She had been a small-time actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write a column ‘Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood’ in the Los Angeles Times in 1938. This revealed a gift for invective so vicious that it brought physical retaliation from Spencer Tracy and Joseph Cotton, among others, and she also named suspected communists in the McCarthy era. Hopper continued to write gossip to the end, her work appearing in countless magazines and later on radio.