The Scold & the Sphinx

Hedda Hopper was the town's genial Scold, Buster Keaton its somber Sphinx; together, they were Hollywood past and present. Keaton's world--the gothic twilight of the silent movie, the pratfall, the Quixote on a treadmill--dimmed when the sound stage dawned. Hopper's world--of glamour, gossip and low jinks among the high-lifes--survived largely because she made it seem exciting even when it was dull. When TV nearly killed the movies, she helped rescue them with exposes and exclusives, chitchat and charm; to 30 million readers, Hedda Hopper was Celluloid City with hats. Last week, when the Scold and the Sphinx died--within hours of each other --the shock came not with the news, but with the realization that the nonstop columnist, at 75, was five years older than the ancient silent-film veteran.

From the beginning, Hedda was blessed with eternal middle age. She began her show-business career in 1913 as Elda Furry, the plumpish daughter of a Quaker meat dealer in Hollidaysburg, Pa. She had little acting ability --but that little carried her to Broad way, where she met and married Headliner DeWolf Hopper, 32 years her senior. The marriage was a failure. In 1922 they were divorced.* It was her last public failure.

No Sleeping Alone. Her career as an actress was brief but profitable. While she was still in the movies she sniffed every breath of scandal, sized up every star and starlet. When she was through in pictures, she was ready to challenge Louella Parsons as Queen of the Glamourmongers. In 1936 she talked her way onto radio, and in 1938 into her own syndicated column. She and Lolly never got along after that.

Unlike Parsons, Hedda had a sharp sense of humor, deliberately collected the showy hats that became a national joke--and the foundation of her fame. But Hopper was known for more than her topper. She continually outreported her rival, spoon-fed the fans endlessly with the trivia that thrills. Through Hedda, the readers learned that Clark Gable had not a tooth in his head, that Joan Crawford's compulsive cleanliness caused her to drop to her hands and knees and scrub the bathroom floor during a visit to SAC headquarters. The fans also got a sizable helping of bloopers. "For more than 2,000 years," Hedda once intoned reverently, "Jews and Christians all over the world have tried to follow in the footsteps of our Saviour."

Occasionally, Hedda came through with some meaty news. She reported as "the truth" a conversation between Producer Harry Cohn and a gangster. Cohn, anxious to break up a blossoming romance between Sammy Davis Jr. and Kim Novak, telephoned Las Vegas. Said Cohn: "You take care of this for me, will you?" "Sure," said the voice on the other end. "I'll just say, 'You've only got one eye; want to try for none?' " On another occasion, Hedda reported that she had chastised Elizabeth Taylor for unseemly conduct after Mike Todd's death, and then published Liz's reply: "What do you expect me to do--sleep alone?"

Alone on the Throne. She seemed to delight in feuds. She and Ed Sullivan enjoyed a mutual loathing; he called her "downright illiterate"; she replied calmly that he was "scared to death" of her. Joan Bennett once sent her a skunk "to answer back for the years I have been a victim of her nasty remarks."

A determined Republican, she stumped vigorously for every G.O.P. candidate from Hoover to Goldwater, so lambasted the Hollywood left that Lauren Bacall finally spoke aloud the words that others were reluctant to say: "I think Hedda ought to shut up." But Hedda never did. In November 1965, aging (72) Louella Parsons hung up her spites and retired to a nursing home, making official what even Hedda's enemies admitted: when it came to columnists, Hedda was alone on the throne. In the end, everyone in Hollywood knew she had meant it when she warned them years before: "You can't fool an old bag like me." And in the end, most of them stopped trying.

Bag of Flour. If Hopper was never old, Keaton was never young. When Harry Houdini saw six-month-old Joseph Francis Keaton fall down a flight of stairs and burst into tears, he nicknamed the bawling infant "Buster." The sobriquet stuck, and Buster's expression never came unstuck again. His father took him into his vaudeville act at four, billed him as "the Human Mop," and literally swept the floor with him while Mom blew the saxophone downstage. While Buster kept his pan dead, Keaton senior threw him through the scenery and out into the wings, then dropped him down on the bass drum in the orchestra. Buster never moved his mouth.

In 1917, the Mop broke up the act to go it alone, inaugurated his long film career with The Butcher Boy, a two-reeler with Fatty Arbuckle in the title role. In the first scene, Arbuckle hit Keaton full force with a bag of flour --and Buster's career was on the rise. Keaton promptly withdrew from a $250-a-week job in vaudeville to act in the movies for $40. His agent congratulated him: "Learn everything you can about that business, Buster," he advised. "The hell with the money."

Pratfalls. Buster obeyed. He learned everything he could about the business, and he said the hell with the money. He climbed from bit player to star in two years, established himself as the Great Stone Face, the melancholy but unflinching victim of machines, animals, policemen--of life itself. Though he made as much as $200,000 a year, he spent it lavishly and he drank hard. In 1932, his first marriage ended in a $400,000 divorce settlement. Keaton backslid into alcoholism, was soon fired by MGM. He declared bankruptcy, listed assets of $12,000 and liabilities of $303,832. A second marriage lasted less than three years, and his career failed too. The silents had flickered and gone out; the talkies left him in the dark, an embarrassing memory of the '20s.

But Keaton still refused to cry for himself; he got married again--this time to a 21-year-old dancer--and welcomed the obscurity that enveloped him for nearly 15 years. Then, in 1949, television revived him in a Los Angeles comedy series that made him a national celebrity all over again. People who had forgotten his name suddenly hailed him as a genius; filmniks recalled that James Agee once wrote of Keaton's silent classics: "Barring only the best of Chaplin, they seem to me the most wonderful comedies ever made." Comedians mimicked his woebegone expression, his films were re-released and shown on TV, and in 1956 Hollywood slapped together a screen bio entitled The Buster Keaton Story, with Donald O'Connor in the title role.

The Bum Smiles. Buster began to pick up cameo roles in big movies--Hollywood Cavalcade, Limelight, Sunset Boulevard. And, pushing 70, he started a new career making TV commercials for Ford trucks, falling off chairs and tables just to amuse the technicians on the set. Even then he refused to allow a photograph of himself grinning. "I did smile once," he recalled recently, "in a fadeout where I was supposed to get the girl. We thought people would say, 'Oh, goody, Keaton smiled.' But do you know what the preview audience said? 'Look, the bum's laughing.' We had to cut it out." Which was the way Keaton always wanted it; he never doubted that the smiles would be waiting for him on the other side of the screen.

* Their only child, Actor William Hopper, plays Detective Paul Drake on the Perry Mason show.

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