It sometimes feels like TMZ and Kris Jenner invented our 24/7 infotainment world all by themselves. But the gossip business is nothing new, and in her heyday, nobody was bigger than Rona Barrett.
That’s according to Anne Helen Peterson over at BuzzFeed, writing about a woman whose onetime dominance has been poorly remembered. Now 79, Barrett has long since gotten out of the business—she basically walked away in the late 1980s. For years she ran a lavender farm; Peterson notes that, “She agreed to talk only because she knew it would publicize her quest to provide housing for low-income seniors,” which is her current project. But once she was in the center of the Hollywood action, and the piece is consequently packed with entertaining details. For example:
Her 1974 memoir, Miss Rona, had sold over half a million copies, in part due to its irresistible lede: “Just an inch, Miss Rona, just let me put it in an inch!” Barrett attributed the come-on to a “major masculine Hollywood star,” and rumors swirled as to his identity. It couldn’t be Frank Sinatra, who’d taken to calling Barrett horrible names at every concert — or Love Story star Ryan O’Neal, who’d sent Barrett a live tarantula.
She had a newspaper column for a time, but it was in the late 1960s, when Barrett got onto TV, that her career really took off. (“It’s inane. It’s trivial triumphant. It’s delicious,” the New York Times reviewed her.) Though she often dealt with blatant disrespect:
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