Hedda Hopper makes a brief cameo at the end of Sunset Boulevard (1950) as a Hollywood gossip columnist, her real job, bringing realism and authentic people into a film filled with stories of manipulation and lies. Sunset Boulevard follows aging silent film star, Norma Desmond as she attempts to make a comeback to film. She hires young screenwriter Joe Gillis, who believes he can manipulate Norma to benefit himself. The story turns to one of violence, madness, and death as the film goes on. Hedda Hopper appears at the end of the film, phoning the newspaper from inside Norma Desmond’s mansion, racing to be the first to break the news of the murder. Hedda Hopper takes control of the whole scene and the single telephone line in the master bedroom to break the news of the murder, “Times City Desk? Hedda Hopper speaking. I’m talking from the bedroom of Norma Desmond. Don’t bother with a rewrite man. Take it direct. Ready? ‘As day breaks over the murder house, Norma Desmond, famous star of yesteryear, is in a state of complete mental shock. A curtain of silence seems to have fallen around her. She sits in the silken boudoir of her house…’” (Sunset Boulevard, 1950). Hedda Hopper playing herself is not something seen often in films today and is an example of “the declining recognizability of bit players and extras in the ‘New Hollywood’ films of the late 1960s onwards” (124) as discussed by Will Straw in his article Scales of presence: Bess Flowers and the Hollywood extra. As a cameo, Hedda Hopper stands out as herself in this fictional reality of Hollywood, unlike other female extras that Heidi Kenaga discusses in her article on ‘Promoting the Hollywood Extra Girl. Kenaga says most women background players typically fade into the background of a film. In her scene, Hedda Hopper does not fade into the background but captures audiences with her real-life gossip columnist attitude and cameo appearance.
Works Cited
Kenaga, H. “Promoting Hollywood Extra Girl (1935).” Screen, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 82–88., https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq062.
Straw, Will. “Scales of presence: Bess Flowers and the Hollywood extra.” Screen, vol. 52, no. 1, March 2011, pp. 121 – 127. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq061
Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, performances by Gloria Swanson, William Holden and Erich von Stroheim, Paramount Pictures Studios, 1950.
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