Introduction

Abstract

When I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s, the world of film and radio, and later television, was filled with larger-than-life celebrities. They seemed distant, much more so than today, when they can be filmed by paparazzi and put on virtual display in seconds. The movie stars of my childhood were magical, beautiful, rich, and successful. They appeared everywhere in the media, at that time largely print. Their fame and glamour set them apart from mere mortals. They were worshipped, profiled: every moment of their private lives chronicled and dissected in gossip columns by such relentless reporters as Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Walter Winchell, who reported breathlessly on their love lives, their marriages, affairs, and divorces, where they ate, and which nightclubs they attended.