Marilyn Beck, whose career as a Hollywood columnist spanned the star system to the digital age, died Saturday, May 31, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after a three-year battle with lung cancer. She was 85. Beck was the last of the old-school high-powered, Hollywood-based newspaper columnists, with some 500 papers, domestic and international, running her five-day-a-week column at the height of her fame. That was in addition to her NBC "Marilyn Beck's Hollywood Outtakes" specials, her long-running stints on television's syndicated "PM Magazine" and E! Entertainment's "The Gossip Show," her reports on Los Angeles radio station KFI, and her books.

She was never one to pull punches, especially when it came to asking celebrities anything — everything — whether it was quizzing Sylvester Stallone about leaving his wife, pushing Bob Hope to talk about his money, or digging for information about the jet-set drug culture in Aspen, Colorado, after the 1976 shooting of skier Spider Sabich by singer Claudine Longet. She also cut a memorable figure of her own with enormous energy and a mischievous sense of humor. This was a woman who owned a pair of shoes that could be converted into roller skates and wore them backstage at the Academy Awards on a dare. She dearly loved the Hollywood beat, but at the same time, after decades of dealing with studios, publicists and stars, she once joked that she was going to become a rancher because, she said, "If there's one thing I know, it's bullshit."

Marilyn wrote her first column for Bell-McClure Syndicate in 1967, having already established herself on the entertainment beat with a local column and fan magazine writing and editing. In 1970, she was named successor to Sheilah Graham by the North American Newspaper Alliance. Beck became a favorite interviewer of show business notables — such as Richard Burton, who shared stories of his life with Elizabeth Taylor when their affair was the scandal du jour in 1963 and all three of them were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Elvis Presley gave Marilyn his first interview after mustering out of the military. Dick Van Dyke, who chose Marilyn when he decided to go public with his alcoholism, Lucille Ball, who disclosed her nearly debilitating health issues, and Michael Landon, who revealed his battles with pill dependence, are three examples of stars who placed their trust in her. She had long-running feuds with prickly, arrogant actors, such as Robert Blake — and favorite interview subjects, such as George Burns, who co-hosted one of her "Hollywood Outtakes" specials.

She saw through the psychedelic clouds of the time and wrote incisively, sometimes derisively, about the radically changing film and TV scene of the 1960s — the "Switched On Hollywood," as she was originally going to title her Marilyn Beck's Hollywood tome of 1972 — "Easy Rider," "Laugh-In" and the loss of flower power innocence that came with the Tate-LaBianca murders.

She moved her column to the New York Times Special Features in 1972. For nearly a quarter-century, she has been syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Although Beck had studied journalism at USC, the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-bred writer truly began her journalism journey after her son, Mark, and daughter, Andee, were both in grade school. As a housewife and mother with a newspaperman husband (the late Roger Beck), early on she would describe her fan magazine stories and celebrity news efforts as her "outlet" — as if they were simply something to supplement the family income and amuse herself between housework and shopping. It had to have become apparent fairly quickly that her capabilities and ambitions were too big to fit within such confines.

Through the '70s, her influence grew, and the end of the decade saw her prominently featured in the New York Daily News, with two reporters in their early 20s working alongside her — daughter Andee and Stacy Jenel Smith, who was later to become her writing partner. After her divorce, Beck moved to a hillside home in Beverly Hills, which she remodeled to include offices. There, amid the furious clacking of typewriters, she and her staff (several different reporters after Andee took up her own career as a TV critic in Oregon) worked on an intense daily drive to pack each of her columns with A-list interviews and exclusive news items about the goings-on of the show business world. The house on El Roble was frequented by stars and TV crews.

With a visionary streak, Beck was determined to find a place on the Internet when other journalists were ignoring it. By the late 1980s, she was answering entertainment-related reader questions for Prodigy online. By 1990, she and Smith were popular contributors to CompuServe. Beck thought up the idea, never before attempted, of taking reader queries live and then posing them to winners in the pressroom of the Academy Awards.

Also in the '90s, Beck and Smith were staples of E! Entertainment's "The Gossip Show," did regular streamed video reports on the Internet's AENTV, and frequently appeared on other programs dealing with entertainment news. The 2000s saw Marilyn spending more time globe-trotting with her second husband (since 1980), retired mediator Arthur Levine, who shared her zest for adventure — and less time chasing stories. Having been at the forefront of reporting during the Roman Polanski scandal and court case of the 1970s, Beck appeared in James Marsh's 2008 documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."

Beck won numerous awards throughout her career, including honors from the Los Angeles City Council, the Southern California Motion Picture Council and the ICG Publicists Guild of America. She was listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in Entertainment. But her family always came first — and she was known to quote Lucille Ball, with whom she agreed that "if your children do well, they're your greatest achievement. If they don't do well, none of your other achievements matter."

She is survived by Levine; daughter Andee Beck Althoff (who became a corporate paralegal before the newspaper business imploded) and son-in-law Jim Althoff; son Mark (a leading California attorney) and daughter-in-law Bonnie Saland; brother Mitchell Mohr; stepchildren Patty and Michael Levine; granddaughter Jeorgea Beck (Aaron Kirby); and grandsons Zeke Beck (Laura), Harry Althoff (Jenn Thomas) and Daniel Althoff.

Stacy Jenel Smith will continue to write celebrity reports under the Beck/Smith Hollywood banner for Creators.

Marilyn Beck and Elvis Presley in 1960.