The Vipers of Tinseltown

Parsons, who preceded Hopper, was Florence Nightingale compared to her eventual rival. (She was also the first online Hollywood columnist. She employed two secretaries, and each one busily worked two phones.) When Parsons discovered that the married Ingrid Bergman had become pregnant by another man—Italian director Roberto Rosselini—she kept the information to herself as long as she could. It was only when professional and commercial pressures asserted themselves that she gleefully rushed Bergman’s secret into print, thus halting Bergman’s Hollywood career for several years.

Much of Parsons’ power depended on her good relations with studio executives, who kept the media under their heel. For a time, in the ‘30s, the Hollywood studios assured good press by withdrawing advertising in the wake of negative coverage. This is why both Parsons and Hopper concerned themselves with the personal lives of the Rita Hayworths and the Ingrid Bergmans rather than with the business dealings of the Zanucks and the Mayers. But in order to outdo Parsons, Hopper went further than the former ever did.

Hopper’s revelations about Charlie Chaplin’s romantic life and his Communist Party sympathies stoked the rising public outrage against him that eventually made Chaplin leave America for Europe. She attempted, in vain, to expose the gay relationship between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. The English actor Michael Wilding sued her for libel and won after she fomented rumors that he and Stewart Granger had been lovers.

Hedda Hopper made a cameo appearance as herself in a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy.

Hopper’s viciousness—some say sadism—had the effect of driving Parsons to crueler extremes, too. But by the time both gossip-mongers left the field to Rona Barrett in the ‘60s, the deflation business had changed.

For one thing, Barrett did her work on TV, a medium less freewheeling than the tabloids of an earlier era. (Newspapers and magazines don’t have an FCC to worry about.) For another, the outsized personalities of Parsons and Hopper had resulted in comical caricature, and caricature spells doom for a type, in this case the mean-spirited gossip-monger. Finally, the dissolution of the Hollywood star system also took with it the stars’ ideal, flawless images that the studios had cultivated. With inflated proportions reduced, the ensuing deflation did not need to be as corrosive.

Enter Nikki Finke, who writes about the studio executives and other Hollywood wheelers and dealers and never about celebrities. Unlike her precursors, Finke is a specialist whose densely written, narrowly focused blog lacks any kind of popular appeal—it is read, relished, and brooded over by the machers and their minions. She has nothing like the mass influence of Parsons, Hopper, and Barrett. What she has is power over a small group of people who influence the masses.

Finke doesn’t bother herself with people’s private lives. The spectacle of money coupling with power is sufficient. Watching money at work is the new pornography; greed or the merest hint of dishonesty in business is the new infidelity. (Adultery nowadays causes outrage in Washington, not Hollywood. The large sensationalism of pregnant Ingrid Bergman has given way to the micro-sensationalism of pregnant Rielle Hunter.)

The politics of personal destruction that Parsons and Hopper trafficked in doesn’t seem to interest Finke. Instead, she insults, and that, in this anxious, image-fretting, nuclearly competitive age seems to suffice. In fact, Finke seems just as anxious and fragilely egoed as her targets. Whereas Parsons and Hopper got sued, Finke is the one who sues anyone who she believes has insulted or cheated her. But her victims, in court and out, should take the long, historic view. This too shall pass.

Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.