MARILYN BECK WAS A RELUCTANT HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP

beck1n-1-webcut

The late Marilyn Beck was a piece of Hollywood history. We had the pleasure of appearing with her on The Gossip Show on E! in the 1990’s. She considered herself a serious journalist and didn’t love the word “gossip.” Indeed, she preferred being friendly with celebrities and writing more about their projects than private lives. Marilyn was a syndicated writer in the days when it really meant something – in the 70’s and 80’s her column appeared in hundreds of newspapers and she had 20 million readers. In spite of the fact that she looked down on our obvious delight in juicy gossip, she was always friendly and professional, and she will be missed. Certainly she took a plenty of Hollywood secrets with her.
(Above, Marilyn with George Burns)

11 Comments

11 thoughts on “MARILYN BECK WAS A RELUCTANT HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP

  1. Much removed from the made up rubbish you have on your site Janet. She would have never had celebrity children featured.

  2. I worked for Marilyn Beck for a few months just before landing my job with STAR. I don’t even remember how I got the job — but it wasn’t advertised. She ALWAYS referred to herself as an entertainment writer and hated, I mean, HATED, being called a gossip columnist. She — along with myself and another senior writer — worked out of her home in Laurel Canyon. It was WAY up in the Canyon, so I brought a sack lunch every day. One quirk is that she had a Hispanic couple come in EVERY DAY to clean her house — and she always left early on Friday to get out to her weekend retreat in, I think, Balboa Island. This was pre-Internet, so her senior writer would someone, through early technology, get her column to her syndicated boss late in the week. She was always very, very nice until I let her know I had found another job — then, she wasn’t. 🙂

  3. Yes Indeed!!
    I am part of that era of readers who looked forward to reading Marilyn’s columns. She did Not appear to be Miss Hollywood, but more of a humbled writer who wrote a column about some of our favorite entertainers, and public figures. Dare I say it, Joan Rivers is the total opposite of mild mannered Marilyn Beck. Just Saying!!

  4. wow, thanks Hilary for sharing that bit. Very interesting!

  5. She was less reluctant to sample:

    MILTON BERLE
    Milton Berle may be dead, but the legend of Hollywood’s most famous dong lives on. Over the course of his career, the late actor became as well known for his prodigious penis as he was for his comedy. Berle’s wang was so large that comedian Phil Silvers once snuck a peek while taking a leak and said, “You’d better feed that thing, or it’s liable to turn on you!” Even after Uncle Milte’s 2002 passing, people were talking about his member. During a memorial service, a comedian friend of Berle’s announced, “On May 1 and May 2, his penis will be buried.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *