Sidney Skolsky was an American writer best known as a Hollywood gossip columnist.
16 Facts About Sidney Skolsky
2.
Sidney Skolsky ranked with Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons as the premier Hollywood gossip columnists of the first three decades of the sound picture era.
3.
Sidney Skolsky claimed to be the person who gave the nickname "Oscar" to the Academy Award and was credited for the introduction of the use of the word beefcake.
4.
Sidney Skolsky was born to a Jewish family, the son of dry goods store proprietor Louis Sidney Skolsky and his wife Mildred in New York City.
5.
Sidney Skolsky studied journalism at New York University before becoming a Broadway press agent for the theatrical impresarios Earl Carroll, Sam Harris, and George White.
6.
When he became the New York Daily News gossip columnist in 1928, the 23-year-old Sidney Skolsky was the youngest Broadway gossip columnist plying his trade on the Great White Way.
7.
Sidney Skolsky had a Sunday column, "Tintypes", profiles of actors, directors and other production personnel and Hollywood creative types, that continued in print for 52 years, until a couple years before his death.
8.
Sidney Skolsky moved to Hollywood in 1933, where he moonlighted as a story editor for Darryl F Zanuck's Twentieth Century Pictures.
9.
Sidney Skolsky had a regular column in Photoplay, the country's premiere movie magazine.
10.
Sidney Skolsky helped promulgate the myth Lana Turner had been discovered there, when it actually had been another Sunset Boulevard establishment, The Top Hat Cafe, which was closer to Lana's alma mater, Hollywood High.
11.
Sidney Skolsky helped champion and was very close to Marilyn Monroe.
12.
Sidney Skolsky followed it up with 1953 bio The Eddie Cantor Story.
13.
Sidney Skolsky wrote five books about Hollywood and the movies, including a 1975 autobiography, Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Hollywood.
14.
Sidney Skolsky died in 1983 from complications due to Parkinson's disease and atherosclerosis.
15.
Sidney Skolsky was married for 54 years to the former Estelle Lorenz, with whom he had had two daughters.
16.
Sidney Skolsky's writings are part of the permanent collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library.