Louella Parsons was retained by William Randolph Hearst because she had championed Hearst's mistress Marion Davies and subsequently became an influential figure in Hollywood.
46 Facts About Louella Parsons
2.
Louella Parsons was born Louella Rose Oettinger in Freeport, Illinois, the daughter of Helen and Joshua Oettinger.
3.
Louella Parsons's father was of German Jewish descent, as was her maternal grandfather, while her maternal grandmother, Jeanette Wilcox, was of Irish origin.
4.
Louella Parsons had two brothers, Edwin and Fred, and a sister, Rae.
5.
Louella Parsons received a financial contribution from a distant German relative.
6.
Louella Parsons's only child, Harriet, who grew up to become a film producer, was born there.
7.
Louella Parsons wrote a book titled How to Write for the Movies.
8.
In 1914, Louella Parsons began writing the first movie gossip column in the United States for the Chicago Record Herald.
9.
William Randolph Hearst bought that newspaper in 1918 and Louella Parsons was out of a job, as Hearst had not yet discovered that movies and movie personalities were news.
10.
Louella Parsons then moved to New York City and started working for the New York Morning Telegraph writing a similar movie column, which attracted the attention of Hearst after he saw her interview of his mistress and protege Marion Davies.
11.
Louella Parsons had encouraged readers to "give this girl a chance" while the majority of critics disparaged Davies.
12.
Louella Parsons showered the former chorus girl with praise which led to a friendship between the two women and led to an offer from Hearst in 1923 for her to become the $200-a-week motion-picture editor of his New York American.
13.
Allegedly, Louella Parsons was aboard the yacht that night but she ignored the story in her columns.
14.
Louella Parsons was a founding member of the New York Newspaper Women's Club, and was elected president of the organization for one term in 1925.
15.
In 1925, Louella Parsons contracted tuberculosis and was told she had six months to live.
16.
Louella Parsons spent a year in Palm Springs, California, which led to it being a popular resort for Hollywood movie stars.
17.
Louella Parsons moved to Arizona for the dry climate, then to Los Angeles, where she decided to stay.
18.
Louella Parsons saw herself as the social and moral arbiter of Hollywood and many feared her disfavor more than that of movie critics.
19.
Louella Parsons had informants in studio corridors, hairdressers' salons, and lawyers' and doctors' offices.
20.
Louella Parsons's husband Harry Martin was a urologist and Hollywood physician, and it was thought that he passed on information he learned in his position as a studio doctor.
21.
Louella Parsons worked from her Beverly Hills home with a staff consisting of a secretary, her assistant reviewer, a "leg" man who gathered news, and a female reporter who covered the cafes.
22.
Louella Parsons had former silent-movie stars on her payroll to help them financially.
23.
Louella Parsons considered the biggest scoop of her career to be the divorce of Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
24.
Louella Parsons had learned of the split from Pickford herself, who had made the mistake of counting on the columnist's discretion.
25.
Louella Parsons sat on the story for six weeks, hoping that they would reconcile and concerned that the news might damage the film industry, but published once she heard that the Los Angeles Times had got the story.
26.
When she had received a tip that Clark Gable was divorcing his second wife Ria, Louella Parsons essentially held Mrs Gable hostage at her home until she was sure that her story was speeding across the wire ahead of any other service.
27.
Louella Parsons appeared in many cameo spots in movies, including Without Reservations, and Starlift.
28.
In contrast to her arch-rival Hedda Hopper, who was notorious for her column's crass tone, Louella Parsons' writing style was often described as "sweetness and light" or "gooey".
29.
Louella Parsons received criticism for her casual chatty tone and casual regard for dates and places.
30.
Louella Parsons countered that "the best gossip" is informal and that the speed at which she needed to complete her daily column did not allow for much rewriting or polishing.
31.
Louella Parsons stated that she would rather get the word out than potentially disappoint her readers.
32.
Louella Parsons became known in Hollywood for assuming an air of goofy vagueness in order to snap up material without people suspecting she was listening or otherwise letting their guard down.
33.
Louella Parsons began to show signs of physical deterioration and when the Los Angeles Examiner folded in 1962 her column was switched to the Hearst afternoon paper, the Los Angeles Herald-Express.
34.
Louella Parsons continued her column until December 1965 when it was taken over by her assistant, Dorothy Manners, who had already been writing the column for more than a year.
35.
When Hopper initially come to Hollywood, she and Louella Parsons had a mutually beneficial arrangement.
36.
Louella Parsons was offered a position as a Hollywood columnist by the Esquire Feature Syndicate due to a recommendation by Andy Hervey of MGM's publicity department.
37.
When rumors began to surface that Orson Welles debut film Citizen Kane was inspired by Hearst's life, Louella Parsons lunched with the director and believed his evasions and denials.
38.
Louella Parsons warned other studio heads that she would expose the private lives of people throughout the industry and reveal long-suppressed scandalous information.
39.
Louella Parsons was by no means alone in her campaign against Citizen Kane but Welles never quite recovered his position in Hollywood afterward.
40.
Louella Parsons had allegedly received the tip from Howard Hughes who was incensed at Bergman for being unable to shoot a film for him as promised.
41.
Reportedly, whereas Hopper was more inclined to see their much-publicized antagonism as funny and good for business, Louella Parsons took it personally and saw Hopper as a rival in every possible way.
42.
Louella Parsons alleged that her first husband died on a transport ship on the way home from World War I, leaving her a widow instead of a divorced single mother.
43.
Louella Parsons pursued singing as a hobby, and took voice lessons with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills.
44.
Louella Parsons's specialty was venereal diseases and he advanced to the post of Twentieth Century Fox's chief medical officer.
45.
Louella Parsons became one of the few female producers in the Hollywood studio system although she still struggled in this role despite the influence of her powerful mother.
46.
Louella Parsons has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, one for motion pictures at 6418 Hollywood Boulevard and one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard.