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Pantheon
240 pages
Product Description
Humphrey Bogart said of <i>Confidential</i>: “Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house” . . . Tom Wolfe called it “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world” . . . <i>Time</i> defined it as “a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction, and plain smut . . . dig up one sensational ‘fact,’ embroider it for 1,500 to 2,000 words. If the subject thinks of suing, he may quickly realize that the fact is true, even if the embroidery is not.”<br> <br>Here is the never-before-told tale of <i>Confidential</i> magazine, America’s first tabloid, which forever changed our notion of privacy, our image of ourselves, and the practice of journalism in America.<br> <br>The magazine came out every two months, was printed on pulp paper, and cost a quarter. Its pages were filled with racy stories, sex scandals, and political exposés. It offered advice about the dangers of cigarettes and advocated various medical remedies. Its circulation, at the height of its popularity, was three million. It was first published in 1952 and took the country by storm. <br> <br>Readers loved its lurid red-and-yellow covers; its sensational stories filled with innuendo and titillating details; its articles that went far beyond most movie magazines, like <i>Photoplay</i> and <i>Modern Screen,</i> and told the real stories such trade publications as <i>Variety</i> and the <i>Hollywood Reporter</i> couldn’t, since they, and the movie magazines, were financially dependent on—or controlled by—the Hollywood studios. <br> <br>In <i>Confidential’</i>s pages, homespun America was revealed as it really was: our most sacrosanct movie stars and heroes were exposed as wife beaters (Bing Crosby), homosexuals (Rock Hudson and Liberace), neglectful mothers (Rita Hayworth), sex obsessives (June Allyson, the cutie with the page boy and Peter Pan collar), mistresses of the rich and dangerous (Kim Novak, lover of Ramfis Trujillo, playboy son of the Dominican Republic dictator). <br><i> </i><br><i>Confidential’</i>s alliterative headlines told of tawny temptresses (black women passing for white), pinko partisans (liberals), lisping lads (homosexuals) . . . and promised its readers what the newspapers wouldn’t<br>reveal: “The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce” . . . How “James Dean Knew He Had a Date with Death” . . . The magazine’s style, success, and methods ultimately gave birth to the <i>National Enquirer</i>, <i>Star, People, E!, Access Hollywood,</i> and <i>TMZ</i> . . . <br> <br>We see the two men at the magazine’s center: its founder and owner, Robert Harrison, a Lithuanian Jew from New York’s Lower East Side who wrote for <i>The New York Graphic</i> and published a string of girlie magazines, including<i> Titter, Wink,</i> and <i>Flirt</i> (Bogart called the magazine’s founder and owner the King of Leer) . . . and <i>Confidential </i>’s most important editor: Howard Rushmore, small-town boy from a Wyoming homestead; passionate ideologue; former member of the Communist Party who wrote for the <i>Daily Worker, </i>renounced his party affiliation, and became a virulent Red-hunter; close pal of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and expert witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, naming the names of actors and writers Rushmore claimed had been Communists and fellow travelers.<br> <br>Henry Scott writes the story of two men, who out of their radically different pasts and conflicting obsessions, combined to make the magazine the perfect confluence of explosive ingredients that reflected the America of its time, as the country struggled to reconcile Hollywood’s blissful fantasy of American life with the daunting nightmare of the nuclear age . . .
Pantheon
240 pages
Amazon.com Review
<span class="h1"><strong>A Q&A with Author Henry E. Scott</strong></span> <br /> <img align="right" border="0" src="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/randoEMS/Henry-Scott_photo-credit-Joyce-Ravid_sm.jpg" /> <br/> <b>Question:</b> <i>Shocking True Story</i> is a full, behind-the-scenes look at the original scandal magazine that started it all--<i>Confidential</i>. You first came to this story, as you share in your acknowledgements, through another title, James Ellroy’s <i>L.A. Confidential</i>. How did that book start everything, and where did it take you?</p> <p><b>Henry E. Scott:</b> I picked up James Ellroy's <i>L.A. Confidential</i> at an airport bookstore before boarding a flight several years ago from New York City to Istanbul. I was so captivated by Ellroy's book that I spent my first two days holed up in my hotel, finishing <i>L.A. Confidential</i>, before venturing out to explore exotic Istanbul. When I got back to New York, the one thing I wanted to know more about was <i>Confidential</i> magazine, which had a small supporting role in Ellroy’s tale. To my amazement, I couldn’t find a book about <i>Confidential</i>. I couldn’t imagine anything more fun than writing one.</p> <p><b>Question:</b> In telling the story of <i>Confidential</i>, <i>Shocking True Story</i> is populated with over-the-top characters--private eyes, movie stars, politicians, moguls--and of course scandal and intrigue of every kind. In all of this, two figures stand out--Robert Harrison, the publisher, and Howard Rushmore, one of the magazine’s most important editors. What were they like and how were they drawn in to this world?</p> <p><b>Henry E. Scott:</b> Harrison, <i>Confidential</i>'s founder and publisher, and Rushmore, its best-known editor, fascinated me because they were such complete opposites. Harrison was the son of immigrants--Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms of the 1890s; Rushmore bragged that his family traced its ancestry to the Pilgrims. Harrison was a social butterfly, out at clubs with chorus girls on his arm; Rushmore had few friends. Harrison was part of a big family, while Rushmore was an only child. Harrison reveled in the celebrity and notoriety that <i>Confidential</i> brought him; Rushmore appreciated the size of the magazine’s audience, but much of its content embarrassed him. What they had in common was both were on a quest for fame that led to a collision that ultimately destroyed <i>Confidential</i>. </p> <p><b>Question:</b> <i>Confidential</i> featured pieces on all of the major movie stars of the time--Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and so on. As you mentioned earlier, these weren’t stories planted or approved by the movie studios, but written in defiance of those studios and the often false images of their stars that they were trying to promote. Among all these stories was there any <i>Confidential</i> piece that shocked you?</p> <p><b>Henry E. Scott:</b> I was quite surprised to discover that "outing,” or disclosing that someone was gay against his will, was a common practice at <i>Confidential</i>. Most of us think of outing as something that started in the '90s, when gay activists exposed the sexual orientation of those closeted gays who they thought opposed gay rights. But <i>Confidential</i>, sometimes bluntly and sometimes by suggestion, wrote about the gay lives of people as varied as Tab Hunter, Marlene Dietrich, and Walter Chrysler Jr., heir to the automobile fortune.</p> <p><b>Question:</b> You have worked at the <i>New York Times</i> and continue to work in the media today--do you look at our current media moment any differently after learning all you did about <i>Confidential</i>? Where do you see us heading?</p> <p><b>Henry E. Scott:</b> I think <i>Confidential</i>’s strategy of exploiting American fears is flourishing today on television, in certain print publications, and certainly online. The wacky idea that the health care bill proposed "death panels" is something I could see <i>Confidential</i> writing about. And the sexual indiscretions of conservative Republican congressmen would have been a major <i>Confidential</i> cover story. As the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The only difference is <i>Confidential</i>’s editorial formula is now found everywhere.</p> <p><b>Question:</b> The book features many original articles from the magazine--what was your favorite one?</p> <p><b>Henry E. Scott:</b> I think my favorite story is "The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce." I love the idea of several of America’s best-known men hanging in the shadows outside a house where they thought Monroe was hidden with a lover. I wish I could have been there and seen the looks at their faces when they burst into the house and discovered what really was going on. I’ve driven by that house in Los Angeles several times--it’s still there--and I always smile at the thought of that so-called "wrong door raid."</p> <p> (Photo © Joyce Ravid) </p> <hr size="1">