Jack Lait and His Pals, Peers, Bosses, and Family -- Confidential, Part 3 -- Garbo

 

 

 Note:  You can find Part 1 of this blog series right here and Part 2 can be found over here.

MAD magazine used to call its staff "the usual gang of idiots," and Hogwarts students had to cope with both Rita Skeeter and the Inquisitorial Squad. Not sure which of these comparisons is most applicable to the creators of the Confidential book series and the similarly titled magazine

Jack Lait (in conjunction with Lee Mortimer) really went all out for scandal-mongering in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The American public was very receptive. Of course this was the era of film noir. People who once felt patriotic now felt cynical. People who once felt effective now felt helpless. People who once felt big now felt small. The Confidential book series perfectly fit this view of life as a dangerous, grimy alley with no outlet. 

We all know Jack Lait didn't create this atmosphere; he just took advantage of it. Investigating mostly invented conspiracies and scandals took a lot of people to give the public a skewed outlook on the world. Here are brief reminders of who some of these noir-ish figures were: 

 

William Randolph Hearst, the guy whose life was semi-fictionalized in "Citizen Kane," built the San Simeon mansion known as the Hearst Castle, which has been a long-standing popular tourist attraction.

 

 Hearst literally lived the idea of freedom of the press belonging to whoever owned the press, and his newspapers pushed wars that Hearst wanted the U.S. government to get involved in, and investigations of people who were Hearst's enemies, opponents, or rivals. Thus it was fitting that Hearst newspaper The New York Daily Mirror was used by Jack Lait to spread gossip and rumors.

Walter Winchell was a gossip columnist and radio host who worked closely with Jack Lait.

 

 

 

In almost every photograph I've ever seen of him, Winchell wears a reporter's hat. Often it's pushed back a bit, which gives him the look a beleaguered detective. Like a former beat cop turned street-wise philosopher, someone who's like a slightly less folksy version of Will Rogers. On the other hand, when Winchell's hat brim is pulled down to eyebrow level, the columnist has the look of a no-nonsense crime reporter. In reality, the closest the commentator ever came was as host of a crime re-enactment show called "The Walter Winchell Crime File."

The columnist and radio personality actually got his start not on the mean streets, but in show business. Winchell was once a tap dancer, before joining a vaudeville act which included Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. His first reporter's beat was Broadway, and it was tips from friends and acquaintances in show biz which provided Winchell's material. 

These friends and acquaintances may well have come to rue the day they befriended Walter Winchell, because he turned around and used the inside information they'd given them to support Senator Joseph McCarthy's inquiries into Communist leanings within the entertainment industry.  

 

Senator Estes Kefauver was a fairly liberal Democrat who did some great stuff in terms of consumer protection from drug manufacturers, and he also took on the Mafia and other corrupt influences on government. But he also thought television shows caused juvenile delinquency, and the hearings Senator Kefauver got attention for certainly encouraged people like Joe McCarthy to hunt for secrets, which could always be made up if not found. 

Joe McCarthy needs no introduction for most readers. People may not know however that in addition to the "Red scare," McCarthy was behind what we might have once called a lavender scare, but now what might be what...? A rainbow scare, I guess. Next week's post will have a lot more about that.

 

Robert Harrison was the publisher of Confidential magazine which was first hit the magazine stands when the Confidential book series was at its height with U.S.A. Confidential a bestseller.  Harrison got his start as an office boy and then writer for the New York Graphic, a tabloid, and this is where he met Walter Winchell. Later Harrison was an editor at Motion Picture Herald, which had close ties with the Catholic Church and with the Hayes Office, which censored the movies. 

Robert Harrison said this in an interview: "Once we establish the star in the hay and that's documented, we can say anything we want and I think we make them a hell of a lot more interesting than they really are."  That quote is longer and contains the phrase "What's the guy gonna do?" Perhaps Harrison's arrogance and sense of being untouchable would not pay off. We'll see in next week's post.

Lee Mortimer is to the right of Jack Lait in these dust jacket author photos.

There will be much more said about Lee Mortimer in the next post in this series, so for now here's a link to the blog Playground to the Stars, which gives a flashy and amusing reconting of that time Frank Sinatra got into a fistfight with Lee Mortimer in a famous nightclub as a result of some of Mortimer's written jabs at the singer.

Howard Rushmore was a former Communist who'd once written film reviews for the Daily Worker. 

 

Later he became director of research for Senator Joseph McCarthy's Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. After getting into a flap with Roy Cohn, Rushmore was fired from his newspaper job and he was hired as editor of Confidential magazine. (Rushmore got a job because Walter Winchell wangled for him.)  From there, life got weirder and weirder for Rushmore. Another situation to be explored a bit more next week. 

 

A couple of quick mentions of people tangential to this story, but whose actions were definitely part of the problem in the scandal/investigation nightmare:

 Roy Cohn was a piece of work, let me tell you. Or you can let NPR tell you in a 2019 report on a documentary about Cohn.

 Drew Pearson wrote the influential political column "Washington Merry-Go-Round." Here's Pearson with Lyndon Johnson.

 And here at the end, a couple members of Jack Lait's family:

George Lait was one of the three children of Jack Lait and his wife Laura.  George had a sister, Lois, and a brother, Jack Lait Jr. (see below).

George had worked at The New York Daily Mirror until his father took a job as the Mirror's editor, and then he was immediately fired. It was done of those Rupert Murdoch / "Succession" moments, but on a smaller scale, perhaps more like the cruel domination moves of the business-shark father who takes over his son's firm in the 2022 British televison series "The Outlaws." George moved to the West Coast and became the director of publicity for Columbia Pictures. He was also a screenwriter, known for "The Story of GI Joe" (1945), which starred Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum.

 

 

Jack Lait,  Jr. was the radio and television editor for the Los Angeles Examiner. 

 

He had some film credits to his name, including screenplays for two films released in 1941:  and two 1941 films "San Antonio Rose," and "A Missouri Outlaw." Lait Jr. also wrote the script for s. the 1938 movie "Kentucky Moonshine," which starred The Ritz Brothers. There will be more about Lait Jr. in next week's post.

 

 

 

 

 

 Next week:  What became of them all (it wasn't good)