The First Lady of Hollywood by Samantha Barbas

Author:Samantha Barbas [Barbas, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-08T15:33:00+00:00

By the time of Harriet's wedding, Hopper had gone from being a minor annoyance to being a serious threat. Though her column still appeared only in the Esquire syndicate, in September 1939 she announced that she would be going on the air three times a week with a gossip show underwritten by Sunkist, Louella's former sponsor. Being without a radio show herself since Hollywood Hotel went off the air, Louella feared, quite rightly, that the new Sunkist program would give Hopper the edge.

Hopper also had other advantages that troubled Louella. Unlike Louella, who came to California as a member of the Hearst press, Hopper, a former actress, had always been an insider. She was loud, gregarious, and naturally theatrical-qualities that endeared her to her many friends, and that Louella, less relaxed and more reserved, had always wished for herself. And though she was only four years younger than Louella, natural good looks and a meticulous beauty regime had kept the tall, blond Hopper youthful and photogenic. She was perfectly poised to become a name in her own right, and Louella worried that it would be only a matter of time before Hopper's talents propelled her into the spotlight.

Then it happened. In October 1939, Hopper outscooped Louella on one of the most important stories of the year. Jimmy Roosevelt, the president's son, who had been working as a producer at the Samuel Goldwyn studio, was planning to separate from his wife, Betsy, and marry a nurse at the Mayo Clinic, Romelle Schneider. A longtime friend of Roosevelt's, Hopper had known that he was planning a divorce and made him promise to tell her first when he was ready to break the story. For weeks Roosevelt remained silent, but on October zi, 1939, a friend of Hopper's in New York told her that she had heard "through the grapevine" that the Roosevelt divorce was imminent. At ten that evening, Hopper phoned her assistant Hy Gardner and the two met at Roosevelt's Beverly Hills home. Pushing her way past the butler, Hopper shouted at Roosevelt, who appeared on the doorstep in bare feet and a bathrobe: "My spies from New York tipped me off. Now give." After Roosevelt confessed-he was indeed about to begin divorce proceedings-Hopper sped back to the Times and, literally shouting "Hold the press" as she ran through the door, managed to get the story into the Sunday paper. The exclusive article, with Hopper's byline, made the front page.61 According to Gardner, it was "the hottest exclusive of national impact in her ... career."69

In her column on Monday, Louella included only a short mention of Roosevelt, a comment criticizing his work at the Goldwyn studio. Hearst, appalled that Louella would take such an obvious crack at the president's son, ordered it out of the paper. When it appeared in the first edition-an "old employee tossed in the paragraph without knowing it had been killed," ac cording to the Hollywood Reporter-editor "Cardington and everyone else at the Examiner threw a fit."70

The

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