Trivia

Her gossip column had a rich assortment of attacks on several film stars of the day. In particular, Joan Bennett was Hopper's No. 1 subject of disdain. In response, Bennett mailed Hopper a skunk as a Valentine's Day gift in 1950 with a note that read, "You Stink!".

Comedian Red Skelton once painted a rather cartoonish portrait in oil of Hedda and gave it to her. Her son William Hopper owned the work until his death. Today it is worth about $22,000.

She died on the same day as Buster Keaton, her co-star in The Stolen Jools (1931), Speak Easily (1932) and Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Mother of actor William Hopper

Hedda's husband, DeWolf Hopper Sr., was the one who made Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat" famous, performing it over 10,000 times.

Ran away from home at the age of 18 and went to New York City where she got a job in the chorus of an opera company.

Raised in a strict Quaker home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

She changed her published birthdate from May 2, 1885 to June 2, 1890 in order to conceal her actual age.

First worked as a silent film actress for Samuel Goldwyn's film company under dismal conditions in Fort Lee, New Jersey, probably around 1917. The dressing rooms and offices were in an abandoned barn with thin wooden partitions and no ceilings.

Filed for divorce from Hopper in New York, July 1923. Granted her interlocutory decree and custody of son, Billy, on January 30, 1924.

In 1964, was sued by Michael Wilding for $3 million over implications in her book "The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth" that Wilding was a homosexual. The suit was eventually settled for $100,000.

Is portrayed by Helen Mirren in Trumbo (2015).

She was of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent.

She was portrayed by Judy Davis in the FX original series, Feud (2017).

Hedda's political allies/sources in the 1940s and 1950s included such heavyweights in right-wing circles as Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Howard Hughes, Ronald Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover and William Randolph Hearst. She had unlimited sources of "dirt" on the entertainment industry through her relationship with Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI; she tried to have Citizen Kane (1941) pulled from release because of her friendship with Hearst (the film was a thinly disguised biography of Hearst); she aided McCarthy in outing "liberal" actors; she helped jump-start Reagan into politics; and she refused to board a plane unless Hughes personally inspected it.

Actress turned gossip columnist.

She left Pennsylvania for New York with theatrical stars in her eyes and met and married actor De Wolfe Hopper. In 1920 she moved to Hollywood with her son to work in films. In 1936 she started a show business gossip radio programe and two years later began her film column which became syndicated in 100's of American newspapers.

The Equitable Building at Hollywood and Vine where Hedda Hopper had an office is shown in Hollywood Mouth (2008). Another Hopper office was in the Guaranty Building at Hollywood Blvd. and Ivar, which is shown in Hollywood Mouth 2 (2014). The director of those films, Jordan Mohr, had played Simone Signoret in the stage play "Two Simones: de Beauvoir and Signoret in Hollywood" in which Signoret talked about her appearance with Hopper on Edward R. Murrow's Small World (1958)--the two women were political opposites--and how Hopper's newspaper column announcing the Oscar nominees left out Signoret's name (she won for Room at the Top (1958)).

A dual biography of Hopper and Louella Parsons, "Hedda and Louella," by George Eells was published as a mass market paperback by Warner Books in 1972.