Jennifer Frost - Hedda Hoppers Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism

Hedda Hoppers Hollywood

AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

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Hedda Hoppers Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism
Jennifer Frost

Hedda Hopper at her office, 702 Guaranty Building, Hollywood Boulevard, 1954. (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)

Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism

Jennifer Frost

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2011 by New York University
All rights reserved

Portions of this book were previously published as Hedda Hopper,
Hollywood Gossip, and the Politics of Racial Representation in Film,
19461948, Journal of African American History 93 (Winter 2008), 3663.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frost, Jennifer, 1961
Hedda Hoppers Hollywood : celebrity gossip and American conservatism/
Jennifer Frost.
p. cm. (American history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9780814728239 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 9780814728246
(e-book : alk. paper)
1. Hopper, Hedda, 18901966. 2. Hopper, Hedda, 18901966Political and social views.
3. Gossip columnistsUnited StatesBiography. 4. Press and politicsUnited States
History20th century. 5. Motion picturesPolitical aspectsUnited States.
6. Motion picture industryCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory20th century.
7. ConservatismUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.
PN4874.H64F76 2010
070.4499143092dc22
[B] 2010028042

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For my mother,
Ann B. Frost,
whothank goodnesswas nothing like Hedda Hopper,
either personally or politically

6 Representing Race in the Face of Civil Rights

There are many people and institutions to thank, as this book has evolved over a long time, and colleagues, friends, and family members have contributed to my thinking and provided support along the way.

The project began at the University of WisconsinMadison, and so I need to thank the Department of History for a Special Travel Grant, which allowed me to undertake an initial research trip to explore available primary sources in Los Angeles. Jeanne Boydston, Paul Boyer, Nancy Isenberg, Earl Mulderink, and John Pettegrew in History provided guidance early on, and courses I took with Jackie Byars, John Fiske, and Stephen Vaughn in Communication Arts proved influential. Over the years, I also have benefited from presenting conference papers on this topic as part of panels organized with fellow Wisconsin graduate colleagues, including Ellen Baker, Andrea Friedman, Leisa Meyer, Laura McEnaney, and Kevin Smith. Most recently, Janet Davis offered helpful and timely advice.

I returned to this project while teaching in the Department of History at the University of Northern Colorado. With the strong support of my Department chair, Barry Rothaus, encouragement from colleagues Marshall Clough and Ron Edgerton in History and David Caldwell and Elena del Rio in English and Film Studies, and funding from a Faculty Research and Publications Board Grant, I completed much of the research. The staff and setting at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fostered my work in the Hedda Hopper papers, especially archivist Barbara Hall, who provided expert and generous guidance. The hospitality of friends Eftihia Danellis and Kathy Tatar and my sister, Millicent Frost, made this part of the process much easier and more enjoyable.

My move to the University of Auckland in New Zealand yielded a New Staff Research Grant, a University Research Fellowship, and Research and Study Leave to finish my research and write the manuscript. My Department headsBarry Reay, Jamie Belich, and Malcolm Campbellnot only endorsed this project but also the importance of balancing its completion with family life. The history subject librarian Philip Abela facilitated my access to crucial primary and secondary sources at just the right time, and graduate students Charlotte Burgess and Sam Finnemore, as well as my mom, Ann Frost, my sister, Millicent, and father-in-law, Denis Taillon, provided research support. My participation in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute on African American Civil Rights Struggles in the Twentieth Century, with Waldo Martin and Patricia Sullivan at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, furthered my thinking on racial representation and activism around film, and a Blaom Family Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship spurred my writing later on.