The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons

by Samantha Barbas

Hollywood celebrities feared her. William Randolph Hearst adored her. Between 1915 and 1960, Louella Parsons was America's premier movie gossip columnist and in her heyday commanded a following of more than forty million readers. This first full-length biography of Parsons tells the story of her reign over Hollywood during the studio era, her lifelong alliance with her employer, William Randolph Hearst, and her complex and turbulent relationships with such noted stars, directors, and studio executives as Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan, and Frank Sinatra―as well as her rival columnists Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell. Loved by fans for her "just folks," small-town image, Parsons became notorious within the film industry for her involvement in the suppression of the 1941 film Citizen Kane and her use of blackmail in the service of Hearst's political and personal agendas. As she traces Parsons's life and career, Samantha Barbas situates Parsons's experiences in the broader trajectory of Hollywood history, charting the rise of the star system and the complex interactions of publicity, journalism, and movie-making. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, The First Lady of Hollywood is both an engrossing chronicle of one of the most powerful women in American journalism and film and a penetrating analysis of celebrity culture and Hollywood power politics.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, History

426 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

An expert on legal history, First Amendment law and mass communications law, Samantha Barbas is a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law. She was previously a professor of history at Chapman University, a visiting professor of history at U.C. Berkeley, and a lecturer at Arizona State University.

Reviews

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent and even-handed biography about a particularly loathsome and vile figure in early film journalism. Barbas, to her great credit, not only allows the reader to judge Louella Parsons's despicable actions, but she also makes many successfully nimble efforts to move past the baroque hagiography that Parsons built for herself and present her rivalry with Hedda Hopper in a somewhat more nuanced way. The fact of the matter is that Louella Parsons was a vicious opportunist who would betray or use anyone to get ahead. Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Marion Davies, you name it. She served as a vile anticommunist mouthpiece when the HUAC hearings began (and later received a loving letter from J. Edgar Hoover). She did anything her master Hearst said, no matter how unethical (which included attempting to bury the masterpiece CITIZEN KANE). Barbas is wonderful in showing how Parsons fit in with the various stages of Hollywood and has a solid sense of history, which prevents this from being a mere gossipfest (although there are some juicy bits). Years before Nikki Finke, there was Louella Parsons, a friendless instigator who had nothing but work and who could destroy someone with a sentence. She is an ignoble reminder of the kind of toxic gossip masquerading as "journalism" that needs to be fought tooth and nail.

[George Fairbrother · Rating 5 out of 5]

Louella Parsons was a powerful columnist for the Hearst News syndicate during Hollywood's golden age. This book is as much about the beginnings of celebrity culture more widely, and it's interesting to note that large media organisations were just as loose with the truth then as now. There's also fascinating insights into the very early days of the film industry.

I found this to be beautifully researched and written, but if anything leaves you even more cynical about media and corporate ethics generally; and how powerful columnists and commentators push the agenda of their employers behind the facade of objective opinion. This is one of the top three or four Hollywood bios that I've read; right up there with A Scott Berg's Goldwyn and Neal Gabler's Empire of their Own

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting life story.

[Howard Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another biography that can't keep on the subject......tedious.