This is the next-to-last in more than a month's worth of weekly posts about the Confidential series, books published in the 1940s to the 1960s. I've rolled Confidential magazine into this as well because the tabloid cashed in on the success of the bestselling books by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer.
I hope you remember that last week's post focused on public figures, both directly connected with the Confidential
craze, who influenced it or were influenced by it. If you haven't had a chance to read the previous stuff, or you are new to this blog, it's worth looking at last week's offering to put today's essay in context. You can find that
post, which within itself contains links to the first two posts in the series, HERE.
So,
we have our Cast of Characters. What happened to everybody? Well, some of them did okay, but for a lot of
people it was a "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas" situation. The number of flea bites and the effect of them varied.
Lee Mortimer's life was one big "sheesh," really. Married five times, Jack Lait's co-author is remembered primarily for getting clobbered by Frank Sinatra in a nightclub. This is not because Lee Mortimer didn't try to make a literary impact on his own; he definitely went solo after his writing partner died.
Books with Mortimer's name on the cover included Women Confidential and New York Behind the Scenes. Mortimer updated the Washington book, and reportedly attempted to stretch the Confidential series to other planets, this being the Space Age. White there are various conflicting reports about how far Mortimer got toward collaborating with big names in the science fiction world. In actuality, the outer-space version was simply a story called "Mars Confidential," which was published in a pulp magazine without any input from Mortimer.
Lee Mortimer had more on his mind than that kind of stuff. He was left holding the bag after the publication of U.S.A. Confidential, when two members of Congress, a Democratic Representative from Pennsylvania, Augustine B. Kelley, and the formidable Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, sued the author team for libel. Jack Lait, who was ailing, had gone into a long coma and then died. Mortimer alone was forced to offer a written apology and pay the court costs and the legal fees.
Mortimer expressed, in a book introduction, his belief that the books he and Lait co-authored were morally superior to the material found in Confidential magazine and similar tabloids. As Mortimer put it, the Lait/Mortimer books focused on "public dirt" rather than "private dirt."Lee Mortimer died of a heart attack in 1963.
Confidential magazine publisher Robert Harrison, who seemed to get by unscathed or at least less-scathed than some others, wasn't very happy at in his last years. Harrison kept trying to get his career going again. He didn't need the money but he'd sure enjoyed the fame/infamy. But the magazine scandal king had been left behind in the march of time.
We'll never know if Harrison was grateful that he was one of the people least damaged by the impact of the Confidential craze, but I'm going to guess that he was not full of gratitude. Ain't it always the way? The guy who makes trouble is the one who mostly gets away with it.
Harrison knew, of course, that much of what Confidential printed simply wasn't true. The magazine's editor, Howard Rushmore, testified in a famous libel trial that the magazine knowingly published unverified allegations. "Some of the stories are true and some have nothing to back them up at all. Harrison many times overruled his libel attorneys and went ahead on something." According to Rushmore, Harrison told the attorneys he paid to advise him about what was and wasn't legal, "I'd go out of business if I printed the kind of stuff you guys want."
It wasn't always about sales figures; the publisher famously punished his enemies and championed his friends. For me personally, Harrison hit a low point when he published the article "Winchell Was Right About Josephine Baker!"
In fact, Walter Winchell lied about being present at the Stork Club on the evening when the famous singing performer was refused service once seated with her party, which included Grace Kelly. Winchell claimed he'd left early and missed the incident, but others at the openly-discriminatory night spot said the columnist was at his usual seat, one table over, and that he had ignored the cruel treatment of a great star.
Harrison's magazine both had how-to-work-it articles for married men who wanted to play around and criticized famous married people for cheating. Robert Harrison himself, of course had a wife and a girlfriend, and the latter was with him when he died after a longer life I would have bet on for him, considering what he said about influential people.
It's true, whatever the publisher thought, that there was collateral damage to all the tabloid terror. For instance, reporter Polly Gould, who worked for Harrison, died under "disputed" circumstances in her home. Featherweight boxer Chalky Wright, who was African-American and rumored to be one of Mae West's love interests, died mysteriously in his own bathtub shortly before a scheduled hearing about whether the evidence provided by scandal-mongers was accurate.
Jack Martin, who was a public relations assistant in Hollywood in the 1950s before becoming a gossip columnist himself, was one of many in the gossip business who thought Confidential went too far and had too much power over people's lives. Martin called Harrison's magazine "vicious" and said of himself in comparison, "I never hurt anyone."
Robert Harrison himself was mostly fine, no matter what happened. Many of his business associates, which included family members, were indicted in the 1957 libel trial. It was serious stuff, felony level. While libel was a misdemeanor in California law, Confidential was charged with conspiracy to commit criminal libel, which was a felony. Family and friends had their names in the paper and incurred legal fees. Some had to flee to Mexico to avoid being called into court. Harrison handed out money to some people, but the whole mess can't have helped his personal relationships.
The payouts meant nothing on the financial area. Robert Harrison was an Elon Musk type figure, so rich that people sued him and he lost but he stayed rich. But the 1957 trail involving over a hundred movie stars hurt Confidential magazine. Harrison was forced to tone things down and print only what he could prove with evidence. Readers began to lose interest, and eventually the publication faded away, though Harrison always wanted to bring it back to life.
There's a biography out for Robert Harrison. Mr. Confidential has this to say in the introduction:
All I personally read of the book was the free Kindle sample. I was not willing to spend money to know more about this guy. I've already seen and read plenty, believe me. Also, Mr. Confidential seems to be somewhat critical of Harrison for his history of selling magazines full of racy photos of almost-nude women, while also reproducing those photos. I guess the author/publisher learned the double standard from the best.
Howard Rushmore, As Editgor-in-Chief and investigative supervisor (Witchfinder General?) for Confidential magazine. Rushmore felt scummy. Though he made good money, Rushmore
was repelled by the informants and Harrison. Rushmore considered his
employer a "pornographer," though Rushmore himself was a collector of
erotica. In the famous 1957 libel suit by "one hundred stars," Rushmore testified against Harrison and the magazine.
Over time, Howard Rushmore melted down spectacularly and tragically. In the last years of his life, he had obviously psychiatric issues and was a conspiracy nut. Rushmore claims on radio in 1955 he was on secret message to find the communists who had "killed" former Defense Secretary James Forrestal. (Forrestal committed suicide.)
Deepening mental health issues caused drama and police intervention. Howard Rushmore appeared at one point to have been kidnapped or murdered. Then he was found in a Butte, Montana motel registered under a false name. Clyde Tolson of the FBI, which had been contacted by Rushmore, told J. Edgar Hoover that in his opinion, Rushmore was "a nut" and the FBI
"should have nothing to do with him." Hoover agreed.
The inner conflicts and the faulty brain wiring issues eventually made Howard Rushmore first a murderer and then a suicide. A week after chasing his wife and their teenage daughter out of the house with a gun, Rushmore got into an argument with his wife in the back seat of the taxi, pulled out a pistol and shot her and then himself.
Senator Joseph McCarthy did many controversial things in addition to starting the "Red scare" and aiding what some have called the "lavender scare." For example, McCarthy advocated for SS officers in the Nuremberg trial era because the said the U.S. Army had tortured the Nazis to get information. This has been disputed by reputable sources. McCarthy died young. He was 48 when he succumbed to either hepatitis, his official diagnosis, or liver cirrhosis, which is what most people think.
Drew Pearson, of "Washington Merry-Go-Round" fame,was once kneed in the groin in a Congressional cloakroom by Joseph McCarthy.
Drew Pearson was a pretty admirable guy, definitely a standout in the crowd we've encountered in this series of posts. There's something else about Pearson which also stands out: he appeared in some movies. Many of the other people I've written about were jostling to get famous in print, on the radio and on television -- all mediums in which Pearson flourished -- but Pearson seems to be alone in having been on film. He makes an appearance, for instance, in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," of all things!
Pearson had a lot of life experience before settling into his career as a political columnist, and it showed. He'd worked overseas, he'd done wartime reporting: Pearson was the first to write about General George Patton slapping a soldier, one of several abuse incidents in Patton's career.
Pearson had a lot of journalistic integrity. When he reported on Patton's abuse of soldiers (some of them in a hospital unit, for pity's sake), the Army investigated Pearson, smearing him a as a liar who also told truths which were of course treasonous. Pearson married into a newspaper family, but moved on when he lost his job and his first wife to disagreements over what he wrote. He also lost a job at the Baltimore Sun, where he wrote about Washington, when it was discovered that he'd anonymously co-written the book Washington Merry-Go-Round. Pearson got the last laugh as his book became a column which ran in sixty newspapers and which made him the best-known columnist of his time.
As he aged, Walter Winchell got crankier and crankier as he aged. He really wanted to be a success in television, but his own program flopped while he watched his columnist rival Ed Sullvan become a huge success. Winchell held similar resentment toward talk show host Jack Paar.
Winchell had always relied on boosts from friends he boosted in return, but incidents like the 1951 Stork Club incident with Winche'll's ignoring the waiters not serving Joseophine Baker didn't make Winchell a more appealing character to the public. His television appearances and programs were flops.
Roy Cohn, in my opinion, worked together with J. Edgar Hoover to murder Ethel Rosenberg, or rather to have her murdered by electric chair. David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, said that Cohn pressured him to lie under oath in help the prosecution make its case against the Rosenbergs. Cohn pushed hard for the couple to receive the death penalty. While historians mostly agree that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of some of the charges against him, he should have been imprisoned rather than executed, and Ethel Rosenberg most certainly did not deserve to die.
Cohn, as well know now, refused to accept that he was gay and instead defined himself as a "masculine" guy who liked to have sex with other men without caring about his partners. Next week, we'll look at the ways Cohn strongly advocated having rights taken away from gay people, including being able to teach or hold public office. I wish I could say I find it satisfactory in some way that Cohn died of AIDS at age 59 but I just find it sad. No, not sad -- depressing. I find it depressing.
Senator Estes Kefauver died the way I imagine he wanted to, after a heart attack suffered on the Senate floor. His reputation is a mixed bag. Both a 1955 Newsweek article and a 1964 piece in another source agree that Robert Harrison saw the televised Kefauver hearings as public acceptance of prying into peoples lives. In fact, Robert Harrison is quoted as saying "finally the public had become educated to the fact that there was excitement and interest in the lives of people in the headlines."
Senator Kefauver, despite the unintended consequence of giving creepy people the idea of doing their own "investigations," did do good things, as mentioned last week. He pushed for consumer protection from
drug companies, fought the Mafia (not much different from the pharma
people sometimes), worried about young people. But this last one, a two-fisted attack on the "causes" of on juvenile delinquency -- comic
books, television, and movies -- also left a legacy of censorship, repression, and
paranoia.
William Randolph Hearst was 88 years old when he died from an ongoing medical condition. He'd lost almost all his money in the 1930s and staved off legal bankruptcy by selling off his artwork and other valuable possessions. His fortunes rose again, as seems to happen to rich people. Hearst had been separated from his wife since she found out he had a girlfriend, but the two never divorced. Millicent, a former showgirl turned philantropist, used her time funding worthy social causes. She's best-known for providing free milk for babies and children.
Hearst remained in his San Simeon mansion until health problems required hospital admission. His longtime mistress, actress Marion Davies was right by his side. Though she had a love interest closer to her own age by this time, Davies was devoted to Hearst and delayed her marriage plans till three months after Hearst's death.
Next week: The Red Scare, The Lavender Scare, and Jack Lait's Legacy
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