Media

TRICKS OF THE TRADES

BY LIZ SMITH

Photographs by FIROOZ ZAHEDI

Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons are no longer the talk of the town. The new breed of Hollywood journalists stress the business—not the show

Once upon a time, the residents of Hollywood lay, like the citizens of Oz, under long shadows cast by the wicked witches of the West. Reigning supreme over moviedom were two competing middle-aged gossip harpies. Their crazy flowered hats couldn't conceal their unquenchable thirst for control.

Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were created by the studios themselves. Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Jack Warner thought that they could better oversee what was printed about their volatile stars and film productions if they co-opted these batty old warhorses.

But Hedda, with her pretty face and ideology just slightly to Hitler's right, and Louella, with her inevitable cocktail and Hearst-backed whim of iron, became the brides of Frankenstein. As their influence grew, they escaped the grasp of the potentates who had granted them their absolute—and absolutely corrupting—power. And for eons they ruled.

Hollywood is a much different place now. Stars, tycoons, agents, flacks, and other assorted movie types roam without fetter, relatively careless of the press. Titillation, gossip, and rumor still exist, but scandal is pretty much left to the supermarket and TV tabloids—outlets which can be ignored or dismissed, albeit with gritted teeth from many a publicist. The over-reaching power of the Hollywood press has been vitiated and watered down by the most mass of the mass media. America is different, too. Changing mores have destigmatized out-of-wedlock babies, adultery, even drugs and other forms of once-frowned-upon recreation. It's not just the closet that has been opened; it's more like Pandora's box.

The emphasis these days is on money, the true underlying reality of Hoilywood, the one that has made Los Angeles the epitome of the old Yankee slogan “The Business of America Is Business!” People want to know about boardrooms, budgets, box office, and the billions generated by our nation's most visible and perhaps influential export.

Despite the change, two small, very special and important publications still stand astride today's metaphorical Hollywood and Vine. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety are the movie world's Colossi of Rhodes, and are fiercely competitive. Face it, this is Hollywood.

The Hollywood Reporter appears five days a week and publishes a large international edition on Tuesdays. Variety is a daily, too, but it also publishes a giant weekly issue. These slicks, each with a daily circulation of around 24,000, are called “the trades,” and from box-office tallies to the bidding wars for superstars, they supply the facts and figures that fuel many an industry decision.

The journalists who produce these necessities aren't gossips any longer; Hollywood has learned its lesson. Today's trade papers—and their reporters-are “respectable.” Robert Dowling is the handsome, big-brotherly fellow who oversees The Hollywood Reporter and helps supervise the world's largest network of entertainment-related publications and services. (BPI Communications' holdings also include Billboard, Musician, Music & Media, AdWeek, Amusement Business,and Back Stage West.) Dowling, who recently won the Crain Award, given by the American Business Press for his distinguished editorial career, has revitalized the Reporter, which went through a rocky period about 10 years back. He has supervised a major redesign, which includes expanded photography and graphics, and greater international coverage. Dowling has also opened the paper to video, cable, marketing, and electronic developments. “Is there any difference between The Hollywood Reporter and Variety?” he asks rhetorically. “I think there is now editorial parity between the two. Sometimes Variety breaks a story first, the next day we do.

But we also have a lot of ‘magazine’ publishing within the paper. We have approximately 90 special issues a year, many more than Variety. We are sensitive to the marketplace, not to our competitors.”

Responding to criticism that he is just an ad salesman and to the idea that the Reporter takes P.R. handouts, Dowling says, “Well, we do consider and use press releases. But we do many service things, such as the Oscar-screenings guide and the box-office previews on Friday. We are heavy into technology and the interactive area. Fifty percent of those who subscribe to the Reporter don't read Variety. We have a mature staff of real reporters, about 145 people. We take this book very seriously. This is not a hobby. Movies are a consequential business, and we are the paper of that business. Variety has always followed us. I believe The Hollywood Reporter is the leader in the industry.”

It's not just the closet that has beer. opened; it's more like Pandora's box.

In his Reporter, Dowling has a num ber of columnists, but the one who at tracts the most attention is the unique and genial George Christy. Chris ty came to the Re porter from Town & Country maga zine, bringing with him an interest in the kind of old-fash ioned “social life” that is all but extinct in work-oriented L.A. Christy says his forte is “sharing discoveries of the things one comes across.” He zeroes in on parties, events, and new Hollywood hangouts, and is usually the first to call the last to public attention. Wolfgang Puck says George Christy is “the god father of Spago,” a restaurant Christy wrote about the week it opened. He was also the first to tout the Ivy, the Ivy at the Shore, Chinois, Granita, Giorgio, Drai's, Mortons, and Cicada.

Now and then Christy prints real scoops and news, but he's just as apt to interview authors, discuss doctors of consequence who cater to the health mad Hollywood community, and inter view directors and actors who have es caped momentarily from the wary eyes of their public-relations specialists. Christy is witty and benign, a far cry from the killer columnists of the past. He is a journalistic confectioner, the kind the town would have had to invent if he hadn't invented himself.

Peter Bart is the wired, wiry editorial director of both the daily and weekly Variety. Bart has impeccable showbiz credentials and the kind of inherent skepticism one would expect of a 10-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. And he is one of the few journalists in Hollywood who have had actual film-business experience. In 1967, Bart joined Paramount and played a key role in developing and supervising such films as The Godfather, Paper Moon, True Grit, and Rosemary's Baby. He also worked at MGM/UA and Lorimar. His column in the weekly Variety is widely read among the cognoscenti.

Variety's 90-year-old tradition as “the Bible of Show Business” was well established before Bart. But he led the grand old girl West, moving the main editorial operation from Manhattan to Hollywood about a year and a half ago. This has increased the paper's stature on the West Coast.

Bart, like Dowling, dismisses his com petition. “Not news oriented,” he says of the Reporter, “not journal ism, full of puff pieces.” He dubs the Reporter's special edi tions “advertorials” and claims that “Variety is pulling ahead. We have real movie savvy. Our real compe tition is The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeks Times. Ours is a tough newspaper.”

Variety's most treasured asset, ac cording to Bart, is a dynamo of energy named Army Archerd. This veteran of the three-dot-column wars is a throw back to Winchell, without the ego. His journalistic biography is virtually unread able; it runs thousands of lines single-spaced and boggles the mind. Known as “Mr. Hollywood,” Archerd boasts an old-fashioned perpetual-motion news man's energy and a long-standing reputa tion for accuracy and fair play. Archerd recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his “Just for Variety” column, and millions worldwide know him from his annual appearance at the Oscars. On July 23, 1985, Archerd broke one of Hollywood's biggest stories when he re vealed that Rock Hudson had AIDS. Some were shocked by this, but Archerd was just doing his job. And for a jour nalist in Hollywood, that's the ticket.

The Hollywood ReporterandVarietyare the movie world's Colossi of Rhodes. They arefiercely competitive.