Front cover image for The first lady of Hollywood : a biography of Louella Parsons

The first lady of Hollywood : a biography of Louella Parsons

"Hollywood celebrities feared her. William Randolph Hearst adored her. Between 1915 and 1960, Louella Parsons was America's premier movie gossip columnist and 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
Print Book, English, ©2005
University of California Press, Berkeley, ©2005
Biography
vii, 417 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
9780520242135, 9780520249851, 0520242130, 0520249852
58789251
Early years
Essanay
The column
New York
"The lovely Miss Marion Davies"
On the way to Hollywood
Hollywood
Feuds
Radio
The best and the Hearst
The first lady of Hollywood
Raising Kane
The gay illiterate
War and peace
Scandal
The end of an era
Eclipse