Hollywood Award

Hollywood's legion of columnists, correspondents and reporters crowded into the Beverly Hills Hotel last week for movie journalism's traditional big night. It was the annual award-to-actors banquet put on by Photoplay, venerable pioneer (founded in 1911) of movie magazines. Master of Ceremonies Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, rose for his polite remarks about Photoplay, then astounded the journalists with a diatribe against the "irresponsible press" of Hollywood.

When the banquet was over, a huffy news contingent stormed Reagan, demanding to know just who was irresponsible. Reagan ticked off the names of Hedda Hopper and some small-bore motion picture columnists, the monthly Modern Screen and a couple of the Los Angeles daily newspapers.*

Famous Faces. For example, said he, the Los Angeles Times had snapped a picture of Actors Dennis Morgan and Gary Cooper as they happened to walk past a murder-suicide on the way to the studio, headlined it FILM STARS GO TO SCENE OF LONELY HEART MURDER-SUICIDE. The Los Angeles Daily News had played the story of a "former movie star" involved in a drunken brawl. Reagan discovered that the woman referred to had played a bit part in a movie as a child.

The Daily News made its own unjournalistic retort four days later. For a story headlined Ex-Ace JAILED ON A CHARGE OF BANK ROBBERY, the News dug up an old picture of Reagan talking to one Byron Kennedy, an ex-Air Force officer who had been arrested on a charge of robbing an East Los Angeles bank. (Reagan had posed with Kennerly nine years before, when the airman was technical adviser on one of Reagan's pictures.)

Wafer-Thin Skins. But it was Los Angeles Mirror Columnist Paul Coates who cynically wised up Reagan with the facts of life: "I'm amazed that he hasn't heard of the unwritten law which makes it verboten to openly blast a Hollywood columnist. They are all hypersensitive old dears with wafer-thin skins.

"Besides, doesn't he realize that columnists serve a vital purpose? We are the world's leading authorities on everything. During the 'time of trouble' with Judy Garland didn't we all pitch in with expert advice on how she should run her life?"

At week's end, neither Hedda nor her colleagues had deigned to answer Reagan. But there was little doubt that if they pounced it would hurt. Hollywood thought that Ronald Reagan was either a very brave man--or a very foolish one.

*But failed to mention another major source of Hollywood gossip: the hundreds of professional pressagents hired by studios and individuals to get movie names in print.

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