Dema Harshbarger

Dema E. Harshbarger was born in Abingdon, Illinois, one of the seven children of Richard Henry Harshbarger and Sarah Belle Lewis Harshbarger.^[1] She survived polio and rheumatic fever in her youth.^[2] She attended Knox College.^[3] Soon after college, she went traveling with her music teacher Mrs. Parry; the two were among the rescued passengers in the wreck of the RMS Slavonia off the coast of Portugal.^[4]

Harshbarger started her career at the Century Lyceum Bureau in Chicago, booking lecturers and entertainers in small towns in Illinois and Indiana.^[5]

From 1919 to 1921 she and Jessie B. Hall ran the Fine Arts Bureau in Chicago.^[6][7] In 1921 she left Hall to become co-owner of Harrison and Harshbarger, a Chicago concert booking agency.^[8] Their first exclusive client was tenor Charles Marshall,^[9] and they helped to develop the "Organized-Audience Plan", a subscription model for entertainment bookings in smaller cities.^[10] In the 1920s, Harshbarger was co-founder (with Ward French) and president of the National Civic Music Association.^[11][12] "Through her service," explained a California newspaper in 1932, "more than one and a half million people in the forty-eight states are served with musical attractions."^[13]

Harshbarger sold her agency to NBC,^[14] moved to California, and was made head of the network's Artists' Bureau in 1936. She became manager and press agent of Hedda Hopper,^[15] and was frequently mentioned in Hopper's gossip column.^[16][17]

Dema Harshbarger was a lesbian.^[18][19] She was known for wearing tailored suits, bowties, and hats.^[20] She lived in La Habra Heights, California, where she raised avocados.^[21] She died in 1964, aged 79, in Los Angeles, California.^[2]

Dema Harshbarger was played by Joyce Van Patten in the 1985 television film about Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, Malice in Wonderland.