June 2nd, 2005

  It first I was tempted to write a column about the new Orson Welles book (Despite the System, by Clinton Heylin) from just reading the index. The index listed just one brief mention of Louella Parsons and that was in the preface. I had expected to find at least one chapter on Louella.
  Orson once told me that Louella had him exiled to Europe because of Citizen Kane. She believed that Orson had defiled her boss, William Randolph Hearst, and his mistress (Marion Davies) in the movie. Louella wanted Orson banned in Hollywood when the movie was first released, but Citizen Kane was released in 1941. Louella, powerful as she was in Hollywood, couldn’t buck World War II. But when the war ended, Orson soon found he couldn’t work in Hollywood. Louella had blacklisted him with all the studio brass. She did this by threatening to expose the married moguls’ illicit love affairs, of which there were many.
  Jack L. Warner, ever the comedian, told me, “She had me involved with so many beautiful stars, I was ready to cop a plea.” Only Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox refused to buckle down to Louella’s threat. Still, Orson the actor thrived in Europe, notably in The Third Man, one of the all-time great movies.
  It is generally thought that Hearst himself was behind Louella’s vendetta against Welles, but Marion Davies once confided to me that Hearst rather liked Orson’s take-off on him. “We saw Citizen Kane six or seven times, mostly in screenings at San Simeon and once in a theater in San Francisco where nobody recognized us,” Marion said. Marion also said that she and Hearst both got a kick out of the movie’s reference to “Rosebud,” which she said was Hearst’s pet name for her private parts. She was drinking when she revealed this to me, I might add.
  I repeated all of this to Orson, who said, “I knew it was that damned Louella all along. She had it in for me from the time I arrived in Hollywood. RKO wanted me to go to her house for an interview. I told the RKO publicity people that if she wanted to interview me, she could come to the studio like all the other reporters do. It irked her.” Louella, as the queen of the Hollywood columnists, wanted the stars to come to her.
  As for the Rosebud mention, Orson said, “It didn’t mean a [expletive] thing. It was inserted in the script as a dramatic gimmick, nothing more,” My best guess is that Marion, while drinking with Citizen Kane’s co-writer Herman Mankewicz (a fellow alcoholic and frequent guest at San Simeon), told him the story about Hearst’s pet name. Mankewicz’s wicked sense of humor prompted him to insert “Rosebud” into the script. Books have been written about “Rosebud,” all with philosophical interpretations about its deep and hidden meaning.
  Reading past the index and into the book itself, the mystery was solved as to why Louella got askant mention. The author confused her with Hedda Hopper, whom he identified as a Hearst columnist, which she never was. She worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune syndicate, both rivals of the Hearst papers that printed Louella’s column.
  On page 70, the book quotes Hopper in her column saying, “All kinds of rumors are flying about town. First, that the RKO studio will be ignored editorially by all of Mr. Hearst’s papers. That is being done.” The book also quotes Welles saying about Hopper: “Wait until that woman finds out the picture is about her boss.” That remark, the book says, was probably an aside uttered to a friend. “It was certainly never said to any reporter on the record.”
  In fairness to the author, he obviously wasn’t around to observe the fierce rivalry between Hedda and Louella. The two have been dead for years and it’s hard to distinguish between them today, as both were powerful gossip columnists in Hollywood’s golden era. However, to us who knew them well, we know that Louella must be rolling in her grave over Hedda getting all the credit for her feud with Orson.   I just read one of the best Hollywood autobiographies ever—Only Make Believe, about the late Howard Keel’s life in showbusiness. He wrote it with Joyce Spizer and it is published by Barricade Books. It will be in bookstores this coming August. (Judy Keel, Howard’s widow, sent me an advance copy.)
  The title of the book comes from a song Howard sang beautifully to Kathryn Grayson in MGM’s Showboat. He was one of the great MGMmusical stars—nothing make-believe about him. He was all man with a great voice.
  I loved reading about his encounters with Marilyn Monroe. He first met her in one of her various foster homes. She was Norma Jean Baker then, and she asked Howard to take her dancing. He was reluctant at first, because, as he pegged her, “She was real San Quentin jailbait.”
  But what the hell, if it pleased her. He took her dancing one Sunday afternoon at the Casino Gardens in Ocean Park. She was 13 and fully developed. Howard was 21. “Wow! I took her home afterwards. She thanked me and I took off.God, she was beautiful.”
  The next meeting took place eight years later at the William Morris office in Beverly Hills. Howard was there to see Abe Lastfogel, the top honcho of the noted agency who said MGM wanted him for Annie, Get Your Gun. Marilyn was in the lobby, probably waiting to see Johnny Hyde, a top agent and her lover. It was Hyde who launched Marilyn’s fabulous career with sexy roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve.
  Ihappened to run into Marilyn on the steps of the Thalberg building at MGM when she was on her way to audition for John Huston, director of The Asphalt Jungle. She had stuffed her magnificent breasts with cotton. She looked like a file cabinet with the top drawer pulled out.
  I said,“Marilyn, take out those falsies. You look grotesque.” I knew her well enough to be candid with her. She ignored my advice, saying, “Johnny said they wanted a sex-pot for this role.” And off she went. The next day, I saw Huston and asked what he did about Marilyn’s falsies. “I reached down and pulled them out,” he said, adding, “Marilyn, you’ve got the part.”
  Back to the meeting in the William Morris lobby. “She exuded an innocent sensuality that drew me in to her web, and I knew I was a goner,” Howard writes. “She was a very sweet and inquisitive young woman,” was how he described her at 13. But now at the William Morris office, he told her:“God, you’re even more beautiful than you were at 13.”
  “She said, ‘Why don’t we have dinner?’ I said, ‘That’s great.’” She offered to pick him up and they dined at a little restaurant where they shared stories of what had happened in the years gone by. Marilyn had been married and divorced. Howard was in the process of getting a divorce.
  After dinner, she drove him to the house where he had been staying. Fortunately, no one was home, so he invited her in. They kissed. Then Marilyn, who never wore undergarments, dropped her dress and stood naked before Howard. They made love on the floor before a roaring fireplace. Howard, fortunately, had thrown sofa pillows on the floor.
  “C’est la vie! C’est la vie!” wrote Howard of the happy reunion. He said that he and Marilyn had many trysts over the years. Marilyn was a fun girl.