As Hollywood heads into the Golden Globes weekend Page Six hears that there’s a bitter war raging between the new owners of the awards ceremony and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — the group that set the Globes up some 80 years ago.
In fact, we’re told that HFPA members are furious because most of them aren’t even being allowed inside Sunday’s glitzy ceremony, where the likes of Angelina Jolie, Timothy Chalomet, Demi Moore and Zendaya will be schmoozing and celebrating.
HFPA was founded in 1943 as a non-profit by a group of international entertainment journalists, and set up the now-famous awards ceremony the following year.
But two years ago Eldridge Industries, an investment firm headed by Chelsea F.C. owner Todd Boehley, made a bid to split the operation into two parts: a for-profit part that would run the lucrative awards ceremony, and the non-profit HFPA.
As part of that deal, 66 so-called “legacy members” of the HFPA were set to get a $75,000-a-year salary for five years, plus health insurance, Globes voting rights for life, various other benefits and — according to members — four tickets to the annual Tinseltown extravaganza.
(Eldridge sources say tickets were never part of the deal, but members insist to Page Six that they were offered as part of an addendum to the main deal, rather than one of the central terms and conditions).
The HFPA went into a spin after 11 of the salaried legacy members were given the boot.
And now we’re told that the association feels its been left out of its own party.
While members used to sit right in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton among the A-list movie stars and other nominees, we’re told that this year some 50 members have been invited to attend a “viewing party” — essentially a TV set up in a function room at the hotel — to watch the festivities.
And that they only got that invitation on Friday, a day before the event was set to begin.
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