Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism

American History and Culture Series

by Jennifer Frost

Before Liz Smith and Perez Hilton became household names in the world of celebrity gossip, before Rush Limbaugh became the voice of conservatism, there was Hedda Hopper. In 1938, this 52-year-old struggling actress rose to fame and influence writing an incendiary gossip column, "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout Hollywood's golden age. Often eviscerating moviemakers and stars, her column earned her a nasty reputation in the film industry while winning a legion of some 32 million fans, whose avid support established her as the voice of small-town America. Yet Hopper sought not only to build her career as a gossip columnist but also to push her agenda of staunch moral and political conservatism, using her column to argue against U.S. entry into World War II, uphold traditional views of sex and marriage, defend racist roles for African Americans, and enthusiastically support the Hollywood blacklist.

While usually dismissed as an eccentric crank, Jennifer Frost argues that Hopper has had a profound and lasting influence on popular and political culture and should be viewed as a pivotal popularizer of conservatism. The first book to explore Hopper's gossip career and the public's response to both her column and her politics, Hedda Hopper's Hollywood illustrates how the conservative gossip maven contributed mightily to the public understanding of film, while providing a platform for women to voice political views within a traditionally masculine public realm. Jennifer Frost builds the case that, as practiced by Hopper and her readers, Hollywood gossip shaped key developments in American movies and movie culture, newspaper journalism and conservative politics, along with the culture of gossip itself, all of which continue to play out today.

Read a review of the book from the Chronicle of Higher Education blog, Tenured Radical.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Film

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 2011

About the author

Jennifer Frost is associate professor of history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She is the author of An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, that was a bust. This was written by an author for her dissertation and it shows. Long, long sentences, detailed (and boring) descriptions and very little to hold the attention of someone who doesn't have to read this for a Ph.D. committee.

I read the entire introduction and the first two chapters before giving up -- too bad, it is an interesting topic but not done to my taste. However, if you are researching Hollywood and the effects of the gossip columns from the mid-40's to the late 60's, this is the book for you.

Me, I DNF.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a nasty mess this woman truly was ... her politics were way over the top and I never knew that. Also, she attempted to "out" Michael Wilding, who sued her, and WON ... apparently her "gay" coterie stuck together to spite her!

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know anything about Hedda Hopper before reading this book other than she was a gossip columnist. Wow she was a jerk. Mega racist and conservative and ready to throw anyone under the bus who she did not like.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a scholarly book, not a popular title, which was fine with me, but may not be to some readers' tastes. This explains the couple of very low reviews that it has received, I believe. I did feel that there was a degree of repetitiveness to the book, in places, and also a kind of hollow center. I had an extraordinary sense of the power of the letters and columns, which I admit was the subject, but sometimes Hopper herself and certainly her contemporaries, Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan (yes, that Ed Sullivan) remained essentially just names in the book rather than actual people despite their critical roles as professional competitors. Given the amount of material the author had to work with, this seems an unusual shortcoming.

Given those reservations, however, I have to say that the book was a fascinating look at the power she wielded and the disturbing self-riotous pleasure she took in so doing. I became interested in her after seeing her portrayed in the film Trumbo and this book certainly gave me an opportunity to see a well detailed look at the way she worked and the careers she destroyed.

Oh, one note for trivia fans, her son William Hopper played Paul Drake in the TV series Perry Mason. I never saw that coming. :-)

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read intro and first chapter for my research and skimmed the rest. Interesting and well researched but very academic

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a scholarly book on Hopper and Hollywood gossip, not a kiss-and-tell biography, so some readers may be disappointed. But it's a great history of the era and I learned not just about movies and stars and the importance of gossip. But also about the cold war, the blacklist, race relations and women and the family. I didn't want it to end!

[Cait · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very much an academic book, which I don't mind, but something to be aware of!

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Super boring.