As I rang the doorbell of the five-bedroom, Spanish-style Beverly Hills house, I braced myself for ghosts. The previous owner, Clifton Webb, reputedly never really moved out. Then, too, I half expected the ghost of Hedda Hopper to come at me with a hatpin. Instead I was greeted by Hedda's spiritual [as it were] successor, Joyce Haber, Hollywood's new No. 1 voyeur. I was ushered past an epoxy statue by Frank Gallo of a naked girl [Joyce likes to strip people naked) and a Tony Curtis box made especially for Joyce and featuring an old fashioned toilet chain.
At 38, Miss Haber was trim enough to show her Donald Brooks suit off to best advantage, but her blue eyes had long since lost their little-girl luminosity; it was almost as if they had already seen so much they had turned to marble. Her face had that blowsy, drowsy look, the kind people get when they have slept too long, or not at all. These nights, sleep is scarce. Plopping down on a two-seater sofa in her workroom, Joyce explained: "This is really a Hide-A-Bed. I have to get up at 5:30 to do my column; so I sleep out here instead of bothering my husband. The messenger from the Times comes at 8:30."
Thus reported TIME Correspondent Jon Larsen on his encounter with the woman who is responsible for reviving a dying institution—the Hollywood gossip column. Even before Louella Parsons' retirement in 1965 and Hedda Hopper's death in 1966, movieland chatter seemed to have lost its appeal. Did anyone really care any longer about those dreary Hollywood divorces and adulteries? Still, Haber's column, syndicated for little more than a year and now running in 93 newspapers, has won a sizable general readership as well as the respect and fear of cinematic celebrities. For good reason. Haber is more intelligent, more accurate—and often more malicious—than her predecessors.
Her column carries the usual trivia about Who Wore What to Whose Party. Although many of her trade items intrigue only insiders, they reflect professional savvy. Above all, she publishes tidbits about twosomes (or threesomes or foursomes) that even today's permissive society still finds at least mildly tantalizing.
"Hedda Haber," as she is known in some quarters, often employs the "blind" gossip item, using initials that have meaning in Hollywood and whet curiosity elsewhere. The device makes some of her columns look like alphabet soup. But, she insists, "the public loves to guess." In one of her columns, she told how "Miss PP" (for Prim and Proper) berated "Mr. VV" (Visually Virile) for what she called "his on-screen presence" while shooting a picture. "But I'm the leading lady, dear," the actress was reported to have remarked to her costar. To many in Hollywood, the initials meant Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson. If most of her items involve sex, well, explains Joyce, "I value things that are offbeat, and I guess a lot of offbeat things are sexual."