Dirt dishers
Peter Ackroyd
My Hollywood Sheilah Graham (Michael Joseph £10.95)
When Miss Graham, snatching a few hours rest from Beverly Hills, found herself flying into a storm above the Alps, she addressed one of the few beings who had not read her column: 'Dear God', (for this was a prayer), `let me see my children again and I'll never write anything nasty again.' The repetition of 'again' suggests that even in extremis a cluttered prose style comes naturally to her; but, perhaps more importantly, that promise was never kept. For, having been saved from a cruel death, here she is again in My Hollywood, repeating the most nasty things, even about people of whom one has never heard.
Sheilah Graham was a gossip columnist in what accountants call the 'golden days' of the film industry; she was once described as `the biggest bitch in Hollywood', a title which she repeats with modest pride in this survey of her career as a disher of dirt. There were three of them — Hedda 'The Hat' Hopper, Louella Parsons, whom Graham describes as 'fat, illiterate' (in her profession, the former was more of a disad- vantage), and Graham herself. Like ancient priestesses of some forgotten but apparent- ly bloody cult, they wielded a power which is now difficult to explain. Hedda Hopper showed one visitor her Christmas tree, all but obscured by presents from actors and directors: 'Fear put them there', she ex- plained in a voice which was once described as that of a python in the act of swallowing a rabbit. When Hopper screamed down the telephone, 'What's going on between Jean Simmons and Richard Burton?', they no doubt had an impromptu affair simply to oblige her. Her motto was, you provide the pictures and I'll provide the whore. Louella Parsons, fat though she may have been, kept everyone else emaciated with nerves. Her husband was a doctor at one of the film studios, and no star could contract what Sheilah Graham calls a 'social disease' without Louella practically officiating in the surgery. Sheilah Graham herself, an English orphan who in true cinematic fashion re-invented herself in order to earn a living, also became the ear and mouth of her public — as a result, both organs grew to enormous proportions.
The point of Hollywood was that it manipulated fantasies in order to entertain the public; since these columnists were engaged in precisely the same activity, and since they reached each day an even larger audience, they were able to brush past the actors who came forward to greet them with outstretched arms and fixed smiles
upon their faces. In
hated the columnists, and the columnists 1984 hated the actors, but both parties needed each one in order to prosper.
Sheilah Graham herself drops the names of stars like dandruff. We learn, for exalln- tphlea,n tshhaet shouldMarilyn h e ,Monroet h a that E r rwas Flynn n no biej kt teceri young girls, that James Cagney and Merle Temple'sshl lenpnt d e t orignegt iheet sr , were ethatr e d dyed an that Ronald Reagan uses a 'strong ring: which leaves stains on the back of sea' covers:So what else is new?' as another `show-biz' columnist characteristically ex- claims. Well, nothing is new: what is roost extraordinary about such details is that they apparently remain interesting even for those, people who were born long after the 'stars in question had been carted away to
asylums or to the graveyard. lunatic
Certainly at one time the obsession to Hollywood for celebrities was such that, at premieres, the waiting fans would forcc open the doors of limousines and, if,1100, starlet was to be seen trussed up in Nobody at at the back, would scream out, k e1111' arid One of the nicest actors I ever Me', zbao ywdhi od Icammeeet tanfeswta,rdwoams RiunssitExtra Feelings, Too based on the life of 0 CT,I, Coolidge. There had been rumours al .0" divorce from his dowdy but long-stiff,er1;rig wife, Rita (a former Mack Sennet ban'eui belle who later became a suceess,2fiii numerologist), and recently in his beat-1_1-1...o home in Bel Air (not the same area ass once it was, but that's another story), 1111,4K the record straight. Little did I know tnain was still haunted by his days as Pa biy Archibald Wilson, the child of 'nisei' Ar, poor parents in London's East chic, as he was known to his many ,, in friends, had been a cinema organist bac%ii the days of the silent film (and whatgrie films some of them were!) and littlneice:: t"F. know that Sam Shine (one of the Side.crase coons I ever met!) caught his act one night. And that's how it all started. He came to Hollywood with Sam, and then married a nutritionist fifty years his senior (Attaboy!). Unlike Doris Day, Maureen O'Hara, Betty Hutton, and quite a few other stars I could mention (and I could Mention them all), he invested his money _wisely by buying an insecticide factory in Hoboken. I could not bear to see him in his last, tragic years when he collected false limbs and wore a Kleenex box on his head. It was a sad thing, but how could you not hell) liking this man? As Scott Fitzgerald us- ed tO say to — me 'They go up and then they come down.' Scott was of course the great ore of my life, although he never met Russ, Archie, or whatever his name was.
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