Where are all the bodies buried

Louella Parsons knew. She chronicled film from the dawn of motion pictures to the end of the big studios. She began as a story editor in the age of silent movies; however on loosing her job she turned to journalism in Chicago. She moved on to New York and then California. She became one of the most powerful film critic/gossip columnists of her age, an age that lasted several decades. At her senith she had 40 million readers. She told the world a sanitized version of the lives of stars... unless you displeased either she or Mr. Hearst. Then she could crush a career in a few words.

The First Lady of Hollywood : A Biography of Louella Parsons is the first big biography of Parsons and shoots holes in her autobiography, which glossed over the less socially acceptable parts of her life. I found it interesting and well written, but at times a little academic in it's style.