The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons [Hardcover]

Samantha Barbas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520242130 | ISBN-13: 978-0520242135 | Publication Date: October 24, 2005 | Edition: 1

Hollywood celebrities feared her. William Randolph Hearst adored her. Between 1915 and 1960, Louella Parsons was America's premier movie gossip columnist and in her heyday commanded a following of more than forty million readers. This first full-length biography of Parsons tells the story of her reign over Hollywood during the studio era, her lifelong alliance with her employer, William Randolph Hearst, and her complex and turbulent relationships with such noted stars, directors, and studio executives as Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan, and Frank Sinatra--as well as her rival columnists Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell. Loved by fans for her "just folks," small-town image, Parsons became notorious within the film industry for her involvement in the suppression of the 1941 film Citizen Kane and her use of blackmail in the service of Hearst's political and personal agendas. As she traces Parsons's life and career, Samantha Barbas situates Parsons's experiences in the broader trajectory of Hollywood history, charting the rise of the star system and the complex interactions of publicity, journalism, and movie-making. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, The First Lady of Hollywood is both an engrossing chronicle of one of the most powerful women in American journalism and film and a penetrating analysis of celebrity culture and Hollywood power politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Historian Barbas's thoroughly researched and footnoted biography of the powerful gossip columnist who virtually invented celebrity journalism asks to be taken seriously as a chronicle of American history at a pivotal time—but it is also a fast and fascinating read. A smalltown girl from Dixon, Ill., Parsons married and separated early; at 29, she set off for Chicago as a single mother where she found a job as "scenario editor" to a small movie company in 1911, sorting through the hundreds of fan-written "screenplays" that arrived daily; the lucky few were turned into 15- or 20— minute silents at $25 a pop to the writer. She began to write about the movies for the Chicago Tribune, and eventually parlayed her friendship with Marian Davies, the actress who was mistress to William Randolph Hearst, into a column for the Hearst papers. The rest is history—riveting history, covering the rise of the talkies; the invention of the studio system, the star system and "Hollywood"; and the blatant lies, coverups, favoritism and blackmail. Parsons's famous feud with rival Hedda Hopper is here, along with her role in damaging the Hollywood careers of Orson Welles, Mae West, Charlie Chaplin and Ingrid Bergman. Of its kind, this is a terrific book about an unusual life, and the author has done future Hollywood historians a great service by documenting it so carefully, incidentally exposing all the falsehoods Parsons related in her own 1945 autobiography, The Gay Illiterate. Photos. (Oct.)
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Review

"An absorbing book about celebrity culture and Hollywood power politics... a pleasing amalgam of rigorous scholarship and popular history. It will appeal to a wide range of readers." - Sheldon Kirshner, Canadian Jewish News "Thoughtful, well-written." - Gregory, McNamee, Hollywood Reporter "The in-depth description of the power that Parsons wielded within the industry is especially illuminating, as is the chronicle of intense rivalries with other columnists-most notably, Hedda Hopper. Solid details of Parsons's life aid in presenting a three-dimensional portrait of both the woman and the public figure. This well-researched and finely written work will appeal to a wide readership." - Carol J. Binkowski, Library Journal (Starred Review) "This is a terrific book about an unusual life, and the author has done a great service by documenting it so carefully, incidentally exposing all the falsehoods Parsons related in her own 1945 autobiography, The Gay Illiterate." - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "A thoughtful biography." - Mark Lewis, New York Times Book Review" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 426 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520242130
• ISBN-13: 978-0520242135
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Nostagic Trip, November 8, 2005

By 

Louella (Carpinteria, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Hardcover)

I would like to commend Ms. Barbas for the wonderful book she has written about a relative of mine.
Given the length and breadth of the material covered, I found only 3 very minor errors in the entire 345 pages of text, and I
think that is remarkable.
My congratulations to Ms. Barbas, and my aunt would have been very proud of the thoroughness and accuracy of her book (I think).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a page-turner, but authentic, December 11, 2006

By 

Lzyblyzzet "Muddie" (Niantic, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Paperback)

I grew up the the 1950s and bought every movie magazine with articles by Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper that my meager allowance would afford me. Dr. Barbas has produced an academic, thoroughly researched work (there are a ton of footnotes)with the ring of authenticity to it. Fingers crossed that she devotes equal time to Hedda Hopper.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ministry of Fear, March 9, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Hardcover)

For Christmas a good friend gave me this exceiting biography (Hi there Mac!) and ever since New Years I've been on a race to finish it. But some books are so good you don't like them to end, and for the past few weeks I've been envying my former self who still had the whole book in front of him instead of a rapidly dwindling few.

Louella Parsons was a woman or iron determination who summoned up the inner strength to leave her shame behind in the small town where she'd grown up, and go to New York where nobody would know her. With her she had a second husband and a small daughter, Harriet, who quietly like a pet, watched her mother with a mixture of fondness and venom. I wonder if Harriet the Spy was named after her! It sounds improbable on the face of it but both HTS author Louise Fitzhugh and Harriet Parsons formed part of the same glamorous Lesbian New York underground in the late 1950s, early 1960s, the years of Harriet's inception. Anyhow Louella soon rose to the top of the Hearst newspaper empire by a unbeatable combination of loyalty, native smarts, and an earnest brown-nosing that is almost endearing to view today, although how it must have irked her professional rivals way back then.

Samantha Barbas is no John Didion but she lays out the facts with a great deal of skill. She has done her homework (and even conducted a handful of new interviews, such as one with Mamie Van Doren, a Hollywood starlet who claims to have been one of Louella's victims. For Louella (I suppose I should call her "Parsons") was very much a bogeyman, a prop employed by the studio system to keep errant stars in line. She crucified Orson Welles, who had the temerity not only to make a jackass out of Hearst in CITIZEN KANE but also to lie about it to Parsons' face. "It deals with a dead man," he told her when she pressed him about the rumors that KANE was going to be a demolition of Hearst. She never forgave left-wing leaning stars like Chaplin. And yet she had a soft side and people could cozy up to her, particularly the unpleasant songwriter Jimmy McHugh. Samantha Barbas shows us how McHugh "dated" Parsons for years, always stringing her along, never actually taking her emotional needs seriously but palming her off with a ditty called "Louella" which made her feel like a schoolgirl. It's a shame a once distinguished press like UC Berkeley can't afford a proofreader nowadays. Or else Dr. Barbas isn't very familiar with the stars of Hollywood--Parsons' beat--otherwise she wouldn't have written "Frederic March," would she?

But what she's terrific at is discovering the roots and the extent of Parsons' feminism, which went far and wide and early. Even before women's suffrage (1920) Parsons was in there fighting for women's rights, and she did help a lot of women journalists find their way. Good for her, too bad she turned into a tragic old harridan figure, half Miss Havisham, half Cassandra, nearly forgotten by the time of her death. I feel sure that THE FIRST LADY OF HOLLYWOOD will remain the standard biography for at least the next few years, for what could supplant it? Anyone writing in the future on Parsons will be like a pygmy standing on the shoulders of a giant.

I hope Dr. Barbas continues to give us more, perhaps next she should turn to the life of Harriet Parsons and clear up the speculations about "Harriet the Spy"?