From Under my Hat [*SIGNED*]

Garden City NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1952. First Edition. Hardcover. [very nice copy with minimal shelfwear; jacket is lightly edgeworn, with minor scuffing to the front panel, faint soiling to the rear panel]. (B&W photographs on endpapers) SIGNED by the author (no inscription) on a tipped-in leaf following the front endpaper. Memoir by the woman who transformed herself from a moderately successful stage and screen actress to one of the most widely-read (and feared) commentators on the Hollywood scene, via her column "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," which debuted on Valentine's Day(!) in 1938 and graced (if that's the word) the nation's newspapers every day thereafter until the day she died of pneumonia in 1966. Given her reputation, her book is a little on the tame side (she even manages to be polite about arch-rival Louella Parsons); the New York Times critic nailed it when he called it "a breezy compilation of fan magazine confidences, coy candor, [and] amusing or pointless anecdotes." The notable exception comes in Chapter 13, when she brings out her sharpest knives for the purpose of skewering Charlie Chaplin for his various personal and political transgressions (not failing to toss out an aside directed at "his friends and fellow travelers"). Hopper, of course, was the Queen of the Red-baiters, and among the loudest voices in the chorus that resulted in Chaplin's banishment from the U.S. Not to suggest any cause and effect, but it's still interesting to note that Chaplin was refused re-entry into the country just a couple of weeks after the publication of Hopper's book. Signed by Author .