Marilyn Beck, longtime syndicated Hollywood columnist, dies at 85
(Ron Galella, WireImage)
Marilyn Beck, a syndicated Hollywood columnist who for decades dished out delectable dollops on celebrities hooking up, splitting up and cracking up, has died at her Oceanside home. She was 85.
At its peak, Beck’s column was featured in some 500 newspapers with a total circulation of 38 million. She also was a familiar presence on television’s syndicated “PM Magazine” and E! Entertainment’s “The Gossip Show.”
As an interviewer, Beck was genial but brash. In a TV appearance, she asked her longtime friend Barbara Walters, then in her 50s, whether she’d had cosmetic surgery. (The answer was no.) She also tried to pin down Bob Hope on the size of his fortune and discovered it was more than $100 million but less than $500 million. (Time magazine got the half-billion-dollar estimate from “some kid backstage,” Hope fumed.)