The Golden Globes and How They Began
by Josephine Laing
Gandhi said that everything that we do is absolutely insignificant but that it is essential that we do it. Back in the 1940's my grandmother helped start a phone tree that grew to become the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with their Golden Globes Awards show. Who could have guessed, from such humble beginnings?
It came about because my grandmother, Nora Laing, being a British born American was writing for newspapers abroad. She wrote regular columns for the "Evening News" and the "News Chronicle" in England and for the "Thomson Press" in Scotland as well as the "Outspan" of South Africa. Her editors had her covering all of the big California stories of the day. But what her readers really went wild about were her stories about Hollywood stars. So she shifted the focus of her news reporting in that direction.
In a way, she was perhaps one of the first international gossip columnists. And we all know how popular magazines like "People" are to this day. One of my chiropractor friends can drop any other periodical from his office magazine pile without so much as a whisper from his clientele, but if he drops "People" everyone is in an uproar. For some reason we all love to know about the intimate details of the lives of celebrities. And so did my grandmother's London, Scotland and South African readers.
The problem was that the publicity departments of the various studios, in Hollywood where she lived, focused their press contacts on dependable, stable organizations that informed American news sources like the "New York Times" and the "San Francisco Chronicle." But they were frustrated by the various somewhat disorganized and too often short lived international press contacts. And they certainly couldn't be bothered to call a bunch of individuals who all spoke with different peculiar sounding foreign accents and who had funny sounding, largely unpronounceable names. So foreign correspondents, including my grandmother, frequently got left out and would only hear about big Hollywood events after they had already taken place.
This incensed my otherwise polite and well mannered grandmother. Because on more than one occasion a prominent English star like Charlie Chaplin or Laurence Olivier would come out with a new movie and the studios would hold a big interview for the press with a private pre-release screening of the new film without informing her. So she called the studios and asked why, as a prominent English correspondent, she had been excluded. And the exasperated press secretaries would complain that the two foreign organizations that had briefly come and gone were clearly undependable and short lived and that there were too many foreign individuals to call and they just couldn't cope with keeping track of them all. So, Nonie asked each of them if they would please just call her and promised that she personally would take care of the rest. With that she started her phone tree.
Many of the celebrities were very happy about it too. Both Chaplin and Olivier wrote my grandmother on several occasions to thank her. They not only had family and friends abroad who loved to read the news about their films, but also the stars, their agents and producers loved the widespread international publicity. And of course, the foreign correspondents and their international journals flourished as the news of celebrities churned more reliably out of Hollywood.
After my grandmother passed away, my father inherited boxes of old photographs, eight and a half by eleven inch glossy black and whites of stars in action shots, stars relaxing on the set, stars in their homes with their families and dogs and stars with my grandmother standing by their sides. We kept a few, but most of these have long since moved on, placed in the hands of people who collect such Hollywood memorabilia. But it was fun to look back on the fruits of my grandmother's early and then lifelong labors.
After the humble beginnings of the phone tree, she and four others formed the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association in 1943. I remember hearing stories of the long hours Nonie would put in at her kitchen table late into the night, back in the early early formative years of the Association. She would be making contacts, organizing meetings, typing up minutes, and following up on commitments and obligations. Though diminutive in size, she was not so in stature. As a young woman, she had been sent from her home in South Africa to finishing schools in France and Dresden. There she studied deportment, and music, learned her craft of writing and studied the arts. She had impeccable social graces and excellent posture. She could actually walk and even dance with a book balanced on her head. And though she was always socially very sweet and kind, and quick to smile, she had a presence and a class about her that was never an affectation, but was simply a part of who she truly was.
In 1950, the group became known as The Foreign Press Association of Hollywood and then assumed it's current name of The Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1955, the year that I was born. My grandmother served as president for one of the early terms just after their first gala event which was the most elaborate awards banquet that had ever been held by a journalistic club. There was discussion about what the actual award should be. At first some thought it should be a golden pen. But somehow that seemed to be too plebeian and didn't quite express their international reach. So eventually the globe was settled on depicting all of the countries of the world, many of which were represented by correspondents within the organization.
When I became old enough to drive, my job was to chauffeur my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, all active members, who were at the time each writing for different foreign papers, to the interviews with the stars down at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Saturday mornings. My mother was a depression era farm girl from Nebraska for whom Hollywood was like the Land of Oz. As a girl growing up, she never would have believed that one day she'd sit and meet and talk at length with a room full of celebrities. My aunt, on the other hand, grew up on the sets of Hollywood. She'd met most of the stars of the day by the time she was twelve and even did a little work in the industry herself, as an extra, being very good at gymnastics and somewhat of a budding contortionist. So she could relate to the actors and actresses as someone who was familiar with their craft. Currently at the age of ninety one, she is the unofficial historian for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association having been intimately involved in it's activities since before it's inception.
On those Saturday mornings we met with: Meryl Streep, Shirley McLaine, Jessica Lange, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins, Diana Ross, Henry Fonda and many many more. You name them, they were there, all the big names along with all of the aspiring ingenues. Sometimes on those Saturday mornings, we'd go down to the studios and watch the actors and actresses at work on the set. But most commonly we went down to the hotel where they would sit at a long table at the front of the room with the studio's press secretaries and their agents at their sides. The actors would be introduced by their agents and then they and their studio representatives would speak a little bit about an upcoming film to the twenty or thirty members who were present that day from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The press members were seated at a number of little round tables with their notebooks and lots of fancy pastries, coffee and tea.
As a mere chauffeur, I was relegated to a small table at the very back of the room and had to be absolutely on my best behavior. And I'm fein to admit, that being a teenager, it was those delicious treats that were my big draw. Of course, this was just a job to me, it was something that I had to do, every Saturday, like it or not. And it was a big part of our families focus, so as a kid, raised in the heart of Hollywood, most of the time, I couldn't have been more bored and all I wanted to do was go and see my friends. Isn't that funny? Ah, the situations and perspectives that life presents us with. And truly, stars are just ordinary people after all. They're no different from you and me in many ways. They have the same foibles and fears. And even at that young age, I could see that too often they have more troubles and difficulties than most folks do.
During the interviews, everyone in the press had their tape recorders lying on the floor in front of the table and they were all free to ask questions. About an hour later after the session was over, they all got individual photos of themselves with the stars to send off to their papers and magazines along with their stories. In the evenings they were invited to attend gala, catered, exclusive pre-release screenings of the films with the producers and often with the stars. Now, those were quite fun. They were more of a free form mingling situation, often with a really good movie. As a young girl, I received plenty of attention and more then once was mistaken for a budding ingenue.
But the big event of the year was always the awards show. I even got to sit on Alfred Hitchcock's lap one year. Back then the Oscars carried more clout, but I'm glad to see that in recent years my grandmother's organization has risen to equal status. You just never know when something as innocent as a phone tree may turn into "a really, really, big show."
© 2011 Josephine Laing
Gandhi said that everything that we do is absolutely insignificant but that it is essential that we do it. Back in the 1940's my grandmother helped start a phone tree that grew to become the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with their Golden Globes Awards show. Who could have guessed, from such humble beginnings?
It came about because my grandmother, Nora Laing, being a British born American was writing for newspapers abroad. She wrote regular columns for the "Evening News" and the "News Chronicle" in England and for the "Thomson Press" in Scotland as well as the "Outspan" of South Africa. Her editors had her covering all of the big California stories of the day. But what her readers really went wild about were her stories about Hollywood stars. So she shifted the focus of her news reporting in that direction.
In a way, she was perhaps one of the first international gossip columnists. And we all know how popular magazines like "People" are to this day. One of my chiropractor friends can drop any other periodical from his office magazine pile without so much as a whisper from his clientele, but if he drops "People" everyone is in an uproar. For some reason we all love to know about the intimate details of the lives of celebrities. And so did my grandmother's London, Scotland and South African readers.
The problem was that the publicity departments of the various studios, in Hollywood where she lived, focused their press contacts on dependable, stable organizations that informed American news sources like the "New York Times" and the "San Francisco Chronicle." But they were frustrated by the various somewhat disorganized and too often short lived international press contacts. And they certainly couldn't be bothered to call a bunch of individuals who all spoke with different peculiar sounding foreign accents and who had funny sounding, largely unpronounceable names. So foreign correspondents, including my grandmother, frequently got left out and would only hear about big Hollywood events after they had already taken place.
This incensed my otherwise polite and well mannered grandmother. Because on more than one occasion a prominent English star like Charlie Chaplin or Laurence Olivier would come out with a new movie and the studios would hold a big interview for the press with a private pre-release screening of the new film without informing her. So she called the studios and asked why, as a prominent English correspondent, she had been excluded. And the exasperated press secretaries would complain that the two foreign organizations that had briefly come and gone were clearly undependable and short lived and that there were too many foreign individuals to call and they just couldn't cope with keeping track of them all. So, Nonie asked each of them if they would please just call her and promised that she personally would take care of the rest. With that she started her phone tree.
Many of the celebrities were very happy about it too. Both Chaplin and Olivier wrote my grandmother on several occasions to thank her. They not only had family and friends abroad who loved to read the news about their films, but also the stars, their agents and producers loved the widespread international publicity. And of course, the foreign correspondents and their international journals flourished as the news of celebrities churned more reliably out of Hollywood.
After my grandmother passed away, my father inherited boxes of old photographs, eight and a half by eleven inch glossy black and whites of stars in action shots, stars relaxing on the set, stars in their homes with their families and dogs and stars with my grandmother standing by their sides. We kept a few, but most of these have long since moved on, placed in the hands of people who collect such Hollywood memorabilia. But it was fun to look back on the fruits of my grandmother's early and then lifelong labors.
After the humble beginnings of the phone tree, she and four others formed the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association in 1943. I remember hearing stories of the long hours Nonie would put in at her kitchen table late into the night, back in the early early formative years of the Association. She would be making contacts, organizing meetings, typing up minutes, and following up on commitments and obligations. Though diminutive in size, she was not so in stature. As a young woman, she had been sent from her home in South Africa to finishing schools in France and Dresden. There she studied deportment, and music, learned her craft of writing and studied the arts. She had impeccable social graces and excellent posture. She could actually walk and even dance with a book balanced on her head. And though she was always socially very sweet and kind, and quick to smile, she had a presence and a class about her that was never an affectation, but was simply a part of who she truly was.
In 1950, the group became known as The Foreign Press Association of Hollywood and then assumed it's current name of The Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1955, the year that I was born. My grandmother served as president for one of the early terms just after their first gala event which was the most elaborate awards banquet that had ever been held by a journalistic club. There was discussion about what the actual award should be. At first some thought it should be a golden pen. But somehow that seemed to be too plebeian and didn't quite express their international reach. So eventually the globe was settled on depicting all of the countries of the world, many of which were represented by correspondents within the organization.
When I became old enough to drive, my job was to chauffeur my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, all active members, who were at the time each writing for different foreign papers, to the interviews with the stars down at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Saturday mornings. My mother was a depression era farm girl from Nebraska for whom Hollywood was like the Land of Oz. As a girl growing up, she never would have believed that one day she'd sit and meet and talk at length with a room full of celebrities. My aunt, on the other hand, grew up on the sets of Hollywood. She'd met most of the stars of the day by the time she was twelve and even did a little work in the industry herself, as an extra, being very good at gymnastics and somewhat of a budding contortionist. So she could relate to the actors and actresses as someone who was familiar with their craft. Currently at the age of ninety one, she is the unofficial historian for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association having been intimately involved in it's activities since before it's inception.
On those Saturday mornings we met with: Meryl Streep, Shirley McLaine, Jessica Lange, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins, Diana Ross, Henry Fonda and many many more. You name them, they were there, all the big names along with all of the aspiring ingenues. Sometimes on those Saturday mornings, we'd go down to the studios and watch the actors and actresses at work on the set. But most commonly we went down to the hotel where they would sit at a long table at the front of the room with the studio's press secretaries and their agents at their sides. The actors would be introduced by their agents and then they and their studio representatives would speak a little bit about an upcoming film to the twenty or thirty members who were present that day from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The press members were seated at a number of little round tables with their notebooks and lots of fancy pastries, coffee and tea.
As a mere chauffeur, I was relegated to a small table at the very back of the room and had to be absolutely on my best behavior. And I'm fein to admit, that being a teenager, it was those delicious treats that were my big draw. Of course, this was just a job to me, it was something that I had to do, every Saturday, like it or not. And it was a big part of our families focus, so as a kid, raised in the heart of Hollywood, most of the time, I couldn't have been more bored and all I wanted to do was go and see my friends. Isn't that funny? Ah, the situations and perspectives that life presents us with. And truly, stars are just ordinary people after all. They're no different from you and me in many ways. They have the same foibles and fears. And even at that young age, I could see that too often they have more troubles and difficulties than most folks do.
During the interviews, everyone in the press had their tape recorders lying on the floor in front of the table and they were all free to ask questions. About an hour later after the session was over, they all got individual photos of themselves with the stars to send off to their papers and magazines along with their stories. In the evenings they were invited to attend gala, catered, exclusive pre-release screenings of the films with the producers and often with the stars. Now, those were quite fun. They were more of a free form mingling situation, often with a really good movie. As a young girl, I received plenty of attention and more then once was mistaken for a budding ingenue.
But the big event of the year was always the awards show. I even got to sit on Alfred Hitchcock's lap one year. Back then the Oscars carried more clout, but I'm glad to see that in recent years my grandmother's organization has risen to equal status. You just never know when something as innocent as a phone tree may turn into "a really, really, big show."
© 2011 Josephine Laing