Confidential

We know I loved my movie magazines when I was a kid.  Actually I was crazy about them until the day I got my driver's license and then I couldn't be bothered with such childish foolishness.  I bought some with my meager allowance but most were hand-me-downs from my mother, aunt, grandmother and neighbors.  I loved the photos and that small-town, Midwestern kid in me lapped up the stories which my father said, over the top of the sports pages of the newspaper, was pure bs.

My interest in them came from my mother who began passing them down to me when she realized how much I loved going to the movies.  Along the way something else came from her although not directly.  I was a nosy, sneaky kid and for at least an hour each weekday I was alone in the house.  One day I looked under her mattress and discovered a magazine called Confidential.  

Two things immediately occurred to me... neither of which was about the inappropriateness of my behavior.  One was that, while it didn't look like a movie magazine, there were pictures of a couple of stars on the cover and that interested me.  Secondly, I wondered why she thought she needed to hide it.  That's all I needed to become a regular reader of Confidential.

I told my mother practically everything but I never offered any information about my sneaky habits of reading it.  One day, several years later, I mentioned something salacious to her about some actor, which I'd read in Confidential but didn't tell her how I found out, and she wailed, Have you been sneaking around reading my stuff?  She told me I was too young to read it, it was an adult magazine and I was not to read it again.  Of course I kept reading it.  One time I checked  and it wasn't there.  I looked around her room, immediately saw her clothes hamper, dug under some clothes and voila!  I considered becoming a spy when I got older.

Well, ok, let's get to it.  I am sure it was the original rag mag, the precursor to The National Enquirer and everything else of that ilk.  There were apparently others around at the same time as Confidential but I never read them.  Migawd, how much stimulation can a young boy stand?  Mmmm.

Its fearless leader was a hustler named Robert Harrison.  He was rude, crude and had an air of stupidity and he thrived in his underworld kind of way.  He had been in the publishing business for awhile but wanted to start a celebrity scandal magazine.  Early on he thought scandal was the perfect antidote to the 1950s.  He'd had numerous writing-publishing jobs but most recently came from flesh-peddling magazines.  No one would deny that he was a total sleazeball. 

 

Confidential owner Robert Harrison

He envisioned an uncompromising, check-your-integrity-at- the-door look into stars' deepest secrets, misdeeds and transgressions in alarming detail.  He wanted to tear down that carefully constructed image that the Hollywood community worked so hard to shove down the throats of a gullible public (such as young boys who read movie magazines).   Hollywood was rife with sleaze and Harrison was going to unearth it.  He knew nothing sold like sex and sin.  He would dish it up to the public that would at first be taken aback but they kept reading, often hiding their copies.  It was thought of as a dirty magazine, not displayed in polite society.  Bogie said everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house.

The first issue came in 1952.  Harrison took on royalty, politicians, gangsters, the wealthy, businessmen, sportsmen, communism, crime, sin and urban vice.  For the first eight months it was published quarterly.  Then it was published bi-monthly when Harrison decided to turn his attention to Hollywood.  

Columnists and studios liked to promote the stars as just plain folks.  Studios particularly spent a great deal of time covering up love affairs, pregnancies, abortions, crime, drugs and the best of them all, homosexuality.  Columnists generally knew the truth but blackmailed studios, getting favors, often financial, to write something wholesome.  Harrison, through his phalanx of tipsters & informants... private eyes, call girls, pimps, hairdressers, masseurs, maids, butlers, chauffeurs, bartenders, valets, unemployed extras, ex-lovers, ex-anything, determined to expose all of it.  Closeted gay actor George Nader said that everyone got nervous on publication dates for fear they would be in it. 

Confidential took a wrecking ball to the fifties' conservatism, innocence and family values by ushering in skepticism and cynicism toward authorities and ideals, messing with the positioning of public and private lives.  Harrison's intent was to expose the jaded, the shocking, the naughty, the taboo and both he and the magazine made a fortune doing so.

The magazine seemed to glower at its reader.   Headlines were in a bold font, there could be exclamation points or drawings to denote explosions.  Most stories were written in an ah-ha, boldly gossipy sort of way.  There were garish color schemes and it was printed on cheap pulp paper.  Movie stars were often photographed looking their worst, often in unflattering, grainy light.  As time went on stories became more outrageous and vicious.  So much was hush-hush.  Truth didn't always figure in.  There was an unmistakable right-wing, racist, sexist, homophobic tone to every issue.   Of course I didn't realize that in those early days but in retrospect it's not difficult to see.

The magazine had a mania about reefer parties, houses of prostitution, gambling joints, back rows of darkened movie theaters, pajama parties.  There was a fondness for any story, whether involving a famous person or not, if it featured rape, murder, deviant sex, nymphomania, suicide, wife-beating, arrests.  The magazine's advertisers were as seedy as the owner and the stories.

The magazine hit pay dirt when it decided to focus on homosexuals.  One of its first gasping headlines was Is It True What They Say about Johnnie Ray?   Oh no.  What?!  The closeted, partially deaf, New York singer was once busted by vice for staying too long in a public restroom.  Thank God no one mentioned it would be more butch to spell his first name with a Y.

Ray's father in the all-star There's No Business Like Show Business, Dan Dailey, got some early special treatment in 1954 (the magazine knew TNBLSB was coming out around the same time which meant more coins for Confidential).  He was not only outed as a gay man but also a cross-dresser.  Combining gay with cross-dressing began the decline of Dailey's career.  Later when he dressed as a woman for a party, you know Confidential was right there.

Another of the magazine's breathless first gay sightings involved Tab Hunter.  He had been arrested for being at what was called an all-male pajama party.  Horrors.  A lot of guys had always hoped that he was that way but young women, his fan base, were sad.  He didn't vanish from movie screens but no one could ever accuse him of having a stellar career either.  

MGM went ballistic when it learned Confidential was going to publish a tawdry piece on their boy-next-door Van Johnson.  It was actually three stories, none of them current.  One was that he was arrested for public sex, necessitating MGM to go into overdrive.  Another is that Johnson told the draft board he was gay but trying to get over it.  Three is that the studio arranged for another of its contract stars, Keenan Wynn, to give his wife a divorce so that she could marry Johnson in an effort to salvage his reputation. 

Of course you've heard that Confidential told Universal Studios that it was going to out Rock Hudson in an upcoming edition.  The studio went berserk since he was their cash cow.  It turned to Hudson's notorious agent, Henry Willson, for help.  Willson offered up another mutual client, Rory Calhoun, and his once being in prison, in exchange for the Hudson story.  Calhoun's past wasn't all that secretive nor as juicy as Hudson's story but surprisingly Confidential went for it.  

It wouldn't be the last time Universal saw one of its male actors on the pages of Confidential and often in the same context.  They sure did have a disproportionate share of pretty boys.

Two-time Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson

was mentioned as having been involved in gay arrests in New York and Illinois.  Confidential reported it was outraged at such false stories.  How could unnamed sources say such things?  Equally gross were those unnamed sources who apparently were often J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthy attorney-henchman Roy Cohn, both closeted homosexuals.

One of Elizabeth Taylor's bisexual husbands, Michael Wilding,  got the treatment.  What's he been up to while she's been away... which really meant who's he been doing.  The magazine, always concerned with fair play, reported that La Liz was having a romp with studly Victor Mature but then who wasn't?

It reported that Errol Flynn had a two-way mirror installed in his house so he could enjoy the intimacies of those he got drunk and then encouraged to spend the night.  An article titled Does Desi Really Love Lucy detailed his many affairs with prostitutes.

Mr. America Bob Hope didn't go unscathed either.  Despite his long marriage, Tinseltown knew that he was a cheater.  But few were ready when the magazine reported his liaison with C-actress and future prostitute Barbara Payton involved callbacks.  Mrs. Hope was furious and embarrassed and there was talk of divorce.  Hope quickly changed his ways... he became more careful.

When there wasn't enough salacious stuff to write about, the magazine would fill pages with which stars were sleeping with their servants or who slept in the nude or who had bratty kids.  Yes, eye-popping entertainment on every page.

Aviation mogul and RKO studio head Howard Hughes was always a favorite of the magazine.  The magazine had a spy or two devoted strictly to Hughes.  I don't recall them ever writing about his bisexuality but they loved to report on the women he had stashed all over L.A. and not one had a bust under 36" they gushed.  Most of his sexual conquests were with those in his employ while most of the famous actresses he dated were platonic affairs.  Sex was never really one of the germ-a-phobe's great interests.  

Almost as popular as gay stories were inter-racial romances.  The magazine just couldn't get enough of them.  There was filthy rich Doris Duke and her black staff, Pearl Bailey and Louis Bellson, Billy Daniels and Martha Braun, Otto Preminger and Dorothy Dandridge, Orson Welles and Eartha Kitt, Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr., Ava Gardner and Sammy Davis Jr., May Britt and Sammy Davis Jr.  One hopes Harrison properly thanked the busy Davis.

Gardner, her brief husband Sinatra and longtime friend Lana Turner were probably featured in the magazine more than anyone else.  All, of course, were sexually-liberated and awfully busy and provided such stimulating copy.  Sinatra had women stacked up in his home or a hotel, each waiting their turn to be serviced.  The magazine reported the skinny crooner fortified himself in between assignations by wolfing down bowls of Wheaties... you know, the breakfast of champions.

There was the time Sinatra returned to his Palm Springs home and found Gardner and Turner, um, together.  He kicked them out in such a noisy, violent rage that neighbors called the cops.  Confidential, just to be fair, also reported about the time Gardner and Turner shared a bartender.  Kansas and Nebraska fainted.

In 1955 the rag gushed about the infamous Wrong Door Raid.  It involved Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio sitting outside a Hollywood apartment building waiting for Marilyn Monroe to come out.  They knew she was doing it with someone from the studio.  Finally their patience wore thin and they broke down the apartment door... the wrong one.  MM and her boytoy fled into the night.

Of course Monroe's busy life also made the pages of Confidential many times.  She didn't give a damn what they wrote as long as they did.  Few were ever the publicity hounds that she was.  A story called Why Joe DiMaggio Is Striking Out with Marilyn Monroe was such a must-read that it doubled the magazine's circulation.

Rita Hayworth made the cover in a damning article about what a lousy, neglectful mother she was, especially during her boozy, hateful marriage to has-been singer Dick Haymes.  

There was an exposé about Burt Lancaster being a drunk and fond of smacking women around, particularly those who tried to thwart his unwanted advances,  The story did nothing to put a damper on his career.

It was Confidential who first told America what a beast Mario Lanza was.  MGM privately wanted to muzzle him and lock him in a dark room but publicly they tried to sing another tune.  It was difficult and Confidential's spies were ever-ready.  The studio could not squelch the fact that Lanza was a depressed, wildly temperamental drunk, a confirmed mental case who had uncontrollable emotions and urges.  And he needed to stop patting chorus girls behinds.  

The threat of libel, of course, hung over the magazine like a dark cloud.  Harrison, his right-hand man, Howard Rushmore, a former reviewer for the communist Daily Worker, and their grubby little team had story conferences and went over every article with a fine-tooth comb before press time.  They also employed a bulldog group of attorneys to the tune of $100,000/year whether they were used much or not.

It was determined that libel meant stories had to be false (it was said most articles had some basis in truth) and defamatory.  To be defamatory the article had to not only be insulting to a person but destructive to a reputation... it has to cause peers to avoid, scorn or shun them.  Unfortunately there weren't at the time First Amendment protections in libel law and items deemed actionable weren't always so.

When Mamie Van Doren got a heads-up the magazine was going to run a story that she and her mother had been prostitutes, the actress raised a ruckus, practically daring them to print it and Universal jumped in the fray and the article was quashed.  The six major studios set up a secret fun of $350,000 to fight Confidential.  The studios organized media blitzes and publicity campaigns and ordered up stories with movie magazines and through powerful columnists emphasizing wholesomeness and sunshine.  Times were changing.

The lawsuits began.  Robert Mitchum sued for a cool million over publication of a story that he stripped down to his socks at a dinner party and poured a bottle of ketchup all over himself.  They'd published worse things about him but he'd had enough.

Errol Flynn sued for the same amount for a story about him spending his wedding night with a prostitute.  Also included was the two-way mirror story which hopefully he'd removed.

It didn't go so well for Lizabeth Scott who sued because they accused her of being a lesbian.  Why Was Lizabeth Scott's Name in the Call Girls' Call Book?  After it said she used men's cologne, slept in men's pajamas, hated frilly women's clothes and when she went to Paris hung out with the city's most notorious lesbian, her agent stopped calling.  She made two more films and then fini.  She was 35 years old.

Dorothy Dandridge sued because the magazine claimed that during a time when she was performing in a Lake Tahoe casino, she sneaked off to the woods and got cozy with some white guy.  She sued another rag before this and was tired of the hate and the lies.

Some lawsuits evolved into trials.  A huge one involved Maureen O'Hara who sued for a story that seemed rather tame by the magazine's low standards but she was royally pissed.  It said she was caught in the back rows of Grauman's Chinese Theater doing the naughty with a Latin lover.  She said it was a lie, both on the date that was claimed or any other time.  However, she produced a passport that showed she was out of the country on the day in question.  O'Hara 1, Confidential 0.

The greatest story of a lawsuit, however, comes from none other than Liberace who sued because the filthy, lying magazine accused him of being gay.  Have you ever heard anything so outrageous.  When he read Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be 'Mad about the Boy', he apparently went nuts.  Despite this being the umpteenth time Confidential wrote about him, he was determined to destroy them.  It's all he talked about.

He claimed the vicious lies caused him to suffer great financial loss and reduced his popularity with the blue-haired ladies.  And he won!

in 1957 California prosecuted the magazine for obscenity and criminal libel, publishing false statements with the intent to harm.  The U.S. Post Office jumped in about sending lewd materials through the mail.

Maureen O'Hara and Liberace

The trial, of course, was a media circus.  Dandridge, O'Hara and Liberace gave testimony.  The courtroom was packed with celebrities including Hunter, Calhoun, Turner, Corinne Calvet, Scott Brady, Gary Cooper and Sonny Tufts.  Two hours after his testimony, Liberace's 65-year old mother was beaten by two men as she took out her garbage. 

In the end 12 jurors could not come together and decide if Confidential was guilty of libel or obscenity and a mistrial was declared. Through it all Hollywood, too, took a good shellacking and its reputation did suffer.  Joan Crawford could stop dressing up to go to the liquor store.  We were on to her.  Even the public, we were on to them, too, the little closet voyeurs. 

With the threat of a retrial looming over him, Harrison made a bargain with the court that if a future trial could be called off, he would promise to only write normal, pleasant, upbeat stories.  Because of that decision, readership greatly suffered and in 1958 Confidential was sold off.

Harrison and his minions certainly got the lion's share of the blame for this scourge on society but wiser folks at the time  and certainly with hindsight has put a little bit more on the public.  After all, if they hadn't bought the filth, it would have gone out of business.  It was the consideration of some that the public paid too much attention to what movie stars did.  Also it was thought the public was unconsciously resentful of the hold celebrities had over them.  Regular folks built them up like gods and then relished, with the help of Confidential, tearing them down.  Additionally, Harrison knew something very fundamental to the magazine's success...  America had a preoccupation with sex. 

I understand Confidential did its part of stripping away more of my innocence.  I have always loved reading about the rich and famous whether in Hollywood or NY or DC or world hot spots and being nosy... well, this was just a movie magazine on steroids.   More importantly it unquestionably aided and abetted me in coming out (or coming out, part 1, but that's another posting).  To learn that movie stars I was drawn to had the same secret that I did was pretty heady stuff.  

Through reading this magazine I learned that I was certainly like a lot of other people.  At that time I knew not another person like me.  For me then, it was almost not about sex at all but rather belonging.  And as I grew more into my life, I would crack up thinking that this mean-spirited, unloving, unrelenting rag would so impact my life in such a positive way.  I have pretty much always thought that the bad stuff said about the magazine was all true but don't try to take it out my my hands.  I've always thought in this funny sort of way that I  owed Confidential a debt of gratitude.

Here's another way to say it.  At the height of the magazine's success, many feared that Confidential would attract youth and other suggestible people to sin and depravity.  I know I've certainly always thought so.

Shhhhh.  No matter how you've felt reading this stuff, remember it's all too wild and crazy to repeat.  Let's keep it confidential.

Next posting:

That gangster flick we talked

about some weeks back.  Raise

your hand if you remember.