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This is one source of Hedda's power. When self-doubt stabs, she and Lolly, her redoubtable counterpart, pour on the balm. But the hand that drops the balm is also armed with claws. And Hedda's claws have grown long and sharp since she discovered her powers.
Fighting Quaker. Where did this terror of the tycoons, this gorgon of gossip, spring from? Like most great legends, Hedda's girlhood, as she recalls it, is swirled in mist, lit by occasional flashes of fire. She was born Elda Furry, in Hollidaysburg, Pa. (near Altoona), in 1890. Her father, a meat dealer descended from a long line of Quaker ministers, begot a long line of children (nine), of whom Elda was No. 5.
She was a fighter from the start. She fought her father because he was stingy. She fought her grandfather, who owned 20 farms, because he was even stingier. After a delicious sneak into Altoona to see Ethel Barrymore in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Elda (then 17) fought her way out of the family, once & for all, and headed for Manhattan and the stage. She brought with her from Hollidaysburg two permanent assets: her talons, and an inviolable core of Quaker staidness. "Hedda," says a friend, "is a Quaker from the mouth down."
In 1913, Elda replaced Ina Claire in the road company of The Quaker Girl. The show closed in Buffalo, and as Elda stepped off the milk train in Manhattan, DeWolf Hopper, having just divorced his fourth wife, was waiting on the platform to marry her. From that sensationally popular musical comedy star, Elda acquired a dressing-room knowledge of practically everybody on the stage. She also acquired a son, William DeWolf Jr., and a new first, as well as a new last name. For in their honeymoon days,
"Wolfie," who had some difficulty getting Elda's name straight, used to rub the bloom off their tenderest moments by murmuring into her hair, "Ella," or "Ida," or "Edna," or "Nella" (the names of his previous wives). With the help of a numerologist, she converted Elda into Hedda and Wolfie never barked up the wrong tree again.
Movie-Mad. Nevertheless, in 1922, Hedda divorced DeWolf, who objected to her movie career and resented her equal earning power ($1,000 a week). For Hedda was there when the flickers were born. She knew Hollywood in 1915, when it was a village near Los Angeles. She knew Sam Goldwyn when his name was Goldfish, and played in several of his pictures in the Biograph studio on New Jersey's Palisades.
During the shooting of a thing called Virtuous Wives, a silent little man prowled about, peering at everything. Nobody seemed to know who he was, or why. When the picture was finished, the little man approached Hedda and thanked her handsomely for all she had done for the show. "That's very nice," said Hedda, in her rather imperial way, "but who are you?" "I'm Louis Mayer. I'm the producer, and this is my first picture. And," he added respectfully, "I know everything that's gone on."