Louella Rose Oettinger Parsons (August 6, 1881 – December 9, 1972), was an American gossip columnist and screenwriter. At her peak, her columns were read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers worldwide.
She was the first writer of a dedicated column on motion pictures in the United States, writing one in 1914 for the Chicago Record-Herald. She later started a similar column for the New York Morning Telegraph, being lured away by William Randolph Hearst's New York American in 1924 because she had championed Hearst's mistress Marion Davies. She subsequently became an influential figure in Hollywood, based at Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner, and remained the unchallenged "Queen of Hollywood gossip" until the arrival of the flamboyant Hedda Hopper, with whom she feuded for years.
Early life Parsons was born Louella Rose Oettinger in Freeport, Illinois, the daughter of Helen (née Stine) and Joshua Oettinger. Her father was of German Jewish descent, as was her maternal grandfather, while her maternal grandmother, Jeanette Wilcox, was of Irish origin. During her childhood, her parents attended an Episcopal church. She had two brothers, Edwin and Fred, and a sister, Rae. In 1890, her widowed mother married John H. Edwards. They lived in Dixon, Illinois.
Parsons decided to become a writer or a reporter during high school. At her 1901 high school graduation, she gave a foretelling speech, titled "Great Men", after which her principal announced that she would become a great writer.
After high school, Parsons enrolled in a teacher's course at a local Dixon college. She received a financial contribution from a distant German relative. While still in college, Parsons obtained her first newspaper job as a part-time writer for the Dixon Star. In 1902, she became the first female journalist in Dixon, where she gossiped about Dixon social circles, making a step towards her Hollywood career.
She and her first husband, John Parsons, moved to Burlington, Iowa. Her only child, Harriet (1906–1983), who grew up to become a film producer, was born there. While in Burlington, Parsons saw her first motion picture, The Great Train Robbery (1903).
Career Motion pictures and reporter When her marriage broke up, Parsons moved to Chicago. In 1912, she had her first taste of the movie industry working for George K. Spoor as a scenario writer at the Essanay Studios in Chicago, selling her first script for $25. Her daughter, Harriet, was billed as "Baby Parsons" in several movies, which included The Magic Wand (1912), written by Parsons. She also wrote a book titled How to Write for the Movies.
In 1914, Parsons began writing the first movie gossip column in the United States for the Chicago Record Herald. During her early career in Chicago, Parsons also worked as a reporter for the Herald: “My most interesting assignment happened when I was on the Chicago Herald. I was told to cover the Eastland disaster… I was instructed to visit the homes of the afflicted and get their personal stories.”
Hearst Corporation William Randolph Hearst bought that Chicago Herald newspaper in 1918 and Parsons was out of a job, as Hearst had not yet discovered that movies and movie personalities were news. 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 protégé Marion Davies. Parsons had encouraged readers to "give this girl a chance" while the majority of critics disparaged Davies. Parsons showered the former chorus girl with praise which led to a friendship between the two women and spurred an offer from Hearst in 1923 for her to become the $200-a-week (equal to $ today) motion-picture editor of his New York American. Her perpetual praise of Davies did not go unnoticed by others. The phrase "Marion never looked lovelier" became a standard in her column and a tongue-in-cheek cultural catchphrase.
There was persistent speculation that Parsons was elevated to her position as the Hearst chain's lead gossip columnist because of a scandal about which she did not write. In 1924, director Thomas Ince died after being carried off Hearst's yacht, allegedly to be hospitalized for indigestion. Many Hearst newspapers falsely claimed that Ince had not been aboard the boat at all and had fallen ill at the newspaper mogul's home. Charlie Chaplin's secretary reported seeing a bullet hole in Ince's head when he was removed from the yacht. Rumors proliferated that Chaplin was having an affair with Hearst's mistress Davies, and that an attempt to shoot Chaplin may have caused Ince's death. Allegedly, Parsons was also aboard the yacht that night but she ignored the story in her columns. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure.Fleming, E.J., The Fixers, McFarland & Co., 2005pg. 46-48
New York Newspaper Women's Club 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.
Syndication In 1925, Parsons contracted tuberculosis and was told she had six months to live. She spent a year in Palm Springs, California, which led to it being a popular resort for Hollywood movie stars. She moved to Arizona for the dry climate, then to Los Angeles, where she decided to stay. With the disease in remission, she went back to work, and Hearst suggested she become a syndicated Hollywood columnist for his newspapers. As she and the publishing mogul developed an ironclad relationship, her Los Angeles Examiner column came to appear in over seven hundred newspapers the world over, with a readership of more than 20 million, and Parsons gradually became one of the most powerful voices in the movie business with her daily allotment of gossip.
Radio program Beginning in 1928, she hosted a weekly radio program featuring movie star interviews that was sponsored by SunKist. A similar program in 1931 was sponsored by Charis Foundation Garment. In 1934, she signed a contract with the Campbell's Soup Company and began hosting a program titled Hollywood Hotel, which showcased stars in scenes from their upcoming movies. The stars appeared for free which did not please rival broadcasters or all of the stars but they did not complain in case of reprisals. Her opening line of the show was "My first exclusive of tonight is...", which became feared. The show was cancelled after the Screen Actors Guild demanded payment for its members. Warner Bros. paid her $50,000 (equal to $ today) to appear in a filmed version in 1937, but the film flopped.
"First Lady of Hollywood"
Parsons saw herself as the social and moral arbiter of Hollywood and many feared her disfavor more than that of movie critics.
Parsons had informants in studio corridors, hairdressers' salons, and lawyers' and doctors' offices. Her 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. She worked from her Beverly Hills home with a staff consisting of a secretary, her assistant reviewer (Dorothy Manners, who worked with Parsons for thirty years), a "leg" man who gathered news, and a female reporter who covered the cafés. She had three telephones in her office. She also had former silent-movie stars on her payroll to help them financially.
She considered the biggest scoop of her career to be the divorce of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford, at that time the most famous couple in Hollywood. Parsons had learned of the split from Pickford herself, who had made the mistake of counting on the columnist's discretion. 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 also gotten the story.
When she received a tip that Clark Gable was divorcing his second wife Ria, 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.
Her unofficial title 'Queen of Hollywood' was challenged in 1938 by newcomer Hedda Hopper, to whom she was initially friendly and helpful. However, they came to be fierce rivals.
Parsons also appeared in many cameo spots in movies, including Without Reservations (1946), and Starlift (1951).
Writing style In contrast to her arch-rival Hedda Hopper, who was notorious for her column's crass tone, Parsons' writing style was often described as "sweetness and light" or "gooey". She received criticism for her casual chatty tone and casual regard for dates and places. She 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. She stated that she would rather get the word out than potentially disappoint her readers.
She 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.
Feud with Hedda Hopper When Hedda Hopper initially came to Hollywood, she and Parsons had a mutually beneficial arrangement. Hopper was then a moderately successful actress, and according to Parson's successor, Dorothy Manners, "if anything happened on a set—if a star and leading man were having an affair—Hedda would give Louella a call." In return, Hopper was guaranteed a few lines of copy under Parsons's increasingly influential byline.
After MGM canceled her contract, Hopper struggled to maintain her career as an actress. She 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.
One of the first papers to pick up "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood" was the Los Angeles Times, a morning paper like Parsons's Examiner. Hopper first publicly scooped Parsons with the divorce of the president's son Jimmy Roosevelt (a Goldwyn employee), who was involved with a Mayo Clinic nurse, from his wife, Betsey. The story became front-page news across the country.
Citizen Kane When rumors began to surface that Orson Welles debut film Citizen Kane was inspired by Hearst's life, Parsons lunched with the director and believed his evasions and denials. Hopper arrived uninvited to an early screening of the film and wrote a scathing critique, calling it a "vicious and irresponsible attack on a great man". As a result, Hearst sent Parsons a letter complaining that he had learned about Citizen Kane from Hopper and not her.
On the warpath, Parsons then demanded a private screening of the film and threatened RKO chief George J. Schaefer on Hearst's behalf, first with a lawsuit and then with a vague but powerful threat of consequences for everyone in Hollywood. On January 10, Parsons and two lawyers working for Hearst were given a private screening of the film. Horrified by what she saw, Parsons rushed out of the studio screening room to cable Hearst, who telegraphed back the terse message "Stop Citizen Kane". Soon after, Parsons called Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released Kane. She also warned other studio heads that she would expose the private lives of people throughout the industry and reveal long-suppressed scandalous information.