Quote:
Originally Posted by Novice
My fave is Maureen O'Hara in the Quiet Man!
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Beautiful woman, that Irish Vixen.
Maureen O'Hara arrives to testify in the Confidential trial, accompanied, from left, by Deputy Dist. Atty. William Ritzi, Guy Ward (O'Hara's personal attorney), and O'Hara's brothers James FitzSimons and Charles FitzSimons.
Confidential was a bi-monthly
magazine published between 1952 and 1978. It was founded by
Robert Harrison and is considered a pioneer in
scandal,
gossip, and
exposé journalism, featuring what
Newsweek called "sin and sex with a seasoning of right wing politics".
[1]
"Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house.”
[2]
Its journalism comprised of just as much
innuendo as of exposés. For example the magazine alleged that
Bing Crosby was a wife beater, that
Rock Hudson and
Liberace were homosexuals (”Lavender Lads”), and made publicly known that
Robert Mitchum had been charged with smoking
marihuana. Apart from spreading gossip and outing homosexuals
Confidential combined their exposés with a conservative agenda especially targeted at those who sympathised with the left and which celebrities that were engaged in so called ”
miscegenation”.
........
Confidential was based in
New York and could therefore not be silenced by the movie industry by bribing anyone in
California. The images the movie companies carefully had groomed for certain stars, were ruined overnight by articles in
Confidential. To limit the damage done to their investments, the film industry started to tip off Confidential of the more innocent gossip, which also made for good publicity for coming movies.
Some lesser stars also collaborated with
Confidential to produce smaller scandals in order to create interest in themselves. Some of the actors of the day had their careers ruined not by
Confidential, but by their own employers. After a while the gossip magazine required larger and larger “sacrifices” and the movie moguls were forced to “sell out” lesser known actors in order to draw negative attention away from their major stars. The
homosexual actor
Rock Hudson was left alone for a while because
Confidential got a tip about
Rory Calhoun instead, whose background included armed robberies when Calhoun was thirteen years old.
The development became intolerable for the film industry as
Confidential and other
gossip magazines demanded more and more sacrifices. Nobody was safe from
Confidential’s scrutiny, and the articles hurt the stars whether the allegations were true or not.
The trial against Confidential
Even if not that many of the articles resulted in lawsuits, some stars were forced to sue in order to try to save their reputations and careers. At one time
Confidential had pending lawsuits that amounted to twelve million dollars in damages. But the magazine got away with a lot more as the celebrities didn’t want to draw attention to the articles.
In 1957 Hollywood tried to stop the gossip mongering and convinced the California Attorney-General to charge Robert Harrison with "conspiracy to publish criminal libel."
[9] The star witness for the prosecution was
Howard Rushmore, an ex-reporter at
Communist Daily Worker and former member of
CPUSA who was hired as an editor by
Confidential in October 1954.
When the trial started Defense Attorney Arthur J. Crowley subpoenaed hundreds of Hollywood stars as witnesses which turned out to be a stroke of genius for the marketing of the scandal mag.
[10] At the beginning of the trial the defence started reading the juiciest magazine pieces for the court record. This meant that the libellous stories could be re-printed by the more serious press, which made the trial degrading for the film industry.
At the end of the trial the jury was sequestered at the luxurious Mayflower Hotel. The jury set a new state record in deliberation time while enjoying Mayflower’s nice menus, room service and swimming pools. After 15 days it was declared that the jury was
hung and could not reach a conclusive verdict.
A re-trial was scheduled but by then the film industry had had enough. Hollywood started wielding behind-the-scenes pressure by threatening to withhold campaign contributions for local politicians and after ten days the judge declared that there were to be no new trial. A deal was struck between Harrison and the film industry that stated that the charges were dropped in exchange for leaving the movie stars alone.
[edit] Confidential after the trial
The deal became the effective end of the magazine as it became deprived of printing the juiciest gossip. Legal problems led to format and subject matter changes that in turn reduced circulation to less than a third of what it was at its heyday.
[11] Eventually Harrison settled with all individuals who had charged him with libel to salvage the income he had during six profitable years. By May 1958, Harrison sold the magazine to a group led by
Hy Steirman.
Confidential went through a number of further changes in format and ownership and eventually ceased publication entirely in 1978.
[12]
Other legal problems of note
'Mad About the Boy' cover from July 1957
- The July 1957 issue featured a cover story on Liberace headlined "Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be 'Mad About the Boy'."[15] It alleged that the actor had a homosexual dalliance with a press agent in Dallas. Liberace successfully sued for libel by proving he was not in Dallas at the time. [16]
- Actress Maureen O'Hara successfully sued the magazine for a story in the March 1957 issue falsely accusing her of having sex in the balcony of Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre. As she recounted in her 2004 autobiography Tis Herself,[17] her passport proved that she was in Spain on the date alleged by Confidential. Her lawsuit and large settlement were instrumental in the decline of the magazine.
- Oscar-nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge successfully sued the magazine for a lurid story titled "What Dorothy Did in the Woods."[18]
- Frank Sinatra threatened to sue Confidential for a story about how Wheaties allegedly enhanced his sex life.
- Groucho Marx responded to an article about him in the magazine with his famous letter -- now in the Library of Congress -- "If you don't stop printing scandalous articles about me, I'll be forced to cancel my subscription."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidential_(magazine)
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