Hedda Hopper: the bitter movie columnist who could ruin careers
These days, anyone with a keyboard and an opinion is capable of passing judgment on the latest happenings in the celebrity sphere, so it goes without saying gossip columnists and journalists held a lot more sway over movie stars in the days when it was a lot more difficult to block out the noise.
One of the most feared by far was Hedda Hopper, which sounds slightly ridiculous considering she was a failed actor with a penchant for extravagant hats who ended up writing various columns for a number of publications. However, she gained her infamy for making a point of trying to ruin the careers of those she didn’t care much for, which reached new heights during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings.
She already had a reputation for trouble after running a story about Joseph Cotten having an extramarital affair, and she was successfully sued for libel by Michael Wilding after alleging he was having a homosexual relationship with Stewart Granger. That would put many people off chasing the more salacious stories, but for Hopper, it only increased her zeal.
She was credited with winning Joan Crawford an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ after heavily publicising and praising her performance as Mildred Pierce, which showed just how far her influence was beginning to spread. Even when war broke out, Hopper simply couldn’t be contained.
Openly blasting the son of Douglas Fairbanks for dodging his duty to serve his country, Hopper’s research failed to turn up the well-known fact Douglas Fairbanks Jr was already part of the Navy. She was famously told to “shut the fuck up” by Elizabeth Taylor, was integral to William Randolph Hearst trying to prevent the release of Citizen Kane, and launched a campaign denigrating Ingrid Bergman for falling pregnant out of wedlock when she was beaten to the story by another journalist.
All of that pales in comparison to her involvement in the blacklisting era, with Dalton Trumbo, her highest-profile victim after she repeatedly ran stories covering his ties to the Communist Party. She encouraged her readers not to see Stanley Kubrick’s Trumbo-penned epic Spartacus – which fortunately didn’t catch on – but the writer’s standing in Hollywood was nonetheless dealt irreparable damage.
Even though she was married to a man 27 years older than her, Charlie Chaplin’s dalliances with much younger women made him another target, too, as did his alleged Communist sympathies. Her resentment for the star ran so deep that she assisted the FBI in attempting to uncover Communist ties and running hit pieces on his character, which heavily contributed to Chaplin being denied admission to the United States in the 1950s.
There were few more precarious places to be than on Hopper’s bad side, and if there was somebody she didn’t take a liking to, then she had both the means and the platform to not only weaponise her vendetta but spread her message among a nationwide readership to try and encourage them to form a similar opinion.