Siegel S., Siegel B. The Encyclopedia Of Hollywood

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ﬁnally fulﬁlled her contract with MGM in 1959, and the last

of the studio sex sirens was on her own.

Since the 1960s, Gardner’s ﬁlms were rather poor, with

the exception of On the Beach (1960) and The Night of the

Iguana (1964). In later years, she made modest supporting or

cameo appearances in movies.

See also

SEX SYMBOLS

FEMALE

Garﬁeld, John (1913–1952) An explosive actor who

projected a unique balance of sensitivity and violence. In

some respects, Garﬁeld was the next generation

HUMPHREY

BOGART

, but he didn’t appear in nearly as many good ﬁlms as

his talents warranted. The quality ﬁlms in which he did

appear, however, were stamped by his greatness.

Born Julius Garﬁnkle in the slums of New York City,

Garﬁeld pursued a serious acting career, eschewing the

glamour of Broadway to work with the more avant-garde

and left-leaning Group Theater. But when

WARNER BROS

spotted him in Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy, a hit play for the

Group Theater, he signed with the ﬁlm company and left for

the West Coast.

Some of his former colleagues thought the actor had

“sold out,” but Garfield never stopped believing in the

ideals of the Group Theater, and he would forcefully

demonstrate his beliefs both in his art and in his life before

his tragic early death.

His ﬁlm career began in 1938 with Four Daughters, which

was an immediate hit and, because it spawned several

mediocre rehashes, was probably the worst thing that could

have happened to him. Soon thereafter, his tough-guy image

was shaped by ﬁlms such as They Made Me a Criminal (1939)

and Dust Be My Destiny (1939).

The Sea Wolf (1941), directed by

MICHAEL CURTIZ

and

costarring

EDWARD G

ROBINSON

, was his breakthrough

movie. Tortilla Flat (1942) and Howard Hawks’s Air Force

(1943) followed and helped to build his reputation. A few

years later he burned up the screen with

LANA TURNER

in the

classic version of James M. Cain’s thriller The Postman Always

Rings Twice (1946).

Garﬁeld was forced to appear in many more poor movies,

but the actor had higher aspirations than to play the parts

that Warner Bros. kept offering him. He refused to renew his

contract in 1947 and putting his money and his reputation on

the line made Body and Soul (1947), an independent ﬁlm

about the boxing world that is now considered a classic.

Next, the committed Jewish actor agreed to play a sup-

porting role in Hollywood’s ﬁrst major ﬁlm concerning anti-

Semitism, Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947). The ﬁlm won an

Academy Award for Best Picture.

The following year, Garﬁeld starred in Abraham Polon-

sky’s ambitious Force of Evil (1948), a no-holds-barred movie

about corruption. Unfortunately, the ﬁlm did not do well at

the box ofﬁce. In fact, none of his next few ﬁlms were hits,

either, although he gave an excellent performance in The

Breaking Point (1950).

Due to Garﬁeld’s left-wing associations, he was called

before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the

early 1950s and asked to name the names of people in Holly-

wood he knew to be communists. The actor refused and was

blacklisted from the ﬁlm industry. He died soon thereafter of

a heart attack.

See also

GENTLEMEN

’

S AGREEMENT

Garland, Judy (1922–1969) This supremely talented

actress and singer was the studio system’s greatest achieve-

ment as well as its greatest victim. Though never a great

beauty, Judy Garland radiated a warmth and sensitivity that

tugged at the heartstrings, and her strong yet tremulous voice

gave her an air of vulnerability that touched her many fans.

She was the top female musical star at MGM at a time when

the studio was reinventing the movie musical.

Though it seems as if Judy Garland grew up in front of

the camera, she began her life as Frances Gumm in Grand

Rapids, Michigan. At three she made her vaudeville debut

singing “Jingle Bells” in a theater managed by her father and

was soon teamed with her two older sisters in an act. “The

Gumm Sisters” worked in vaudeville until one of them mar-

ried and broke up the trio.

When Garland was 13 years old, her mother pushed to

get her a screen test at MGM; the studio recognized the girl’s

talent and signed her up. She ﬁrst appeared in a

DEANNA

DURBIN

short, Every Sunday (1936). A small role in a very

minor musical, Pigskin Parade (1936), followed, but it was

clear that MGM didn’t quite know how to use her. Garland,

however, had a mentor in Roger Edens, the highly respected

musical talent supervisor at MGM. He had played the piano

at her screen test and recognized her star potential. In an

effort to help her be noticed, Edens wrote new lyrics to the

song, “You Made Me Love You,” and gave it to Garland to

sing at Clark Gable’s birthday party on the MGM lot.

She was such a big hit that the studio immediately put her

(and the song) in Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937). Leading

roles in several ﬁlms followed, including her ﬁrst opposite

MICKEY ROONEY

in Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937). In 1938,

she joined Rooney in her ﬁrst of many Andy Hardy ﬁlms,

Love Finds Andy Hardy. The Wizard of Oz (1939), however,

was the ﬁlm that put Garland on the Hollywood map.

It is not uncommon in movie history to ﬁnd actors and

actresses who have emerged as stars in vehicles originally

intended for other, already established, stars. The man who

was ultimately responsible for the gigantic success of MGM’s

movie musicals in the 1940s and 1950s,

ARTHUR FREED

wanted Garland for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

But this was a major production, unlike her handful of previ-

ous ﬁlms, and the rest of the MGM brass was opposed to

using the relatively unknown and inexperienced young

actress in such an important ﬁlm. They wanted

SHIRLEY

TEMPLE

. Plans fell through, however, when Twentieth Cen-

tury-Fox refused to loan their biggest star to their competi-

tor, and Judy Garland got the part by default.

The Wizard of Oz was a hit and has become one of the

most beloved movie classics of all time. The ﬁlm made Judy

Garland an international star, brought her a special Oscar in

1939 “for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile,”

GARFIELD, JOHN

168

and provided her with her lifelong theme song, “Over the

Rainbow.” It’s curious to note, however, that before the

movie was released, “Over the Rainbow” had almost been cut

from the ﬁlm.

Garland continued in the Andy Hardy ﬁlms but, more

signiﬁcantly, she starred in For Me and My Gal (1942), which

introduced

GENE KELLY

, and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), a

landmark ﬁlm that did not use a show-business background

as a pretext for its musical numbers. Thanks to Garland’s

luminous performance, the movie became MGM’s second

most lucrative ﬁlm at that time, topped only by Gone With the

Wind (1939), Garland married

VINCENTE MINNELLI

, the

director of Meet Me in St. Louis, and later had a child, Liza

Minnelli, who has ably followed in her mother’s footsteps.

Garland proved her dramatic ability in the touching World

War II home-front ﬁlm, The Clock (1945), and launched into

more musicals, such as The Harvey Girls (1946) and The Pirate

(1948). 1948 also saw her team up with

FRED ASTAIRE

in Easter

Parade. The movie was a mammoth hit (Astaire had come out

of retirement to make it), and MGM planned on teaming the

two in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), but for the ﬁrst time,

Garland pleaded ill health and was dropped from the ﬁlm.

Failing health and her subsequent pattern of making and then

breaking commitments began that fateful year.

Garland had been a money-making machine for MGM,

and in an effort to help her sleep at night and perk her up

during the day, studio doctors prescribed an assortment of

pills to which she eventually became addicted. Later when

she began to drink, the combination proved devastating.

Nonetheless, she eventually went back to work, appear-

ing in several ﬁlms, such as Words and Music (1948), In the

Good Old Summertime (1949), and Summer Stock (1950), but

soon she became more famous for the ﬁlms she didn’t make

rather the ones she did. Garland failed to complete Annie Get

Your Gun (1950) and had to be replaced by Betty Hutton. She

was suspended for not showing up to ﬁlm Royal Wedding

(1950), and she bowed out of playing Julie in Showboat (1951).

MGM tore up her contract. After 15 years as a movie star, it

looked as if Garland was through—at only 28.

Sid Luft, the third of her ﬁve husbands, arranged a con-

cert career that kept her in the public eye, and she then made

one of the greatest—if shortest—comebacks in movie history

when she starred in the Warner Bros. musical remake of A

Star Is Born (1954). The movie was both a critical and box-

ofﬁce winner, putting Judy Garland back on top. But her rep-

utation for unreliability still haunted her, and no more

serious projects were offered to her.

Garland didn’t appear on ﬁlm again until 1961, in a small

dramatic part in Judgment at Nuremberg. The role led to an

Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she didn’t

win the award. That same year she starred in A Child Is Wait-

ing with

BURT LANCASTER

. It was a touching, if ﬂawed, ﬁlm

directed by

JOHN CASSAVETES

. Garland’s last ﬁlm was the

aptly titled I Could Go On Singing (1963). She sang in concerts

and cabarets until her death from an accidental drug over-

dose in 1969. Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in The

Wizard of Oz, once said, “Judy didn’t die of anything, except

wearing out. She just plain wore out.”

Garmes, Lee (1897–1978) A gifted cinematographer

who was a master of “north light,” a lighting effect that

resulted in a distinct yet soft contrast between bright and

dark areas within the same frame. Like many early camera-

men, he was responsible for important technical innovations,

including the crab dolly. From his long and varied career,

Garmes is probably best known for his dreamlike, romantic

lighting of several of the better

JOSEF VON STERNBERG

ﬁlms

starring

MARLENE DIETRICH

and his cinematography and

codirection of a number of fascinating if ﬂawed ﬁlms in

which he worked in collaboration with screenwriters

BEN

HECHT

and Charles MacArthur.

Garmes began to work in Hollywood in 1916, serving his

apprenticeship in a variety of jobs for director George Fitz-

maurice. By 1924 he graduated to the position of cameraman

and quickly made his mark by lighting such silent master-

works as The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926) and The

Garden of Allah (1927).

In the 1930s, Garmes worked closely with Josef von

Sternberg on such ﬁlms as Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931),

and Shanghai Express (1932), the last of which earned him an

Oscar. The cinematographer showed his versatility in these

early years, creating the gossamer images of von Sternberg’s

movies as well as the slick sheen of

ROUBEN MAMOULIAN

’s

City Streets (1931) and the harsh, violent shadows of

HOWARD

HAWKS

’s Scarface (1932).

In the 1930s Garmes worked in the dual capacity of cin-

ematographer and associate director for three ﬁlms shot in

Astoria, New York, that were ostensibly to be directed by

Hecht and MacArthur for Paramount. The two screenwrit-

ers blithely ignored the technical demands of ﬁlmmaking and

left the movies largely in the hands of Garmes, who shot the

peculiar scripts with style and panache. The best of the three

movies was Crime Without Passion (1934), which was made all

the more fascinating by the inclusion of a bizarre montage

sequence shot by the Salvador Dali of the movies, Slavko

Vorkapich. The other two Hecht/MacArthur ﬁlms for which

Garmes took charge were The Scoundrel (1935) and Once in a

Blue Moon (1935).

Despite the fact that he worked until the end of the

1960s, Garmes’s best, most interesting work was done in the

1930s. Among his more noteworthy efforts as a cinematogra-

pher in his later years were Duel in the Sun (1946), on which

he collaborated,

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

’s experimental Rope

(1948), and Max Ophuls’s Caught (1949). Lesser efforts near

the end of his career, usually in color rather than in black and

white, included Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man

(1962) and How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968).

Garson, Greer (1908–1996) Noble and dignified

even as her characters suffered rejection, loneliness, and

other tragedies, Garson projected exactly the kind of image

America needed during the war years. Though the bulk of

her Hollywood career spanned 15 years, she had her greatest

impact from 1939 to 1945.

Born in Ireland, Garson intended to become a teacher,

but the theater captured her interest and she successfully

GARSON, GREER

169

reached the London stage in the mid-1930s. When

LOUIS B

MAYER

of MGM was in England looking for talent in 1937,

he saw her in a play called Old Music and immediately signed

her up. Once in Hollywood, she languished for more than a

year until she was given the part of Mrs. Chips opposite

Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). The movie was

box-ofﬁce gold and Garson was instantly established as a

credible movie actress.

Much of Garson’s early success in the 1940s was due

inadvertently to

NORMA SHEARER

, who turned down the

roles that made the new Hollywood actress famous. Shearer

said no to and Garson accepted the lead roles in Pride and

Prejudice (1940) and Mrs. Miniver (1942). Garson had not

wanted to play Mrs. Miniver for the same reason Shearer

turned down the role; she didn’t want to be cast as a mother.

But Garson did not have Shearer’s clout, and much to her

eventual delight, she not only became a major star because of

Mrs. Miniver (winning an Oscar as Best Actress), but she also

met her ﬁrst husband. As it turned out, the man she fell in

love with was the actor who played her son (Richard Ney),

and they agreed, after studio pressure prevailed, not to marry

until after the ﬁlm had ﬁnished its run.

Random Harvest (1942) was another spectacular success for

Garson. In this grand tearjerker she played the understanding

and long-suffering wife of an amnesiac (

RONALD COLMAN

Madame Curie (1943) showcased her acting talents, but

just as Garson had feared when she made Mrs. Miniver, she

was becoming typecast as a mother, and MGM put her in a

series of family movies, including Mrs. Parkington (1944) and

The Valley of Decision (1945).

Audiences were greeted in 1946 with the slogan, “Gable’s

back and Garson’s got him.” The movie was Adventure, and it

was no family saga. Gable’s ﬁrst ﬁlm since returning from

wartime service, it drew huge numbers of fans but it was a

rather poor movie. It seemed that each time Garson tried to

establish an image beyond that of a beautiful matron, the

movie in which she starred was either a critical disaster or a

ﬁnancial ﬂop (or both).

Plagued by mediocre movie scripts, she eventually

begged out of her MGM contract in 1954. Yet she still had

her moments: as Calpurnia in Julius Caesar (1953) and

Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). But her

career never recovered from its downward slide. Despite a

paucity of good movies after 1945, she still managed to

receive a whopping total of seven Oscar nominations over the

course of her career, leaving her mark as one of the great

ladies of Hollywood.

Gentlemen’s Agreement The 1947 landmark movie that

made a frontal assault on American anti-Semitism. Based on

the best-selling novel of the same name by Laura Z. Hob-

son, Gentlemen’s Agreement was courageously produced by

DARRYL F

ZANUCK

TWENTIETH CENTURY

–

FOX

despite

opposition from many prominent Hollywood Jews who were

afraid of a backlash.

From Moss Hart’s script,

ELIA KAZAN

directed an impres-

sive cast.

GREGORY PECK

, an actor possessing quiet dignity,

played the role of the Gentile reporter who poses as a Jew to

write about anti-Semitism and learns ﬁrsthand how Jews are

treated in America.

JOHN GARFIELD

, who was Jewish, played

a Jewish soldier. Dorothy McGuire, Celeste Holm, Anne

Revere, June Havoc, Albert Dekker, Jane Wyatt, and Dean

Stockwell rounded out the cast.

Gentlemen’s Agreement came out the same year as a melo-

drama, Crossﬁre, that also dealt with anti-Semitism, but the

Fox ﬁlm was released ﬁrst and focused more attention on the

issue. Both movies were winners at the box ofﬁce, but Gen-

tlemen’s Agreement received more press because it won Oscars

for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress

(Celeste Holm). Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire won

nominations for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively.

The success of Gentlemen’s Agreement led directly to Pinky

(1949), a movie about racial discrimination.

Seen today, Gentlemen’s Agreement seems terribly dated,

but the ﬁlm’s impact at the time of its release was signiﬁcant.

See also

MESSAGE MOVIES

Gere, Richard (1949– ) Suave, handsome, and rogu-

ish Richard Gere has played romantic leads for almost 30

years. In fact, he has aged so well that his leading women are

often 20 years younger than he. Although he has appeared

mostly in romantic and dramatic ﬁlms, he can also do musi-

cals, as proved by his performance in the hit musical Chicago

(2002). He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor

Golden Globe Award for his role as the cynical, ambitious,

and ruthless lawyer who gets two murderers acquitted.

Born in Philadelphia but raised in upstate New York, Gere

spent two years studying philosophy and ﬁlm at the Univer-

sity of Massachusetts before leaving to become an actor. He

was unsuccessful in his attempts to form a rock band but did

succeed in getting some work in the theater. He got his ﬁrst

big break in London in 1973, when he played Danny Zucco

in Grease; he would later play the same role on Broadway.

The following year, he made his ﬁlm debut when he had

a small role in Report to the Commissioner. During the next few

years, he alternated between the stage and the screen: He

worked with Sam Shepard on two plays and in 1979 won crit-

ical praise for his performance in Martin Sherman’s Bent; on

screen he was one of the men Diane Keaton found in Looking

for Mr. Goodbar (1977), and his good looks were well utilized

as the lead in American Gigolo (1980). Stardom, however, did

not come until 1982 when he played the egocentric loner

who learns what it is to be An Ofﬁcer and a Gentleman. Unfor-

tunately, his roles during the rest of the decade did little to

enhance his reputation.

In 1990, he appeared in two ﬁlms that reestablished him

as a popular lead, Internal Affairs and Pretty Woman. As the

ruthless businessman who falls in love with prostitute

JULIA

ROBERTS

, Gere was nominated for a Golden Globe Best

Actor award. Other romantic roles during the 1990s were in

Sommersby (1993) and Runaway Bride (1999), when he was

again teamed with Julia Roberts. During the 1990s, Gere also

took on some roles in thrillers and action dramas, and he

played a defense attorney, a corrupt, sleazy cop, a psychia-

GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT

170

trist, a psychiatrist’s patient, and even a Eurasian, the last in

Akira Kurosawa’s ﬁlm about post–World War II Nagasaki.

The new millennium saw Gere return to romance with

Dr. T. and the Women (2000), another remake, like Sommersby,

of a French ﬁlm; and Autumn in New York (2000), which con-

cerns a December/May relationship. Both ﬁlms suggest that

Gere’s forte is romantic comedy, but, as his role in Chicago

demonstrates, Gere is adept in all ﬁlm genres.

Gershwin, George (1898–1937) and Ira (1896–1983)

They were sibling songwriting collaborators who brought a

greater respectability to popular music. Their work was

mostly heard on Broadway, where, together, they composed

the songs and lyrics for 14 musicals. George Gershwin wrote

an additional nine musicals for the New York stage, bringing

their combined total to 23. The two wrote the ﬁrst Broadway

musical to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, Of Thee I Sing (1932).

The brothers’ impact on movie musicals resulted from many

of their Broadway shows being adapted to ﬁlm and from the

large number of their songs that were used in various movie

musicals. The Gershwins also provided original scores for

several Hollywood films, including the wonderful

Astaire/Rogers musical, Shall We Dance (1937).

George, who was born Jacob Gershvin, and Ira, born

Israel Gershvin, saw their Broadway show Girl Crazy adapted

for the big screen in 1932. Two other adaptations followed in

1943 (the most famous version) and then in 1965 as When the

Boys Meet the Girls. Some of their other famous stage plays

later adapted to the screen include Lady Be Good (1941),

Funny Face (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959).

George’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris”

(which was used in the Oscar-winning 1951 ﬁlm of the same

name) have made him more famous than Ira; yet Ira had con-

siderable impact on movie musicals. After George’s untimely

death from a brain hemorrhage, Ira continued his work as a

lyricist, his clever words appearing in the songs of ﬁlms such

as Cover Girl (1944), The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), and A

Star is Born (1954).

George was the subject of a biopic, Rhapsody in Blue

(1945), with Robert Alda playing the composer. It was a poor

drama but was peppered with terriﬁc Gershwin music.

Gibbons, Cedric (1893–1960) The dean of Holly-

wood art directors, he designed movie sets for more than 40

years. Of more signiﬁcance than his longevity, however, was

the impact he had on setting the standard for art directors

throughout the industry. From his early beginnings as an art

director for Edison (1915–17), for

SAMUEL GOLDWYN

(1918–24), and ﬁnally for MGM (for the rest of his career),

Gibbons was a leader in production design.

As the principal designer of hundreds of ﬁlms and the

chief art director of many hundreds more at MGM, Gibbons

was involved in the “look” of every MGM movie during that

studio’s golden years. Largely due to his talents, MGM’s ﬁlms

consistently had the highest production values of all the

major studios.

Gibbons was nominated for Best Art Direction Academy

Awards with almost monotonous regularity. He won 11

times, taking home the Oscar (which statuette he had also

designed for the academy) for The Bridge of San Luis Rey

(1929), The Merry Widow (1934), Pride and Prejudice (1940),

Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Gaslight (1944), The Yearling

(1946), Little Women (1949), An American in Paris (1951), The

Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and Some-

body Up There Likes Me (1956).

The famous art director only once tried his hand at direc-

tion, codirecting Tarzan and His Mate (1934). Although the

movie was successful, Gibbons did not enjoy the experience

and he chose not to pursue that career.

See also

ART DIRECTOR

Gibson, Mel (1956– ) Although perhaps best known

for his action roles in the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon series,

which deﬁned his popularity, Mel Gibson is also a gifted actor,

as proved by his rendering of Hamlet for Franco Zefﬁrelli in

1990, and has also proved himself as a director, with such ﬁlms

GIBSON, MEL

171

Mel Gibson in The Patriot (2000) (PHOTO COURTESY

COLUMBIA PICTURES)

as Man without a Face (1993) and the blockbuster Braveheart

(1995), which earned him an Oscar for Best Director.

Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, and moved with

his family to Sydney, Australia, in 1963. He graduated from

the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in 1977, the same

year he made his screen debut in Summer City. Following his

graduation, he appeared in many stage productions, includ-

ing Romeo and Juliet, Oedipus, and Waiting for Godot. In 1980

he was cast as the lead in Mad Max, which became a cult clas-

sic and was followed in 1982 by a sequel, The Road Warrior,

which made him a star. Other notable ﬁlms of the 1980s were

Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1983),

both made for the gifted Australian director Peter Weir.

After appearing with Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty (1984,

a reworking of the Captain Bligh story), Gibson had his ﬁrst

screen role as an American in The River (1984).

In 1987 Gibson was cast with Danny Glover in the first

of four Lethal Weapon movies, all of them directed by

Richard Donner and all of them very successful. This was

one of the best police buddy movies of the decade, involv-

ing an older, more wary detective (Glover) and reckless

younger partner (Gibson). Gibson would later play similar

roles in such movies as Conspiracy Theory (1997). Three

years later he would cast himself against type by playing a

melancholy, disfigured protagonist in The Man without a

Face, which he also directed. All the while, he retained his

popular base by appearing in less-serious films such as Mav-

erick and the historical epic Braveheart (1995), which was

proclaimed Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy.

His appeal is considerable and cuts through many levels. To

cast Mel Gibson in a film is to assure a mass audience, even

for Hamlet.

In 2004 Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, a

controversial movie account of the last days of Jesus Christ,

which he directed and produced. It became a blockbuster

hit.

Gilbert, John (1897–1936) He was the classic exam-

ple of a popular and expressive silent ﬁlm star who could not

make the adjustment to talkies. Gilbert’s voice was rather

tinny and high pitched, and when he opened his mouth to

speak, he lost the dashing, impressive presence that had been

his mainstay in silent ﬁlms.

Born John Pringle, he came from a theatrical family and

broke into the movie business as an extra in the

WILLIAM S

HART

western Hell’s Hinges (1916). He continued in small

parts for many years, slowly moving up the cast list. His ﬁrst

big break came in 1920 when he wrote the script with direc-

tor

CLARENCE BROWN

for The Great Redeemer (1920) and

managed to wrangle the lead. He continued writing and star-

ring in his own ﬁlms throughout the early 1920s, and soon he

was offered the opportunity to direct ﬁlms, as well. Instead,

he pursued his acting career, which continued to build.

He had several big hits, such as He Who Gets Slapped

(1924) and The Snob (1924), but he became a superstar in

1925 when he played the lead in two of that year’s biggest

grossers, The Merry Widow and The Big Parade.

The Merry Widow, directed by

ERICH VON STROHEIM

was a movie musical without music. Such was the magic of

von Stroheim’s direction and Gilbert’s magnetic perform-

ance that the ﬁlm made $1.5 million. The Big Parade, an anti-

war ﬁlm masterfully directed by

KING VIDOR

, was the

biggest hit of its time, bringing in a staggering $15 million.

Gilbert was at the height of his career and the popular equal

of Valentino.

In 1927, when Gilbert began his famous acting liaison

with

GRETA GARBO

in Flesh and the Devil, both he and his

costar sizzled on screen. Rumors of a love affair between the

GILBERT, JOHN

172

The talkie revolution destroyed the careers of many, but John

Gilbert’s fall was among the most tragic. He is seen here while

still in his heyday as one of the silver screen’s great lovers.

(PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SIEGEL COLLECTION)

two actors heightened interest in their pairing, which contin-

ued in Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1929).

His talkie debut in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is legend.

In a short scene with

NORMA SHEARER

, he performed the

balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and audiences laughed

out loud at him. His career seemed doomed, but he gallantly

tried to forestall the end in ﬁlms such as His Glorious Night

(1930) and Way for a Sailor (1930). Every ﬁlm was a box-ofﬁce

loser except Queen Christina (1933) in which he was paired

again with Greta Garbo, who asked for him when Laurence

Olivier was dropped from the lead male role. The ﬁlm was a

hit, due largely to Garbo’s popularity.

His last ﬁlm was The Captain Hates the Sea (1935), in

which he played a drunk; in his despair, he had become a

heavy drinker in real life as well. He died the following year.

See also

GARBO

GRETA

gimmicks There is often a thin line between innovation

and gimmickry. New technological developments in the cin-

ema initially perceived as gimmicks but later accepted as

important new storytelling tools include sound, color, and

various widescreen processes. Other ideas, however—some

of which were serious concepts that simply didn’t catch on

with the public and others that were obviously gimmicks—

have peppered the history of Hollywood.

Today, 3-

ﬁlms are generally considered a gimmick, but

a considerable number of serious movies were ﬁlmed in the

process during the 1950s in the hope of luring audiences

away from their television screens. Ultimately, the 3-D sys-

tems proved to be visually unacceptable, and the novelty

wore off. Nonetheless, the occasional 3-D ﬁlm is still made

in the hope of luring the curious into movie theaters.

Color and sound had long been a part of the ﬁlmgoing

experience, but some decided the sense of smell had been

neglected. In a battle of gimmicks, two different scent ori-

ented systems were tried out on a bemused public in late

1959 and early 1960. The ﬁrst accompanied a movie called

Behind the Great Wall, offered in AromaRama. According to

James L. Limbacher in his book, Four Aspects of Film, Aro-

maRama offered “72 odors capable of being transmitted by

the triggering and timing mechanism in the theater. The

odors are fed to the audience through the regular air circu-

lating system.” A critic from the Detroit Free Press called Aro-

maRama “a real stinker.”

A competing system named Smell-O-Vision was intro-

duced with the ﬁlm Scent of Mystery (the later, unscented, ver-

sion was retitled Holiday in Spain). This system differed from

its competitor in that the odors were piped separately to each

seat in the theater. Neither system ever resulted in a follow-

up effort.

Psychorama, another, more insidious, gimmick came (and

went) in 1960. Purposefully using subliminal images (scenes

ﬂashed on the screen too quickly for the eye to register them

consciously) to enhance the effect of horror ﬁlms, the movies

appealed to audiences’ growing awareness of psychology.

There were two such ﬁlms made, My World Dies Screaming

(a.k.a. Terror in the Haunted House) and A Date with Death.

Also in 1960, another novelty thriller called The Hypnotic

Eye, produced by Allied Artists, tried to hypnotize the audi-

ence. The gimmick involved having ushers pass out balloons

to the theater patrons; then an actor in the ﬁlm dared them

to try to use their arms to raise the balloons.

Often, gimmicks used to lure customers into a movie the-

ater have nothing to do with the way a ﬁlm is made. For

instance, the famous producer/director William Castle

offered free life insurance to those who went to Macabre

(1958), a ﬁlm he claimed to be so scary that patrons might die

of a heart attack while watching it. He was the same man who

had a fake skeleton shoot out across the audience at a critical

moment in House on Haunted Hill (1958) in a process called

Emergo. But his most famous gimmick, Percepto, literally

shocked people in the theater by wiring selected seats and

giving those customers a small dose of electricity during

showings of The Tingler (1959).

For the most part, gimmicks have always come from

either small studios that lack big name stars or independent

producers who lack both big name stars and a decent script.

A true gimmick, as opposed to an innovation, has nothing to

do with the quality of the ﬁlm but only the quantity of the

box-ofﬁce take.

Gish, Lillian (1896–1993) One of the most popular

and inﬂuential screen stars of the silent era, Gish practiced

her craft in what became the longest acting career in show-

business history.

Born Lillian de Guiche, she was the eldest of two sisters

in a home that was in desperate ﬁnancial straits. Her father

had walked out on the family, and her mother tried to earn a

living as an actress. Mrs. Gish had better luck placing her

children in juvenile acting roles, so “Baby Lillian” (as she was

billed) started her show-business career at the age of ﬁve in a

play called In Convict’s Stripes. Soon, the entire family began

to tour the country with various acting companies.

MARY PICKFORD

had been a child actress during this time

and knew the Gish family. Later, when she began to work for

GRIFFITH

, she talked the director into hiring the two

teenaged Gish sisters. Often called the Sarah Bernhardt of

the movies, Gish’s frail, child/woman persona ﬁt her mentor

D. W. Grifﬁth’s ideal of pure womanhood, and her expres-

sive, angelic face made the image complete.

Lillian’s ﬁrst acting stint in ﬁlm was in a two-reeler

directed by Grifﬁth, An Unseen Enemy (1912). During the

next three years, she appeared in more than 20 Grifﬁth ﬁlms,

culminating in her starring role in his epic masterpiece

THE

BIRTH OF A NATION

(1915), which vaulted her to international

celebrity. Interestingly, Blanche Sweet had been Grifﬁth’s

ﬁrst choice for the female lead, but he was delighted with Lil-

lian’s performance. Between 1915 and 1922, Gish was Grif-

ﬁth’s main actress, and she starred in his most impressive

ﬁlms, including Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East

(1920), and Orphans of the Storm (1922).

After she left Grifﬁth because of a salary dispute, Lillian

eventually signed with MGM, where her best ﬁlms were La

Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the 1920s

GISH, LILLIAN

173

came to an end, she found herself losing popularity. She was

seen as old-fashioned compared to other MGM stars such as

NORMA SHEARER

and

GRETA GARBO

She made the transition to sound in One Romantic Night

(1930) with but one problem: Nobody wanted to see Lillian

Gish in a romantic leading role. She was 31 years old and a

has-been—or so the Hollywood establishment thought.

Except for an occasional ﬁlm appearance in the 1930s

and early 1940s, Gish continued her career on Broadway

with considerable success. She returned to the screen with a

splash in a supporting role, in Duel in the Sun (1946), and

performed magniﬁcently in a leading role in The Night of the

Hunter (1955). She continued to act in the movies from time

to time, and her later ﬁlms include

ROBERT ALTMAN

’s A

Wedding (1978) and The Whales of August (1987), directed by

Lindsay Anderson.

Lillian Gish was honored in 1970 with a much-deserved

special Oscar “for her superlative and distinguished service in

the making of motion pictures.”

Her younger sibling, Dorothy, also had an illustrious, if

not quite as spectacular, screen career, as Lillian’s. The two

sisters often appeared in ﬁlms together, particularly early in

their movie careers. In fact, Lillian once directed her sister in

Remodeling Her Husband (1921). The two sisters were very

close. Dorothy died in 1968, and Lillian in 1993.

The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II

(1974)

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

’s stunning, allegorical

epic masterpieces set in the world of modern American

organized crime. Alternately nostalgic and cold blooded in

their observations of family relationships, these two ﬁlms

were provocative and deeply resonant achievements that

managed also to be enormously popular.

The two Godfather sagas presented the story of the Cor-

leone family. The original ﬁlm told the tale of elderly Maﬁa

patriarch Vito Corleone’s (

MARLON BRANDO

) death and the

struggle for power by his son. The sequel, thanks to a clever

structure, managed to be two movies at once, traveling both

forward and backward in time, explaining the young Vito’s

(

ROBERT DE NIRO

) rise to power while also detailing the

expanding role of the mob through the story of Vito’s son

(

AL PACINO

The Godfather was originally slated to be a modest little

gangster ﬁlm, without a name cast and made on a budget of

less than $2 million. The ﬁlm rights to Mario Puzo’s block-

buster best-seller had actually been bought by Paramount for

a mere $35,000 before the novel became a hit. The decision

to use non–name actors in major roles held ﬁrm except for the

pivotal, if modest, part of Don Vito Corleone. As the budget

escalated to more than $6 million to meet the growing expec-

tations of the public, the studio considered

EDWARD G

THE GODFATHER

AND

THE GODFATHER, PART II

174

Lillian Gish has been called the ﬁrst lady of the silent screen. She is seen here (on the left) with her sister, Dorothy Gish, in a

scene from D. W. Grifﬁth’s classic Orphans of the Storm (1922).

(PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SIEGEL COLLECTION)

ROBINSON

and Danny Thomas. Coppola’s ﬁrst choice, how-

ever, was

LAURENCE OLIVIER

, who turned it down. His sec-

ond choice, Marlon Brando, wanted the role, but Paramount

didn’t want Brando. The studio was afraid the actor’s some-

times erratic behavior might send the movie overbudget, not

to mention the problem of Brando’s diminishing drawing

power after a number of recent box-ofﬁce failures. But Cop-

pola held ﬁrm, and Brando won the role after performing in a

makeshift screen test the actor shot himself at his home.

Coppola would seem an odd choice for such an increas-

ingly important movie. His track record as a director was

anything but impressive. He had had one modest success,

You’re a Big Boy Now (1967), and two highly publicized ﬂops,

Finian’s Rainbow (1968) and The Rain People (1969). His

biggest claim to fame was his Oscar for the screenplay of Pat-

ton (1970). James Monaco, writing in American Film Now,

astutely speculated that “[Coppola] was the only thinkable

choice with an Italian surname. The producers were already

having trouble with the Maﬁa and with Italian-American lob-

bying groups. A director named Coppola would (and did)

take some of the heat off.” Just the same, Coppola was

reportedly nearly ﬁred at least three times during ﬁlming.

The Godfather was, for a short while, the highest-grossing

ﬁlm in Hollywood history. In addition to making the other-

wise struggling young writer-director Francis Coppola a

household name, the ﬁlms also made stars of such perform-

ers as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and

ROBERT DUVALL

. The

original movie also resurrected the career of Marlon Brando.

Besides its critical and popular success, The Godfather also

won the acclaim of the industry, winning three Oscars for

Best Film, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Screenplay

(Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola). It also won three nomi-

nations for Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino, James Caan,

and Robert Duvall). It was the only gangster ﬁlm, before

being joined by its sequel, to win a Best Picture Oscar.

The Godfather, Part II won six Academy Awards, for Best

Film (Coppola producing), Best Direction (Coppola), Best

Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Screenplay Adap-

tation (Coppola and Puzo), Best Art Direction (Dean

Tavoularis and Angelo Graham, George R. Nelso—set direc-

tion), and Best Original Dramatic Score (Nino Rota and

Carmine Coppola—the director’s father). Also nominated for

Best Supporting Actor Oscars were Michael V. Gazzo and

Lee Strasberg. Part II remains the only sequel ever to win a

Best Picture Oscar in Hollywood history.

The cast of The Godfather includes Marlon Brando, Al

Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall,

Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane

Keaton, Al Lettieri, Talia Shire, John Cazale, Abe Vigoda, Al

Martino, Morgana King, Alex Rocco.

The cast list of The Godfather, Part II includes Al Pacino,

Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale,

Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, G. D.

Spradlin, Morgana King, Mariana Hill, Troy Donahue, Joe

Spinell, Abe Vigoda, Fay Spain, Harry Dean Stanton, Danny

Aiello, and James Caan.

The Godfather Part III was completed and released in

1990. Though it offered fans a continuation and conclusion

of the storyline begun in The Godfather, the ﬁlm was not up

to the standards of the earlier movies and critics panned it.

See also

GANGSTER MOVIES

Goldwyn, Samuel (1882–1974) An independent pro-

ducer whose Hollywood tenure was marked by momentous

events and excellent ﬁlmmaking. In a career spanning nearly

60 years, he discovered and fostered the talents of a great

many actors, directors, and writers. He was also one of very

few independent producers to survive successfully during the

studio era and beyond; in fact, Goldwyn holds the record for

the longest career as an independent producer in Hollywood.

Born Shmuel Gelbﬁsz in Poland, he immigrated ﬁrst to

England when he was 11 and then to America when he was

13. Broke and without any skills when he arrived in the

United States, he learned the glove-making trade and began

to prosper. By this time he was known as Samuel Goldﬁsh. At

the age of 28 he married Blanche Lasky (whom he divorced in

1919), sister of the vaudeville performer and producer

JESSE

LASKY

, who introduced Goldﬁsh to show business. The two

men joined with

CECIL B

DEMILLE

to form the Jesse L. Lasky

Feature Play Company in 1913, which promptly began to

make movies. Their ﬁrst venture was The Squaw Man (1913),

which was a spectacular box-ofﬁce success.

Events moved quickly during the early years of the ﬁlm

industry. After the Lasky company merged with

ADOLPH

ZUKOR

in 1916, Goldﬁsh was soon forced out in a $900,000

settlement. That same year, Goldﬁsh joined with Edgar Sel-

wyn, merging not only their capital and experience but also

their names to create the Goldwyn Company. Goldﬁsh liked

the ring of the new company’s name and changed his own to

match it in 1918.

During the late 1910s, Goldwyn began to establish his

reputation for producing ﬁlms from high-quality scripts. One

of these efforts, Polly of the Circus, became one of the biggest

hits of 1917, but not until the sound era would Goldwyn’s

reverence for writers and their world translate into a consis-

tent hit-making formula.

Meanwhile, the Goldwyn Company limped into the

1920s, which saw the ever-increasing consolidation of the

industry into a handful of major studios. In 1922, amid bick-

ering and squabbling, Goldwyn was once again forced out of

a company of his own creation. A short while later, his name-

sake studio was merged with Metro and Mayer to form

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which quickly became the colossus

of Hollywood. Goldwyn never was involved with the famous

studio that still bears his name.

In 1923 the mogul formed Samuel Goldwyn Productions,

embarking on a career as an independent producer, forswear-

ing partners so that he would always be in charge of his own

operation. During the silent era, he numbered among his hits

such memorable ﬁlms as Stella Dallas (1925) and The Winning

of Barbara Worth (1926), but he had his ﬁrst real break-

through in the late 1920s with his initial sound ﬁlm, Bulldog

Drummond (1929). Goldwyn proved a crafty businessman by

capitalizing on the growing inﬂuence of newspaper critics,

becoming the ﬁrst producer to provide an all-expenses-paid

GOLDWYN, SAMUEL

175

junket to Hollywood for New York journalists. It paid off in

good press and substantial box ofﬁce for the ﬁlm.

In the years following, Goldwyn generally produced two

types of ﬁlm: the serious, prestige drama and the musical

comedy. Many of his best and most famous dramas were

directed by

WILLIAM WYLER

. The director’s credits are

attached to such Goldwyn classics as Dodsworth (1936), Dead

End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Westerner (1940),

The Little Foxes (1941), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Among Goldwyn’s other famous productions were The Hur-

ricane (1937), Pride of the Yankees (1942), The Bishop’s Wife

(1947), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Porgy and Bess (1959).

Of Goldwyn’s musical comedies, most have centered

around the same kind of charming, daffy, comic hero person-

iﬁed by his two greatest comedy stars,

EDDIE CANTOR

and

DANNY KAYE

. Between those two performers, Goldwyn pro-

duced more than a dozen ﬁlms, among them Whoopee!

(1930), The Kid From Spain (1932), The Secret Life of Walter

Mitty (1947), and Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

Goldwyn was famous for more than his movies. His

malapropisms became legend in Hollywood. Memorable

“Goldwynisms” include “Let’s bring it up to date with some

snappy nineteenth-century dialogue,” “I had a great idea this

morning, but I didn’t like it,” “A verbal contract isn’t worth

the paper it’s written on,” and the ever quotable, “Include me

out.” It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Gold-

wyn was not intelligent. He may have lacked a formal educa-

tion, but knew enough to always surround himself with the

ﬁnest in available directorial talent in the properties he

bought for ﬁlming and in the screenwriters who were hired

to adapt them.

Although he generally worked with already established

directors and writers, Goldwyn was more than willing to

develop new acting talent for the screen. Among his discov-

eries were Lucille Ball,

RONALD COLMAN

GARY COOPER

DAVID NIVEN

WILL ROGERS

, and

SUSAN HAYWARD

Goldwyn’s ﬁlms won innumerable Oscars, and he was

personally honored at the 1946 Academy Award dinner with

the prestigious

IRVING G

THALBERG

Award for his “out-

standing motion picture production.”

Gone With the Wind (1939) Until it was overtaken by

The Sound of Music, Star Wars, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,

Raiders of the Lost Ark, and several other modern-day ﬁlms, it

was the most ﬁnancially successful movie of all time. It

remains one of Hollywood’s most beloved ﬁlms, often top-

ping popularity polls as the greatest movie ever made. Based

on Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling novel, this slickly told

love story set during the Civil War starred

CLARK GABLE

VIVIEN LEIGH

LESLIE HOWARD

, and

OLIVIA DE HAVIL

LAND

. The superproduction was guided from start to ﬁnish

by producer

DAVID O

SELZNICK

In many respects Gone With the Wind was an unlikely hit.

It had long been a maxim in Hollywood that ﬁlms about the

Civil War don’t do well at the box ofﬁce; after all, half of the

country is not going to like the outcome. Beyond mar-

ketability, the movie was troubled from the start by produc-

tion problems. For instance, Clark Gable didn’t want to play

Rhett Butler despite the fact that he was the overwhelming

choice for the role among movie fans. Only after strong stu-

dio pressure did he agree to accept the part. The other male

star of the ﬁlm, Leslie Howard, was dead set against playing

Ashley Wilkes; he was cajoled into taking the role by being

given the chance to produce (and star) in Intermezzo (1939).

Nor did Gone With the Wind have a leading lady—even after

production began. Vivien Leigh was hired to play Scarlett

O’Hara after the burning of Atlanta (one of the ﬁlm’s most

famous scenes) and after a much-ballyhooed talent search

had been conducted. Among the actresses seriously consid-

ered for the lead female role were Paulette Goddard,

KATHARINE HEPBURN

BETTE DAVIS

LORETTA YOUNG

, and

Miriam Hopkins. Among the enormous numbers of less-seri-

ous contenders were

JEAN HARLOW

, Jean Arthur, Talullah

Bankhead, and, believe it or not, Lucille Ball.

There were even more strikes against this production:

Selznick went through three directors (

GEORGE CUKOR

, Sam

Wood, and Victor Fleming), three cinematographers (

LEE

GARMES

, Ernest Haller and Ray Rennahan—the latter two

stayed with the production), and interminable script revisions

(by the likes of Ben Hecht, John Van Druten, F. Scott

Fitzgerald, Jo Swerling, and Sidney Howard, who received

the sole screen credit). The ﬁlm ran 219 minutes, the longest

movie ever released theatrically in America up to that time

(and for several decades after).

Selznick acquired the rights to Gone With the Wind in a

most unusual way. In Mel Gussow’s biography of

DARRYL F

ZANUCK

, Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking, the

TWENTI

ETH CENTURY

–

FOX

boss is quoted as saying there was a bid-

ding war among the studios for the popular novel. . . . “To

end the bidding, at the suggestion of

MAYER

, we met in

Thalberg’s bungalow, the heads of the studios, about ﬁve. . . .

Someone suggested, let’s put our names on slips of paper and

put them in a hat and draw one slip out and whosoever’s

name is on the slip will purchase it—whatever the price. . . .

the ﬁrst paper touched had Selznick’s signature on it. That’s

how he got Gone With the Wind.”

Selznick didn’t get off easy, however. He had the property

but he had to agree to distribute through MGM to get the

services of Clark Gable. MGM bought Selznick’s rights to

the ﬁlm during the 1940s, and every seven years reaped a

bonanza on reissues of the movie.

Gone With the Wind won the Best Picture Oscar for 1939

along with eight other Academy Awards. At the time, it was

the record holder for the most Oscars ever awarded to any

one ﬁlm. It broke other ground as well by having in its cast

the ﬁrst black performer,

HATTIE MCDANIEL

, to win an

Oscar. Less well known is the fact that Vivien Leigh was the

ﬁrst British performer to win a Best Actress

ACADEMY

AWARD

for her portrayal of Scarlett. The ﬁlm also put just the

slightest dent in the Hays Code by virtue of the inclusion of

Rhett’s famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Gordon, Ruth (1896–1985) An actress, screenwriter,

and playwright who had a unique career in Hollywood,

GONE WITH THE WIND

176

becoming the only scriptwriter in the industry’s history to

sandwich several stints as a ﬁlm performer between a string

of memorable screenwriting hits. As an actress, she had

some success on Broadway but ﬂopped twice in the movies,

ﬁrst in the silent era, then in the early 1940s. She ﬁnally hit

it big on the silver screen in her seventies when she began to

play an assortment of eccentric old ladies, usually in come-

dies. As a playwright and screenwriter, she generally collab-

orated with her husband,

GARSON KANIN

, penning a

number of delightful theatrical comedies during the late

1940s and early 1950s.

Born Ruth Gordon Jones, she tried to break into the

legitimate theater during the 1910s and ﬁrst appeared in the

movies in small roles in ﬁlms such as an early and otherwise

forgotten version of Camille (1915). After enjoying some suc-

cess on the stage, Gordon was lured back to Hollywood in

the early 1940s to play character parts in such ﬁlms as Abe

Lincoln in Illinois (1940, well cast as Mary Todd Lincoln), Dr.

Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), and Edge of Darkness (1943).

When an earlier play she had written, Over 21, was

turned into a movie in 1945, she decided to write directly for

the screen, going on to pen such hits as A Double Life (1948),

Adam’s Rib (1949), The Marrying Kind (1952), and Pat and

Mike (1952). She also wrote the screenplay for The Actress

(1953), based upon her autobiographical play, Years Ago.

Gordon disappeared from the screen as both an actress

and a writer for more than a decade before she returned for

her last unlikely stab at stardom in 1965 when she appeared

in Inside Daisy Clover. The following year she also appeared in

Lord Love a Duck (1966), but it wasn’t until her startling

Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actress performance in Rose-

mary’s Baby (1968) that critics and audiences began to take

notice. But the best was yet to come. Gordon’s baroque char-

acters in the cult hits Where’s Poppa? (1970) and Harold and

Maude (1971) made her a favorite among young ﬁlmgoers.

There were few good roles written for actresses her age,

but she had memorable turns in Clint Eastwood’s two broad

comedies Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which

Way You Can (1980). She continued appearing in ﬁlms during

the early 1980s, such as the hit My Bodyguard (1980) and the

ﬂop Jimmy the Kid (1982). After a long and creative life, she

died at the age of 89.

gossip columnists A blend of journalism, show business,

and plain old dirt was the stock-in-trade of the ﬁrst national

celebrity gossip columnist, Louella Parsons (1893–1972). She

began her gossip column in the 1920s, employed by the

Hearst newspaper chain, in part to help boost the ﬁlm career

of actress Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s mis-

tress. Parsons’s column was such a success, however, that oth-

ers soon followed the same practice of reporting on the latest

tinsel-town news. Eventually, as many as 400 writers covered

the Hollywood gossip beat for papers, radio stations, and

magazines all over the world.

For the most part, Hollywood easily controlled the press,

giving anxious reporters whatever tidbits they wanted to leak

out—the publicity machines of the major studios were well

oiled and enormously sophisticated. Nonetheless, several gos-

sip columnists wielded so much personal power due to their

wide readerships that they could signiﬁcantly affect Holly-

wood careers and the ﬁnancial success of almost any movie.

Louella Parsons was one of these, together with her two

greatest competitors, Hedda Hopper (1890–1966) and

Sheilah Graham (1904–1988). Louella Parsons had been a

reporter before arriving in Hollywood, Hopper had been a

sometime ﬁlm actress, and Graham had been a model. Jour-

nalistic skills, however, weren’t necessarily the key to success

in the gossip game. A keen sense of what one’s readership

wanted to know and the ability to push the right buttons to

get that information were all that mattered.

Hedda Hopper was known for her wildly eccentric hats

and her sadistic nature. She began to write her column in

1938; it was soon syndicated all over the country. Although

both Parsons and Hopper enjoyed their immense power,

Hopper was much more likely to use it to hurt and humiliate

her enemies. Hopper and Parsons were cutthroat in their

competitiveness, and many a powerful Hollywood ﬁgure

quivered at the thought of bad press in one of their columns.

(Incidentally, Hopper’s son, actor William Hopper, played the

investigator, Paul Drake, on the old Perry Mason TV show; his

mother was instrumental in launching his modest career).

Sheilah Graham, on the other hand, was the least vindic-

tive of the inﬂuential three. She began her column in 1935

and actually appeared in more papers than the other two

GOSSIP COLUMNISTS

177

Ruth Gordon became Hollywood’s favorite “little old lady” in

ﬁlms such as Where’s Poppa? (1970), Harold and Maude (1971),

and Every Which Way But Loose (1978), but she was also a

highly respected screenwriter and playwright when this

photograph was taken.

(PHOTO BY DOROTHY WILDING)