The Press: Being Catty to Columnists

Pamela Mason, the all-but-divorced wife of Actor James Mason, is an English-born, middle-aged chatterbox whose very conversation is constructed like a Hollywood gossip column. Mostly, she has confined her monologues to parties and daily appearances on radio and TV, but neither medium was just the right setting for a woman with Pamela's natural dagger-turn of phrase. Last week she announced that she was about to be put in her proper place at last. Soon, she said, she will begin writing a Hollywood column just like Hedda and Lolly. Columnist Mason's paper: The Chicago Sun-Times.

"If they ever have another filibuster in Washington, Pamela should lead it," says Groucho Marx. "She's the steadiest-talking woman I ever encountered. It's invariably about sex—but that's an interesting subject to me."

"I don't want to do gossip," Pamela says defensively. "I do opinion. Movie-star gossip isn't interesting unless you're having an affair with Richard Burton."

Her opinions are as trim and sharp as she is. Her two-word review of Irving Shulman's biography of Jean Harlow was: "Shocking puce." Her general code is: "You should be vicious only if you have something to be vicious about." And—regardless of whether it is called gossip or opinion—she sees no reason not to be vicious about actors if she wants to be. "I don't think actors have any right to private lives," she says. "If they want to have privacy, they shouldn't be actors. I don't like cowards who stick their necks out and then scream and run. You can't have it both ways."

As for Hedda and Louella, she says: "I challenge them, because they're passe. Louella has a gushing attitude toward the whole industry and neither she nor Hedda writes her own column. Hedda's not a writer. I am. I've written books and novels." She has, at that. One work in progress: Woman of the Worldmanship, originally titled Hollywood Be Thy Name.