Actress turned gossip columnist.
Comedian Red Skelton once painted a rather cartoonish portrait in oil of Hedda and gave it to her. Her son William Hopper owned the work until his death. Today it is worth about $22,000.
First worked as a silent film actress for Samuel Goldwyn's film company under dismal conditions in Fort Lee, New Jersey, probably around 1917. The dressing rooms and offices were in an abandoned barn with thin wooden partitions and no ceilings.
Hedda's husband, DeWolf Hopper Sr., was the one who made Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat" famous, performing it over 10,000 times.
Hedda's political allies/sources in the 1940s and 1950s included such heavyweights in right-wing circles as Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Howard Hughes, Ronald Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover and William Randolph Hearst. She had unlimited sources of "dirt" on the entertainment industry through her relationship with Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI; she tried to have Citizen Kane (1941) pulled from release because of her friendship with Hearst (the film was a thinly disguised biography of Hearst); she aided McCarthy in outing "liberal" actors; she helped jump-start Reagan into politics; and she refused to board a plane unless Hughes personally inspected it.
Is portrayed by Jane Alexander in Malice in Wonderland (1985) (TV), by Alice Backes in Gable and Lombard (1976), by Katherine Helmond in Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story (1995) (TV), and Joanne Linville in James Dean (2001) (TV).
Mother of actor William Hopper
Raised in a strict Quaker home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
Ran away from home at the age of 18 and went to New York City where she got a job in the chorus of an opera company.
She changed her published birthdate from May 2, 1885 to June 2, 1890 in order to conceal her actual age.
She died on the same day as her The Stolen Jools (1931), Speak Easily (1932) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) co-star Buster Keaton.