Word: haber
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...responsible for reviving a dying institution-the Hollywood gossip column. Even before Louella Parsons' retirement in 1965 and Hedda Hopper's death in 1966, movieland chatter seemed to have lost its appeal. Did anyone really care any longer about those dreary Hollywood divorces and adulteries? Still, Haber's column, syndicated for little more than a year and now running in 93 newspapers, has won a sizable general readership as well as the respect and fear of cinematic celebrities. For good reason. Haber is more intelligent, more accurate-and often more malicious-than her predecessors...
...Hedda Haber," as she is known in some quarters, often employs the "blind" gossip item, using initials that have meaning in Hollywood and whet curiosity elsewhere. The device makes some of her columns look like alphabet soup. But, she insists, "the public loves to guess." In one of her columns, she told how "Miss PP" (for Prim and Proper) berated "Mr. VV" (Visually Virile) for what she called "his on-screen presence" while shooting a picture. "But I'm the leading lady, dear," the actress was reported to have remarked to her costar. To many in Hollywood, the initials...
Wall-to-Wall Hips. For the Times's Sunday supplement, Haber usually does interviews expanded by well-researched background material. Often sympathetic, especially about her favorites, she can also be sarcastic, as she showed when she cut up Julie Andrews: "There is a kind of flowering dullness about her, a boredom in rosy bloom-she is about as seductive as the average waitress at a teahouse." At times, she can be downright mean. Melina Mercouri, she reported, "had wall-to-wall hips, an ear-to-ear mouth, and more teeth than a pretzel has salt." Occasionally, the sarcasm cuts...
Some of her victims wish they had a column in which to call her something like Miss VV (Vile and Vicious) or BB (Biting and Bitchy). Sweet Julie Andrews drops her Mary Poppins mask and says of Haber: "She needs open-heart surgery-and they should go in through her feet." Director Blake Edwards charges that "Haber's writing is so blatantly vicious and her motivation so disturbed that she really adds up to a psychiatric case...
Columnist Haber has a sure instinct for social snobbery. As she analyzes it, Hollywood has two kinds of parties: "A" and "B". An A party is served by the host's staff, starts at 9 p.m., and calls for either no tie or black tie. A B party is catered by Chasen's, starts at 7:30, requires a dark suit and has a receiving line. As for her own parties, they are a mixture that rates about...