Despite living and working in Detroit, Hollywood columnist Shirley Eder managed to report on (and cultivate relationships with) movie stars for over forty years. The daughter of a staid New York Supreme Court Justice, Eder rebelled at sixteen by performing a supporting role in a play, The Women. A year later she began working as a radio show host for WINS in New York. In 1946 she began doing celebrity interviews for radio station WMCA, and then hosted Mic About Town for another station. In 1951 she co-hosted a talk show, Women Talk It Over, for WOR-TV She continued her work in radio and television after moving to Detroit and began writing a syndicated weekly column on movies, music, theater, and other media, while developing relationships with celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Joan Rivers, and Jacqueline Susann, and regularly hosting lavish parties in her Detroit home. She was noted for avoiding showbiz cattiness and for her repeated calls for writers and directors to stop the high turnover of young starlets and start developing more complex roles for talented older actresses.