Charles Augustus Milverton: Whose Is It? He That Is to Come

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: Charles Augustus Milverton: Whose Is It? He That Is to Come
Author: gardnerhill
Word Count: 60
Rating: G
Warning: Crack-a-doodle-doo.
Summary: Hell is other people.
Dramatis Personae: Lady Sneerwell is the reputation-ruining antagonist in the Sheridan play A School for Scandal. William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper tycoon whose yellow journalism built or broke political careers and ginned up the Spanish-American War. Hedda Hopper was a Hollywood gossip-monger in the Golden Age of the silver screen.

***

“For vulgar money and not the sport itself,” Lady Sneerwell …er, sneered.

 “Amateur,” sniffed Hearst. “I destroyed countries.”

 “Was it worth it, Chuckie?” Hedda Hopper grinned.

Milverton looked at the people who sat with him in the sweltering tiny doorless room. One chair was unoccupied. He peered through his spectacles at the name on the back.

“Who is ‘Rupert Murdoch’?”

Comments

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Hedda Hopper is much better known in the U.S., as her name was practically synonymous with 'gossip columnist' for decades (she even does a cameo as herself in the 1950 movie SUNSET BLVD).

And I had to throw in another fictional purveyor of scandal and ruination so Milverton wouldn't be lonely! In A SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL Lady Sneerwell's very first speech talks of how her own reputation was ruined as a young woman by gossip, so she spends her life inflicting that ruination on others.