Marilyn Beck
American journalist (1928-2014)

Marilyn Beck (December 17, 1928 – May 31, 2014) was a syndicated Hollywood columnist and author.
Career
Beck began working as a newspaper and magazine writer in the early 1960s. One of her first interviews was with the "Red Light Bandit" serial rapist Caryl Chessman on San Quentin's death row, shortly before he was executed. She wrote her first column for Bell McClure syndicate in 1967. Three years later, she was named Sheilah Graham's successor for the North American Newspaper Alliance.
Beck's Hollywood column moved to the New York Times Special Features in 1972 as she reported on the doings of celebrities. She became affiliated with Tribune Media Services in 1980, and a decade later moved to Creators Syndicate.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, her column was seen in papers with a combined readership upwards of 25 million, maintaining a large print readership through the evolving Internet era of the '90s and '00s. Beck established an early-day web presence in the mid-'80s, via Prodigy and CompuServe, and later on E! Online and AOL. She authored the Grapevine column in TV Guide from 1989 to 1992.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6763500. VIAF identifies the subject as 108011259. The Library of Congress control number is no2010033921. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2014, 1967 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marilyn Beck” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.