publicity office, soon established herself so firmly that she was inevitably wired for sound. Her radio and newspaper stint brings her an estimated $110,000 annually, over ten times what she made at the top of her acting career.

Tall, handsome, fiftyish, with a weakness for dizzy hats, Hedda is rated less inaccurate than most of the gossips, in a notoriously inaccurate field. An impetuous pourer-out, she seldom goes through a show without muffing words, mixing up names. Typical blunder last week was an item praising Jack Dempsey, which she gaffed into a plug for Jack Benny. Leaving the studio, she usually remarks, "Boy, I sure kicked that one."

Famed for her tough talk, she boasts, "You can't fool this old bag." To secretarie's of bigwigs who have misled her she shouts: "You tell your boss Hedda Hopper says he's the biggest son, of a -- in town." Her working methods are impulsive. Confronting her note-sprawled desk, she kicks off her shoes, screams "Front and centre" at her secretary, lights a cigaret, paces up and down the room in her stocking feet, dictating at the top of her voice. Her notes are usually unintelligible to anyone but herself. Recent sample: "Willie going to war. Catalina and sleep. Stinkey Pinky. Fred. Claudette. He has to have three steps to get on the love. Betcha heights after ride. Berlin. Test Pilot. Marie Antoinette. Mrs. Chauncey Alcott. Biggest sin is not knowing who directing.''

Hedda lives in a small, eight-room house with a pair of dachshunds, spends much of her income on clothes. At least a dozen Hollywood columnists have bigger circulations than Hedda, but none of them makes so much of a splash as she does. She scooped the town on Jimmy Roosevelt's divorce, recently came through again with news of the Myrna Loy-Arthur Hornblow break-up six weeks before it happened.

Hedda runs her gossip business smartly, sends a mimeographed report to all studios every two months, pointing out the number of plugs she has given their stars and pictures both on the air and in her column. Cheerful about mistakes she has made, she has installed a gold-plated mechanical canary before her mike, gives herself the bird for every error.

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