Writing
As Hopper's movie career waned in the mid-1930s, she looked for other sources of income. In 1935, she agreed to write a weekly Hollywood gossip column for The Washington Herald at $50 a week (equivalent to $1,174 in 2025), which was cancelled after four months when she refused to take a $15 pay cut. In 1937, Hopper was offered another gossip column opportunity, this time with the Los Angeles Times. Her column, entitled "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood", debuted on February 14, 1938. Hopper could not type, nor spell very well, so she dictated her column to a typist over the phone. Hopper used her extensive contacts forged during her acting days to gather material for her column. Her first major scoop had national implications: in 1939, Hopper printed that President Franklin Roosevelt's son James Roosevelt was divorcing his wife Betsey after being caught in an affair with a nurse at the Mayo Clinic.
Part of Hopper's public image was her fondness for wearing extravagant hats, for which the Internal Revenue Service allowed her a $5,000 annual tax deduction as a work expense. During the Second World War, the Nazis used photographs of Hopper in her extravagant hats for propaganda, as a symbol of "American decadence". Her annual income was $250,000, enabling her to live a luxurious lifestyle and maintain a mansion in Beverly Hills, which she described as "the house that fear built".
After Hopper printed a story about an extramarital affair between Joseph Cotten and Deanna Durbin, Cotten ran into Hopper at a social event and pulled out her chair, only to continue pulling it out from under her when she sat down and then kick her in the rear. The next day, he received dozens of flower bouquet deliveries and congratulatory telegrams from others in the industry, thanking him for having the courage to do what everyone else dreamed of doing. Cotten later threatened Hopper that he would kick her again if she kept slandering him.
Hopper spread rumors that Michael Wilding and Stewart Granger had a sexual relationship. Her 1962 book The Whole Truth and Nothing But, which she promoted on the CBS television series What’s My Line?, included a chapter in which Hopper asserted their relationship was a fact. Wilding sued Hopper for libel and won.
Hopper was an advocate for actress Joan Crawford, whose career suffered in the early 1940s after she was labelled "Box-Office Poison" and forced to resign from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1945, Hopper reprinted a press release for Mildred Pierce in her column, which described Crawford as a leading contender for the Best Actress Oscar. Such was Hopper's influence that she was credited with swinging the decision in Crawford's favor when she won the award. Hopper's support has been described as the first instance of lobbying the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to favor a certain nominee.
Hopper lobbied for African American actor James Baskett to receive an Academy Award for his performance in the 1946 film Song of the South. Baskett would ultimately receive an honorary award for his performance. Actress ZaSu Pitts compared Hopper to "a ferret". Joan Bennett sent Hopper a "$35 valentine. The $35 went for a skunk which carried a note: 'Won't you be my valentine? Nobody else will. I stink and so do you.'" Hopper reportedly commented that the skunk was beautifully behaved. She called it Joan, and passed it on to actor James Mason and his wife as a present, as they had made the first bid after the story about the unusual gift made the news.
During World War II, Hopper's only child, actor William "Bill" Hopper, served in the Navy in Underwater Demolitions. She chastised Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the son of her old friend Douglas Fairbanks, because she thought the younger Fairbanks was shirking his duty to his country. Fairbanks Jr. recalled in his memoirs Salad Days that he was already in uniform serving in the United States Navy, and despised Hopper for her insinuations.
Actor Kirk Douglas recounted an interaction between Hopper and Elizabeth Taylor. At the premiere of Taylor and her husband Richard Burton's film The Sandpiper (1965), Hopper began to complain when she saw screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's screen credit (she had led the charge in blacklisting Trumbo for his Communist party membership). This caused Taylor to turn around and say "Hedda, why don't you just shut the fuck up?"
In 1963, Hopper complained in her column that three out of five Best Actor Oscar nominees were British and only two were American: "The weather's so foul on that tight little isle that, to get in out of the rain, they all gather in theatres and practise Hamlet on each other."
