Though she started out acting, what really made Hedda Hopper famous was her work in newspapers. For several decades, she could make or break a movie career with her gossip column, sending statements to print regardless of whether there was any actual proof of what she claimed.

Research: 

• Collins, Amy Fine. “The Powerful Rivalry of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.” Vanity Fair. April 1997. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/rivalry-hedda-hopper-louella-parsons-gossip-columnists
• Eells, George. “Hedda and Louella.” W.H. Allen. Virgin Books. 1972.
• Ephron, Nora. “Hedda and Louella.” New York Times. April 23, 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/23/archives/hedda-and-louella-by-george-eells-illustrated-360-pp-new-york-g-p-p.html
• FROST, JENNIFER. “‘GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD COMPANY’: HEDDA HOPPER, HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP, AND THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHARLIE CHAPLIN, 1940-1952.” Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2007, pp. 74–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054077
• “Hedda Hopper, Columnist, Dies; Chronicled Gossip of Hollywood.” New York Times. Feb. 2, 1966. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/02/02/79310265.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
• “Hollywood’s Godmother to Give Views on Past, Present, Future.” The Tampa Tribune. Jan. 10, 1960. https://www.newspapers.com/image/329731973/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1
• Hopper, Hedda. “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood.” The Shreveport Journal. October 4, 1938. https://www.newspapers.com/image/600365053/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1
• Peak, Mamie Ober. “Social Butterfly of Screen a Different Person at Home.” Hartford Courant. Jan 10, 1932. https://www.newspapers.com/image/369469825/?terms=hedda%20hopper&match=1
• Sbardellati, John and Tony Shaw. “Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America.” The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 495-530. University of California Press. https://web.viu.ca/davies/H323Vietnam/CharlieChaplin.McCarthyism.pdf
• “William Randolph Hearst’s Campaign to Suppress Citizen Kane.” American Experience. PBS. April 30, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/kane-william-randolph-hearst-campaign-suppress-citizen-kane/