Hollywood's Gossip Queens

Discover

Podcast Features
Your all-in-one podcasting solution.

Blog to Podcast
Turn your blog into an engaging podcast.
Livestream
High-performing audio live, without limits.

Podcast Studio
Easy-to-use audio recorder app.
Podbean AI
AI-Enhanced Audio Quality and Content Generation.

Podcast App
The best podcast player & podcast app.

Ads Marketplace
Join Ads Marketplace to earn money
through sponsorship on your podcast.

PodAds
Manage your ads with dynamic ad insertion capability.
Apple Podcasts Subscriptions Integration
Effortlessly publish and manage exclusive episodes for your
Apple Podcasts subscribers directly from Podbean.
Live Streaming
Receive livestream rewards from your audience and earn
recurring income from your Fan Club membership.

All Arts Business Comedy Education
Fiction Government Health & Fitness History Kids & Family
Leisure Music News Religion & Spirituality Science
Society & Culture Sports Technology True Crime TV & Film
Live

How to Start a Podcast
How to Start a Live Podcast
How to Monetize a podcast
How to Promote Your Podcast
How to Use Group Recording

Log in
Start your podcast for free

Podcasting
Monetization
Advertisers
Enterprise
Pricing
Discover

Today In History with The Retrospectors

History

Hollywood’s Gossip Queens

2024-02-14

iOS

Android Share

Luella Parsons’s reign as Tinseltown’s top tittle-tattler was severely challenged on 14th February, 1938, following the print debut of rival column, ‘Hedda Hopper's Hollywood’. With her fiery style and incendiary content,...

Luella Parsons’s reign as Tinseltown’s top tittle-tattler was severely challenged on 14th February, 1938, following the print debut of rival column, ‘Hedda Hopper's Hollywood’.

With her fiery style and incendiary content, Hopper quickly garnered a massive audience of her own. Together, the two writers reached over 75 million readers and radio listeners in Hollywood’s golden age; their networks of informants and sensational stories making or breaking countless careers.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly discover how the rivals derailed Orson Welles' career after the release of ‘Citizen Kane’; reveal how the Chicago railway played a pivotal role in Parsons’s rise to the top; and consider how Hedda changed her first name - to appease her first husband…

Further Reading:

• ‘The Powerful Rivalry of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons’ (Vanity Fair, 1997): https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/rivalry-hedda-hopper-louella-parsons-gossip-columnists

• ‘Forgotten Hollywood: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons’ (Golden Globes, 2021): https://goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-hedda-hopper-and-louella-parsons-articles-forgotten-hollywood-hedda-hopper-and-louella-parsons/

• ‘Publicist Frank Liberman on Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper’ (Television Academy Foundation, 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaZNCJriAZ4

Love the show? Join 🌴CLUB RETROSPECTORS 🌴 to DITCH THE ADS and get an additional full-length episode every SUNDAY!

Plus, get weekly bonus bits, unlock over 70 bits of extra content and support our independent podcast.

Join now via Apple Podcasts or Patreon. Thanks!

We'll be back tomorrow! Follow us wherever you get your podcasts: podfollow.com/Retrospectors

The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Ollie Peart.

Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2023.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices