Word: elda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fighting Quaker. Where did this terror of the tycoons, this gorgon of gossip, spring from? Like most great legends, Hedda's girlhood, as she recalls it, is swirled in mist, lit by occasional flashes of fire. She was born Elda Furry, in Hollidaysburg, Pa. (near Altoona), in 1890. Her father, a meat dealer descended from a long line of Quaker ministers, begot a long line of children (nine), of whom Elda...
...fighter from the start. She fought her father because he was stingy. She fought her grandfather, who owned 20 farms, because he was even stingier. After a delicious sneak into Altoona to see Ethel Barrymore in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Elda (then 17) fought her way out of the family, once & for all, and headed for Manhattan and the stage. She brought with her from Hollidaysburg two permanent assets: her talons, and an inviolable core of Quaker staidness. "Hedda," says a friend, "is a Quaker from the mouth down...
...Elda replaced Ina Claire in the road company of The Quaker Girl. The show closed in Buffalo, and as Elda stepped off the milk train in Manhattan, DeWolf Hopper, having just divorced his fourth wife, was waiting on the platform to marry her. From that sensationally popular musical comedy star, Elda acquired a dressing-room knowledge of practically everybody on the stage. She also acquired a son, William DeWolf Jr., and a new first, as well as a new last name. For in their honeymoon days...
...Wolfie," who had some difficulty getting Elda's name straight, used to rub the bloom off their tenderest moments by murmuring into her hair, "Ella," or "Ida," or "Edna," or "Nella" (the names of his previous wives). With the help of a numerologist, she converted Elda into Hedda and Wolfie never barked up the wrong tree again...
...Elda bought the old Weaver homestead, which had passed out of the family. The early years were hard, but the Kuesters pulled through, says Gus, "by chickens, hogs and going without." They pulled through also thanks to the patient devotion of Elda Kuester. Over the years hogs paid the mortgage (today the land is worth $225 an acre), and the Kuesters received the final patent of ownership: the neighbors began to call the old Weaver place the Kuester farm. There were born Dale and a pretty daughter, Shirley, now 19, who sometimes acts as her father's official secretary...