Tabloids on Trial

In 1957, California declared war on a tabloid magazine. Confidential Magazine was the most powerful gossip magazine in the country, with millions of readers and the ability to make or break stars' careers. Movie studios hated the magazine and politicians worried that it was ruining the country's morals. When California charged Confidential with publishing libel and obscenity, many cheered. But others worried about what this case meant for free speech...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Listener discretion advised. On the evening of November fifth, nineteen
fifty four, Florence Cotts got ready for bed as usual,

(00:21):
a thirty seven year old secretary living on Quiet Wearing
Avenue in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Cotts put her curlers in,
slipped under the covers, and turned off the lights. It
was a Friday, so maybe she even planned to sleep
in the next day, but she wouldn't get the chance.

(00:44):
In the middle of the night, Florence's door exploded inward
in a shower of wood and glass. Before she could react,
a group of men rushed in. A blinding light flashed
in her face. Florence huddled in her bed, paralyzed by
fear and then nothing. She heard one of the men yell,

(01:06):
we've got the wrong place. They turned around and ran
out through her kitchen, breaking glasses and leaving a mess.
Once she was certain they were gone, Florence called the police,
who couldn't make heads or tails of the event. It
must have been an attempted burglary. An officer told the
terrified woman she was lucky to have escaped unhurt, and

(01:30):
because she hadn't seen any of the men's faces blinded
by the bright lights they'd shown, there wasn't much for
the police to go on. The case wasn't likely to
get solved. Florence learned she would just have to live
with the fear. But less than a year later, a
shocking break in the case arrived from an unusual source

(01:52):
a tabloid magazine. In September nineteen fifty five, Confidential magazine,
the tops celebrity scandal sheet in the country, published a
story about the break in at Florence Cott's apartment. It
might seem like a strange story for a celebrity magazine
to care about, but Confidential had good reason. The men

(02:15):
who had broken into Florence's apartment that night, the article claimed,
were none other than Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio. In
the article titled the Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe's Divorce,

(02:35):
Confidential explained how the famous singer and the Yankee star
had come to be there. Florence Cotts, it turned out,
lived in the same small apartment building as one of
Marilyn Monroe's friends, an actress named Sheila Stewart, Joe DiMaggio,
still reeling from his in Monroe's divorce, had become convinced

(02:57):
that Monroe was using Stuart's apartment to meet with the
man he thought Monroe had left him for. Acting on
information from the private investigator he'd hired and likely fueled
by more than a few drinks, DiMaggio had enlisted some friends,
including Sinatra, to help him catchman Row in the act.

(03:17):
It was a sloppy plan, and it had unsurprisingly gone
very wrong. Instead of going into Sheila Stuart's apartment on
the second floor, the group had broken into the first
floor home of Florence Cotts. So Florence finally got some
answers about what had happened to her that night, and
she eventually got some reparations. She sued DiMaggio, Sinatra, and

(03:42):
the other men and got a settlement. But the story
of the Wrong Door Raid, as it came to be known,
was far from over because California officials had some questions
about how Confidential magazine had gotten their story. In February
nineteen fifty seven, California State Senator Fred Graft held a

(04:06):
series of hearings to determine if Confidential had gotten the
story by paying off a private investigator. You might be
wondering why would a state legislature care where a scandal
magazine got its stories from. Well, Confidential Magazine wasn't just
any scandal magazine. It was one of the most powerful

(04:29):
publications in the country, with a reader base in the
millions and the ability to ruin a star's career with
a few carefully worded sentences. People all across America worried
that Confidential's salacious content would corrupt the country's youth. In California,
politicians and entertainment executives worried that its shocking stories would

(04:52):
destroy the lucrative movie industry, and so by nineteen fifty seven,
the studios and the government were lo looking for ways
to take the magazine down. The state Senate hearings into
the Wrong Door Raids story were only the first step.
Three months later, in May nineteen fifty seven, a grand

(05:14):
jury convened by the ambitious California Attorney General Pat Brown,
indicted Confidential, along with several key employees and partner businesses, on,
among other things, charges of conspiracy to commit criminal libel
and conspiracy to publish obscene and indecent material For years,

(05:37):
Confidential had held Hollywood hostage, using a network of informants
to dig up dirt on America's biggest celebrities. But now
Hollywood was fighting back with the assistance of the government.
The ensuing trial would put the right of freedom of
the press into question because Confidential stories were nasty, no doubt,

(06:00):
but the magazine would claim they were all true, and
could publishing the truth, no matter how indecent, ever be
a crime. Americans were about to find out. Welcome to
History on trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward. This week

(06:21):
the State of California v. Confidential. Confidentials creator and publisher
Robert Harrison was no stranger to scandal. After coming up
as a reporter for the New York Gossip Rags, Harrison
had gone into business for himself, creating a number of

(06:43):
so called girly magazines, publications filled with images of scantily
clad women. Harrison was a hands on magazine executive, regularly
acting as a photographer for his magazines and sometimes even
posing in photos himself. He was also an ambitious man.
When his girly magazines failed to make ends meet, Harrison

(07:06):
began casting around for a new, more profitable concept, and
he found it on television. Throughout nineteen fifty and nineteen
fifty one, a Senate committee led by Senator estes Ki
Fauver investigated the state of organized crime in America in
a series of hearings that were broadcast live on television.

(07:28):
Americans were glued to their TV screens as a procession
of mobsters testified in front of the committee. The March
nineteen fifty one hearing in New York attracted an estimated
thirty million viewers. Harrison was also inspired by the Confidential
series of books, which came out between nineteen forty eight

(07:51):
and nineteen fifty two and profiled different American cities New
York Confidential, Chicago Confidential, and so on. The Confidential series
claimed to reveal what was really happening in these cities.
The books shocked their readers with depictions of crime, sex,
and debauchery happening allegedly in the heart of every city.

(08:15):
They had a distinct point of view, As historian and
law professor Samantha Barbis puts it in her book on
the magazine Confidential Confidential, the Confidential books were racist, sexist, homophobic,
and largely false. They were also best sellers. Seeing the

(08:36):
public interest in the Key Father hearings and the Confidential books,
Harrison had a realization the American people craved this kind
of content, the story behind the story, a glimpse into
the private lives of public figures and the dirty underbelly
of modern life. Thus Confidential Magazine was born. The first

(08:59):
issue of Confidential, which hit newsstands in September nineteen fifty two,
set the tone for what was to come. The cover,
printed in lurid, eye catching blue, yellow and red, featured
giant headlines that leapt from the page. Photographs were grainy,
blown up, and unflattering, and like that of its namesake

(09:20):
book series, the magazine's content was sleazy, shocking, and bigoted.
This type of magazine focused on expose's and gossip were
often called scandal magazines. Confidential wasn't the only scandal magazine
on the market, so Robert Harrison had to find a
way to set it apart plan a lie. If his

(09:43):
reporters couldn't find juicy enough stories, they could just make
up better ones. Early issues of Confidential featured completely invented
tales of sex and crime, bolstered up by posed or
composite photos. But even Bonker's creations like a mob barun
grave robbing ring couldn't boost the magazine's circulation. Harrison needed

(10:06):
a new angle. In the summer of nineteen fifty three,
he found it. In the August issue, Confidential ran an
article about the relationship between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe,
who were then dating. The piece, called why Joe DiMaggio
Is Striking out with Marilyn Monroe, alleged that Monroe's mentor,

(10:29):
the seventy six year old co founder of twentieth Century Fox,
Joe Shank, was interfering in the relationship, either out of
concern for Monroe's career or because Shank was sleeping with
Monroe himself. The magazine heavily implied it was the latter,
and Americans ate it up. Confidential circulation doubled overnight. Harrison

(10:52):
knew he was onto something. If people liked reading about
the secret lives of mobsters, they loved reading about the
secret lives of movie stars. Throughout the rest of nineteen
fifty three and nineteen fifty four, Confidential increasingly focused its
coverage on Hollywood. We've got to have more Hollywood stories.
Harrison told his staff, the hotter, the better. A decade earlier,

(11:17):
it would have been impossible for a magazine like Confidential
to get the kind of Hollywood stories they wanted. For
the first half of the twentieth century, Hollywood had been
tightly managed by the movie studios. Studios controlled every step
of the film business, from production to distribution, and they
controlled the lives and images of their contracted stars with

(11:39):
the same iron fist. The only way for journalists to
get access to stars was to play along with the
studios and to produce the kind of positive coverage they wanted.
But by the nineteen fifties, the studio system was crumbling.
In nineteen forty eight, Supreme Court decision United States v.
Paramount Pay Pictures, Inc. Had ruled that the studios held

(12:02):
an unfair monopoly. Studios were forced to give up control
over many aspects of the business, dealing them a serious
financial blow. At the same time, the rise of television
had decreased movie attendance. As the studios lost power, their
threats to blackball journalists who didn't cover stars in the
right way lost weight, and the stars who were used

(12:26):
to the studios covering up their bad behavior were suddenly
very exposed. The gossip cup was running over, and Confidential
was ready to catch every last drop. Harrison began coordinating
a network of informants across Los Angeles. Everyone from sex
workers to police officers to studio employees, and even movie

(12:50):
stars themselves soon learned that Confidential would pay well for
good dirt. Confidential paid nannies to spy on employer's wressers
to listen in on client conversations, and waiters to remember
who wait with whom to get their stories. Confidential equipped
its sources with all sorts of spy gadgets, including bugs

(13:12):
to tap phone lines and watches that held hidden recorders.
Harrison's niece, Marjorie Meade and her husband Fred eventually moved
to Los Angeles and established a company called Hollywood Research, Inc.
Which coordinated and organized the information coming in from tipsters.
Harrison had correctly gauged the public's interest in Hollywood Gossip.

(13:34):
By nineteen fifty five, the magazine's circulation was close to
four million. Most copies were passed along to additional readers,
and estimated four readers per copy, putting Confidential's readership at
close to sixteen million people, or one in every ten Americans.

(13:54):
With that kind of audience came great power. Confidential stories
could make or break a star's career. A March nineteen
fifty five story about an alleged interracial romance between the
white actress Ava Gardner and the black singer dancer Sammy
Davis Junior led to Gardner's films being boycotted and banned

(14:14):
in parts of the country. Two months later, a story
about the actor Rory Calhoun's criminal past and how he
had turned his life around thanks to religion earned Calhoun
eight thousand fan letters and completely revitalized his career. As
Confidential's influence grew, the movie studios increasingly came to view

(14:36):
the magazine as a threat. The studios were more vulnerable
than ever. Their profits were down and their audiences were straying.
People also thought Hollywood was corrupting the country's morals. The
studios even faced a Senate inquiry into whether movies could

(14:56):
be tied to a rise in juvenile delinquency. The last
thing Hollywood needed was a magazine digging up all of
the industry's buried bodies. In the mid nineteen fifties, the
studios decided to fight back and they were prepared to
fight dirty. In the summer of nineteen fifty five, studio

(15:24):
publicity heads met in secret at the Beverly Hills Hotel
to discuss the Confidential problem. Shortly after the meeting, one
of the publicists traveled to New York to meet with
Confidential editors. Wouldn't it be better for everyone, he asked
the editors if the magazine focused on athletes, or politicians,

(15:45):
or really anyone besides Hollywood stars. Confidential editors laughed him
out of the office. This straightforward approach having failed, the
publicists moved on to something more cloak and dagger. Enlisting
movie producers and an actress to help them, The publicists
cooked up an elaborate trap for Confidential. The team planted

(16:10):
gossip about the actress, backing up their story with witnesses.
They made sure the story eventually got to Confidential via
a chain of tipsters. When Confidential sent a private investigator
to look into the story, everything seemed to check out.
But had Confidential run it, they would have been vulnerable

(16:30):
to an enormous libel suit because the story the publicists
had planted was entirely, verifiably false. At the last minute,
though the magazine had doubts and killed the story. The
studios were foiled again. If they couldn't control Confidential, the
studios decided maybe they could control the flow of information

(16:54):
out of Hollywood. Each of the six largest studios agreed
to contribute to a fund which would pay for private
security force to monitor star's behaviors and interfere with Confidential's
information gathering network. But the studios eventually balked, fearing that
Confidential would discover their plans and attack. A plan to

(17:14):
blacklist anyone thought to be a Confidential informant was abandoned.
For similar reasons, Celebrities, sick of having their dirty laundry
aired in the magazine's pages, wanted the studios to fight harder.
Many stars felt powerless on their own. They had the

(17:34):
option to file libel suits against Confidential. Yes, but there
were a number of reasons not to. First, a suit
could draw attention to the very thing that the stars
hoped to keep hidden. Filing a suit would only give
Confidential the publicity they want, said Marlon Brando, and maybe

(17:56):
I'd get an award of eight cents. There was also
the that a suit would provoke Confidential into spilling even
more information about the star. It was well known that
Confidential often published only parts of the stories they received
from tipsters, holding on to the most damaging titbits as
insurance against legal action. And finally, there was the problem

(18:19):
of jurisdiction. Confidential was a New York based company. Most
of the stars it wrote about lived in California and
filed their rare libel suits against the magazine in that state,
suits that judges quickly dismissed, saying that California did not
have jurisdiction over a New York company. The New York

(18:39):
courts were notoriously backed up, and filing there might have
meant a year's long wait to be heard. As stars
considered how best to deal with Confidential, the studios escalated
their battle to the federal level. In August nineteen fifty five,
several studio heads reached out to Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield

(19:01):
with a bold request. They wanted the Post Office to
revoke Confidential's mailing privileges. One movie producer was alleged to
have told Summerfield, unless they take away Harrison's mailing privileges,
this industry is done. For Summerfield, who saw obscenity as
one of the gravest threats to American society. Had his

(19:22):
own reasons for disliking Confidential. On August twenty seventh, he
issued a withhold from dispatch order on the November issue
of Confidential. Under the order's terms, no issue of Confidential
could be mailed without first being reviewed by the Post
Office and being found free of improper content. The determination

(19:43):
of whether content was or was not improper was entirely
up to the Post Office. Harrison responded by filing suit
against Summerfield, and a judge eventually ruled in the magazine's favor,
saying that the Post Office was violating the magazine's right
to do process by threatening to ban it with no notices,

(20:04):
charges or hearings. Confidential had won again. The fight with
the Post Office had even raised the magazine's profile and
with that, its circulation. But a raised profile also brought
unwanted scrutiny. The studio executives were not alone in their
concerns about Confidential. Segments of the American public were worried

(20:28):
about the effect scandal magazines might have on the nation's morals.
To some, these magazines seem to represent everything wrong with
the country. As one Californian told the newspaper, quote, all
scandal magazines should be taken off the market. They are
a menace to society. They caring nothing but trash, and
that is no good for our youth. Scandal magazines weren't

(20:51):
the only target for criticism. Many Americans worried about the
effect of any reading materials that freely discussed hot button
topics like sex, violence, and race. Throughout the nineteen fifties,
many communities set up review boards which determined if publications
were inappropriate. If they were found to be so, local distributors,

(21:12):
including booksellers, newsstands, and libraries were strongly encouraged not to
carry these items under the vague threat of legal action.
What about freedom of the press, you might ask. Here's
one magazine writing on that very question in nineteen fifty seven. Quote,
the framers of the Constitution never meant the First Amendment

(21:34):
to protect filth peddlers who poisoned minds. And this magazine
wasn't the only one to take this position. Many journalists
and publications believed that scandal magazines like Confidential were not
entitled to the same legal protections as more traditional publications.
They feared that aligning themselves with scandal magazines could end
up damaging their own rights. Back in Hollywood, the studios

(21:59):
sent that the tide of public opinion might be turning
their way. In October nineteen fifty six, when Harrison appeared
on The Tonight Show to defend Scandal Magazine's the audience
booed him it was time for the studios to strike.
In December nineteen fifty six, MGM released Slander, a movie

(22:23):
about an unscrupulous scandal magazine publisher unfairly ruining the life
of a well meaning actor. The movie was melodramatic, it
ends with the publisher's mother killing him, disgusted by what
her son has become, and flopped at the box office,
but its heavy handed message did not go unnoticed. Slander

(22:45):
quote reeks with the motion picture industry's long pent up
sense of vengeance, wrote Texas's Amarillo Globe. Harrison responded in
a typically cheeky fashion, hiring models to picket the movie
outside a Broadway theater holding signs that read Slander is

(23:07):
unfair to Confidential. But the studios weren't done there, though
their attempt to get Confidential through the post office had failed,
they now recognized the power of governmental attacks on the magazine.
In January nineteen fifty seven, the California State Senate formed
a committee to investigate the practices of private detectives in

(23:28):
the state. Or at least that was the committee's alleged purpose.
In reality, the committee had been formed at the behest
of the studios and planned to look into how Confidential
got its stories. This was the committee mentioned in the
prologue that looked into the wrong door raid at Florence
Cott's apartment. The committee's investigation eventually fizzled out in March,

(23:52):
with lead Senator Fred Kraft declaring that though the magazines
were a quote national disgrace, the field is beyond this
scope of a single state legislature. But the state's war
on Confidential was far from over. California Attorney General Pat
Brown announced that his office, in tandem with the Los
Angeles County District Attorney, would now be pursuing charges against Confidential.

(24:16):
Brown said his decision was motivated by a desire to
protect children from the magazine. He also claimed that Confidential
Quote caused divorces and broken homes and led to blackmail,
but behind the scenes, the studios were again pulling the strings.
Brown was pursuing a run for governor, and the film
industry had made it clear to him that they would

(24:38):
look favorably upon a candidate who supported their crusade against Confidential.
In May nineteen fifty seven, Brown and Los Angeles County
District Attorney William McKesson convened a grand jury to look
into Confidential. On May fifteenth, the grand jury indicted Confidential
members of its staff, its printer and distributor, and its

(24:59):
sister Magaze Whisper on four charges, including conspiracy to commit
criminal libel and conspiracy to publish obscene and indecent material.
Robert Harrison addressed the charges directly in an editorial and Confidential,
this magazine is under assault in the California courts. Harrison wrote,

(25:19):
this is a determined effort initiated by a segment of
the motion picture industry to get this magazine. He positioned
the Confidential as a brave truth teller, a publication unafraid
to reveal to the American people what the elite did
not want them to know. Is an American jury going

(25:41):
to get us for daring to tell that truth? Harrison asked,
we don't believe so his assumptions would soon be put
to the test. Confidential's trial was scheduled to begin in August.

(26:01):
It almost ended before it started, though, because it seemed
that both sides had lost their appetite for the fight.
Throughout the summer, Harrison's lawyers had been issuing subpoenas for celebrities.
Most stars had managed to avoid the summons, flipping out
of back entrances, heading to Las Vegas, even leaving the country,

(26:21):
but some hadn't. Dean Martin, Launa Turner, and Gary Cooper
were among those who had received subpoenas. Studio executives panicked.
The last thing they wanted was for their biggest box
office draws to have to confirm or deny their sins
under oath. Arthur Crowley, the high powered Los Angeles lawyer

(26:42):
running the defense, knew just what he was doing. I
want to make it clear that the reputations of many
persons will suffer if this case goes to trial, because
we are going to offer the truth as a defense,
he stated. Studio executives heard Crowley's message loud and clear,
and they started to have second thoughts about the trial.

(27:03):
George Murphy head of the Motion Picture Industry Council, approached
the prosecutors and urged them to reach a compromise. The
defense was receptive. Harrison knew that this trial, no matter
the outcome, would be enormously expensive, so the two sides
came to an agreement. Confidential would stop focusing on celebrities
in exchange for some of the charges being decided by

(27:25):
a judge and others being dropped. But Judge Herbert Walker
rejected the deal. The state had brought charges for good reason,
he said, and this compromise didn't do enough to address
those charges. The trial would proceed. Stars and Confidential executives
alike held their breath. No matter who won the case,

(27:46):
everyone knew scandal was sure to ensue. On August second,
nineteen fifty seven, the trial began at the Los Angeles
Superior Court. Robert Harrison wasn't there. In fact, only two
of the people charged and the grand jury indictment were present.

(28:10):
All summer, Confidential's lawyers had been battling to prevent the
extradition of their clients from New York, and they had succeeded.
The face of Confidential at the defense table would not
be its infamous publisher Harrison, but his niece Marjorie Need
and her husband Fred. Marjorie and Fred had flown back
into Los Angeles in May to surrender, and Marjorie, decked

(28:34):
out in furs and diamonds, had asked reporters, then, don't
you think this whole thing has a little to do
with destruction of freedom of the press? Now she sat
quietly in the courtroom, her dyed red curls and large eyes,
drawing admiring looks. The prosecutors, William Ritzy and Clarence Lynne,

(28:55):
presented quite a contrast to the glamorous Meads. Ritzy, a
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, and Lynn, an Assistant Attorney General,
were both serious religious men. Lynn taught Sunday school back
home in San Francisco, and they weren't letting the spotlight
dazzle them. Though the trial had largely come about due

(29:15):
to political pressure, Ritzy and Lynn were confident that the
law was on their side. One of their first jobs
was making the connection between the meds and confidential clear,
given that the Meads were the only defendants present. That
connection came, the prosecutors claimed, through a company called Hollywood Research,

(29:37):
This was the Los Angeles business that organized and followed
up on informants tips and sent them back to Confidential.
The magazine had long claimed that Hollywood Research was a
completely independent organization. This was part of their strategy of
claiming to have no corporate presence in California, thus making
it harder for stars to sue them. But the prosecution

(29:58):
thought otherwise, and they had good reason to think so,
because Hollywood Research had been run by none other than
Marjorie Mead. The prosecution took several steps during their case
to prove their point, submitting phone records that showed a
huge volume of calls between the Confidential office and the

(30:22):
Hollywood Researching Office. They also brought out a witness, Paul Gregory,
who claimed that Marjorie Mead had extorted him over keeping
a story out of Confidential. Gregory's testimony had provided a
dramatic moment. As he testified about Marjorie, she began to sob,

(30:44):
and once the jury left the room, she collapsed entirely furious.
Her husband, Fred had stalked over to the prosecution table
and slamming his fist down, yelled at prosecutor Ritzy, you
must want to win this case pretty bad by putting
that lying character on the stand, Ritzy was unfazed. The

(31:07):
defense would later provide records proving that Meade could not
have been with Gregory when he claimed she had the
biggest scores for The prosecution's argument about the California Confidential
connection actually came during Fred Mead's own testimony. He revealed
that Harrison had been the one to suggest that he
and Marjorie get into the gossip business. Harrison had even

(31:30):
given them money to get started on cross Ritzy got
need to admit that Marjorie's brother was the company's vice president,
and that the supposedly independent Hollywood Research had only ever
sold information to two magazines, Confidential and its sister magazine, Whisper.

(31:52):
Whatever the exact nature of the relationship between Hollywood Research
and Confidential Engine, true prosecutors were right. Hollywood Research had
been set up by the magazine. It was clear from
the testimony that the Needs were involved in this business
up to their necks, and in the course of this business,

(32:14):
the Needs and the rest of the Confidential crew, the
prosecutors claimed, had conspired to commit obscenity and libel. The
prosecutors now set out to prove these charges. First up
the question of obscenity. What is obscene material. That's a
hard question to answer, a question that even the law

(32:37):
struggles with, because what makes something obscene is often subjective
in California law. At the time, material was obscene if
quote it has a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt
its readers by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desire.
In other words, if it turned people on. The magazine

(32:59):
had been charged with not just the publication of obscene material,
but also the conspiracy to publish it, meaning that two
or more people had arranged knowingly to commit the crime.
So now Ritzie and Lynne had to prove not only
that Confidential had published obscene material, but also that they
had knowingly done so. The prosecution argued that Confidential had

(33:21):
done just that. They brought Ronnie Quillen, a sex worker
and frequent Confidential tipster, to the stand. Quillen testified that
Harrison had wanted stories quote primarily dealing with the sexual
activities of celebrities, and that he'd made it clear that quote,
the more lewde and lascivious the story, the more colorful

(33:42):
the magazine, But the defense rebutted that notion, claiming that
the magazine had always been careful not to cross the
line into obscenity, and how had they defined that line.
Daniel Ross, one of the magazine's lawyers, explained that he
and Robert Harrison had compared the magazine to others published material.

(34:02):
To prove Ross's point, proudly, the defense attorney submitted into
evidence a whole stack of books which Ross claimed to
have used to learn what the public found acceptable in
terms of obscenity. The stack included best sellers like John
Steinbeck's East of Eden and Grace Mettalius's Peyton Place. Whether
or not these books made senses benchmarks for obscenity, and

(34:24):
more importantly, whether or not Confidential had ended up publishing
obscene content despite these precautions would be up for the
jury to decide. The next charge was libel. The state
had again gone with a conspiracy charge, so they would
have to prove two things. That the magazine had published
afammatory material and that it had done so with intent,

(34:46):
Because the magazine was charged not with civil libel but
with criminal libel, a little used charge that basically doesn't
exist today, the burden of proving whether or not the
stories were true fell to the magazine. Prosecutor Clarence Lynn
had said when the charges were announced that he didn't
think the magazine would be able to prove that their
stories were true. Like many people, he seemed to assume

(35:11):
that Confidential was sloppy in their standards, publishing anything, no
matter how questionable, as long as it sounded good. But
in that assumption, Lynn was very wrong. Though Confidential had
started out by publishing made up stories, once they graduated
into the world of Hollywood gossip, Robert Harrison had wanted

(35:34):
to make sure that Confidential was legally safeguarded. When the
magazine decided to move forward with a tip, private investigators
were hired to double check the information. We have to
have the exact type, exact date, everything documented just in case,
Harrison said. Then the magazine's lawyers would prepare affidavits for

(35:55):
their sources to sign, which read quote, I swich that
all the events described in the above story are true
and that I was a participant in these events. Based
on these affidavits, confidentials writers would then put together a piece,
but the legal review wasn't over yet. Lawyers would now

(36:16):
check over every word of a story, often demanding rewrites
or deletions. Their oversight was so intensive, one reporter said
that he once requested a disclaimer that an article was
an attorney's work, not his own. Writers quickly learned that
the best approach was to imply conclusions, not state them outright,

(36:37):
in order to protect themselves from liability. Confidential, the testimony suggested,
was very, very careful with the truth, but two of
the trials most eye catching witnesses would reveal that Confidential's
fact checking process was not infallible. Hollywood's fears about stars

(36:58):
being called by the defense hadn't materialized. Defense lawyer Arthur
Crowley didn't want to risk being bound by the testimony
of witnesses who might perjure themselves to protect their reputations. However,
there were some stars who wanted to testify. Their names
were Maureen O'Hara and Dorothy Dandridge. O'Hara, an actress, came

(37:24):
to court to respond to a March nineteen fifty seven
article titled quote it was the hottest show in town
when Maureen O'Hara cuddled in Row thirty five. The article
alleged that O'Hara had had a sexual encounter with a
lover in the back row of Grammin's Chinese Theater in
Los Angeles. O'Hara vehemently denied it, and she had proved

(37:48):
to back up her denials. On the same day that
Confidential claims she was getting busy in Los Angeles, O'Hara's
passport showed that she had been in London. Dorothy Dandridge,
a singer actress, also testified. Confidential had published an article
called only the Birds and the Bees Saw What Dorothy
Dandridge Did in the Woods, claiming that Dandridge had had

(38:10):
sex with a man in the woods near a resort
in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Now, Dandridge appeared on the stand,
stating for the court that what Confidential claimed could never
have happened. Dandridge was black, and the man the story
alleged she had had sex with was white. During the
period in which she had been in Lake Tahoe, Dandridge explained,

(38:33):
racial prejudices there had not only precluded her from interacting
with white people, but also from walking freely around the
resort grounds. She couldn't have even gone into the woods,
let alone met a white man there, so Confidential was
not infallible. But had they meant to defame the subjects
of their articles. Opinions on that varied. One disgruntled former

(38:57):
reporter testified that he had wanted to hear those he
wrote about, while others claimed that they were just reporting
facts like any other news publication. The real blame for
any damage done, when witness said, lay with the movie studios,
who did not enforce the moral clauses in their stars contracts. Again,
it would be up to the jury to decide. In

(39:21):
closing arguments, the prosecution doubled down on their themes. They
pointed out the familial and financial bonds between Confidential and
Hollywood Research. They argued that Confidential had no motive for
exposing scandal other than financial gain. They railed against the
low morals of the magazine. Look at them, shouted William Ritzy,

(39:45):
pointing his finger at Marjorie and Fred Mead. They are
the self appointed purveyors of filth and gossip in the
United States. For the defense, Crowley fought back, Oh, was
Confidential so much different, so much worse than any other publication?
He asked, what about girly magazines with their erotic content.

(40:10):
Why wasn't the government pursuing them unlike those magazines, Crowley continued,
confidential is accepted by the community. It is sold over
the counter, not under the counter. And then he brought
up another point, one that had nearly gotten lost amongst
the discussion of celebrities and gossip and smut, the issue

(40:35):
of free speech. The prosecution wants to indulge in censorship,
to do your thinking for you. Who is the prosecutor
to tell you what you can and can't read? He asked,
If you find my client's guilty, Crowley told the jury,
you will be taking a precious piece of liberty. Would

(40:58):
this plea be enough? After more than a month of
testimony and nearly thirty witnesses, the trial ended and the
decision was left in the jury's hands. Soon it became
clear that it would not be a quick deliberation. One
day passed, and then another, and then another. The jury

(41:20):
returned to the courtroom to ask Judge Walker some clarifying questions.
They left again. Things were getting heated amongst the jury.
At one point marshals had to step in. Several jurors
had allegedly threatened to throw another juror out of the window. Finally,
after a then record breaking fourteen days of deliberation, the

(41:42):
jury returned to the courtroom on October first, but they
still had no verdict. They were hopelessly stuck, they told
Judge Walker, and could not reach a unanimous verdict. Reluctantly,
he declared a mistrial. Later, it would emerge that the
jurors had voted seven to five in favor of conviction
on the charge of conspiracy to commit criminal libel and

(42:05):
eight to four on conspiracy to publish obscenity. Now the
government had the option to retry Confidential, but did they
want to publicly? California Attorney General Pat Brown was quick

(42:26):
to declare his desire for a retrial, but privately he
wanted the whole thing to be over and done with,
and so did the studios who had first urged him
to take the case. The trial had been expensive and exhausting.
He wrote to Prosecutor Clarence Lynn on October ninth and
urged him to settle the case with Confidential. Publicly, Robert

(42:48):
Harrison was thrilled by the trial's outcome. He threw a
lavish dinner to celebrate Arthur Crowley in New York City
and hired a violin player to serenade him privately. Was terrified.
The first trial had cost him an estimated three and
a half million dollars in legal fees in today's money.

(43:11):
He was worried that another trial would ruin him and
perhaps even land his niece Marjorie in jail. So when
the prosecutors reached out to discuss a deal, Harrison was receptive.
The lawyers got to work hammering out terms. Meanwhile, Pat
Brown announced his run for governor. He was elected less

(43:32):
than a year later and served two terms. On November twelfth,
Judge Burton Noble approved a proposed deal between California and Confidential.
The terms were simple. The state would drop all charges
except the count of conspiracy to publish obscenity. A judge
would determine the magazine's guilt on this charge based on

(43:53):
the grand jury and trial transcripts. In exchange for the
reduced charges, Confidential agreed to stop publishing exposes about celebrities.
They also agreed to take out ads publicly announcing this
change in editorial direction. In December, Judge Noble found Confidential
and her sister magazine whisper guilty of conspiring to publish obscenity.

(44:16):
Each magazine was fined five thousand dollars. Where were the
studios in all of this? During the trial, Now aware
that taking the legal route ran the risk of unwelcome exposure,
the studios had created another internal anti scandal magazine committee members,

(44:37):
including a politically ambitious actor named Ronald Reagan, brainstormed measures
to fight Confidential and its cronies. In mid October, they
announced a campaign to root out magazine informants. We will
organize effective opposition to fight these people, writers, said one
committee member. But their efforts proved unnecessary because though Confidential

(45:04):
had made it through the trial, they had not come
out of the battle unscathed. In the spring of nineteen
fifty eight, the magazine revealed its new approach to readers.
We're quitting the area of private affairs for the arena
of public affairs. Read the announcement. If wiseacres say we've
retreated from the bedroom, we'll say, yes, that's true. From

(45:26):
now on, we'll search the thoroughfares of the globe for
stories of public interest. These so called public interest stories
including gems like what's wrong with the oil burner in
the White House Basement and Penicillin Can Save Your Life.
Unsurprisingly failed to interest the public at all. Circulation numbers

(45:49):
collapsed after three issues of the new Confidential. Robert Harrison
had had enough. He wanted a magazine that drew attention,
that started conversations, and most of all, that made money.
Under their restrictions placed by the California Deal, Confidential could
no longer be that magazine. Plus Harrison was now facing

(46:12):
a number of celebrity libel lawsuits. He announced that he
was selling the magazine. The new publisher tried to revive interest,
but couldn't find an audience. The magazine steadily lost readership
and eventually folded. Many people saw Confidential's collapse as a
victory for American morality. One newspaper editorial put it like this,

(46:36):
these magazines still may not be fit for most living rooms,
but it is generally agreed that they are not quite
so bad as they were before. The heavy expenses of
the trial appear to have made the publishers and editors
of Confidential and her scandalous sisters more conscious of their responsibilities.
But other observers were concerned about the potential chilling effects

(46:58):
of the trial, the journalist Maurice Solitau expressed these fears
governmental power has been used to alter the editorial content
of a national magazine. It has been shown that the
cost of defending such a charge is so expensive that
by merely threatening an indefinite series of prosecutions, any publication

(47:20):
can be put to death. Regardless of one's personal opinion
of Confidential, many may regard the use of the judicial
power to muzzle a magazine any magazine, as an act
discouraging freedom and controversy. Fortunately, Zlatao's views were not immediately realized.
In the decade after the Confidential trial, the American public

(47:43):
and the judicial system seemed to lose their appetite for censorship.
Many of the local and state level literature review boards
which served as de facto censorship organizations, disbanded, usually due
to court rulings against them, but censorship has never fully
vanied from our landscape. Recently, the country has seen a

(48:03):
rise in community efforts to ban or censor books from
public and school libraries. The American Library Association reported in
September twenty twenty three that the first eight months of
that year contained the highest number of book challenges since
it began recording the data in two thousand and three,
the number of book challenges had already nearly doubled between

(48:25):
twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. Unlike Confidential, which
was invested in reinforcing racist, homophobic, and sexist stereotypes, most
of the publications being challenged today are those that explore
or are supportive of gender, racial, and sexual diversity. But
the question at the heart of all these challenges has

(48:45):
remained the same. Who chooses what the public gets to read?
The American Library Associations Deborah Caldwell Stone is a statement
about book challenges. Said quote, to allow a group of people,
or any individual, no matter how powerful or allowed, to
become the decision maker about what books we can read
or whether libraries exist, is to place all of our

(49:08):
rights and liberties in jeopardy, Or, as Arthur Crowley put
it in the Confidential Trial, who is the prosecutor to
tell you what you can and can't read? There are
some lighter parallels between Confidential and today too. Though Confidential
itself may not have lasted long, it set the tone

(49:30):
for nearly all of the celebrity gossip we consume today.
Before Confidential and other scandal magazines like it. Hollywood stars
had highly polished images. Confidential revealed the truth behind the glamour.
Once the truth was out, there was no going back,
and many stars decided that it was better to capitalize

(49:51):
on the public's interest in their foibles than try to
deny them. In nineteen sixty four, Robert Harrison was profiled
in esquire Ma magazine and told the reporter quote, you
couldn't put out a magazine like Confidential again because movie
stars have started writing books about themselves. They tell all.
No magazine can compete with that. Many magazines, of course,

(50:14):
have tried. From confidentials Ashes Rose Publications has varied as
The National Inquirer and People Magazine, as well as online
gossip sites like TMZ and television programs like Entertainment Tonight.
Robert Harrison, for all his quirks, knew what news sold,
and as I sit here now telling the story of

(50:36):
the hidden forces at work behind his magazine's trial, I
can't help but think of some of his words. I
sincerely believe the basic vehicle of the story behind the
story will be here long after we are all dead.
That's the story of California. V Confidential Stay with Me

(50:59):
after the Break to learn more about the tragic rise
and fall of one of the magazine's star writers, who
embodied many of the nineteen fifties darkest trends. In the
spring of nineteen fifty three, Robert Harrison was looking for
a reporter to write a hit piece about one of
his loudest critics, the New York Post editor James Wexler.

(51:22):
None of his usual freelancers would do. Harrison wanted to
highlight Wexler's youthful membership in the Young Communist League, and
thus wanted a noted anti communist journalist to write the piece.
So he reached out to the source of all things
anti communists, the office of Senator Joe McCarthy. Three years earlier,

(51:44):
McCarthy had made national news by declaring that he had
a list of hundreds of Communists working at the State Department.
Since then, he had ruthlessly and often baselessly accused hundreds
more Americans of Communist sympathies, ruining reputations and lives with
his hearings in the Senate. One of the main sources

(52:05):
of information for these hearings was a prominent anti communist
journalist named Howard Rushmore, who now worked for McCarthy. When
Robert Harrison called McCarthy's office in the spring of nineteen
fifty three, it was with Rushmore that he wished to
be connected. Rushmore had not always been an anti communist.
In fact, he had once been a passionate communist. Born

(52:29):
on July second, nineteen twelve, in Sheridan, Wyoming, Rushmore grew
up in profound poverty. As a young reporter in Missouri,
he had been radicalized by witnessing both terrible working conditions
and the lynching of a young black man. Rushmore was
desperate for a better world and admired the conviction with
which communist organizations railed against injustice. By the nineteen thirties,

(52:54):
he was prominent in the communist movement and served as
film critic for the major communist newspaper, Daily Worker. But
in nineteen thirty nine, Rushmore had a catastrophic falling out
with the Communist Party over his positive review of the
film Gone with the Wind. Other Daily Worker employees accused
him of being racist and of sympathizing with the Confederacy. Outraged,

(53:17):
Rushmore left both the paper and the Party and decided
to devote himself to destroying communism in America. His rise
in the anti communist movement was just as swift as
it had been in the communist movement. He was hired
by the right wing journal American Newspaper and became the
country's first full time reporter on the communist movement. By

(53:39):
the nineteen forties, With his anti communist expertise established, Rushmore
became a popular witness for government investigations. He was a
key witness in the House on American Activities Committees' hearings
on communism in Hollywood. In nineteen fifty three, Senator McCarthy
made Rushmore his research director. His power seemed limitless, but

(54:03):
under the surface cracks were appearing. Rushmore was an alcoholic
with violent tendencies. He had a prickly personality, a combative nature,
and a condescending manner. He also had a tendency to
fabricate evidence. Once, he had claimed to have an FBI
report showing that whe hundred and fifty government employees in

(54:23):
Washington State were Soviet spies. When the FBI asked him
to produce this report, he gave them a letter he
himself had written, and he would eventually lose his job
with McCarthy after it was revealed that he was using
private testimony from the Scent hearings for his articles in
The Journal American. After agreeing to write that first article

(54:44):
for Confidential onn Wexler, Rushmore had contributed occasionally to the magazine,
writing mainly anti communist expose is Like the Strange Death
of J. Robert Oppenheimer's Red Sweetheart. Rushmore thought the tabloid
business was beneath him, but when and the Journal American
fired him in nineteen fifty four over personality and pay disputes,

(55:05):
he came to Confidential full time. Eventually, Rushmore became Confidential's
chief editor. His main passion was exposes of stars for
communist leanings or homosexuality, but he'd chafed against Harrison's requirements
that he also report on what Rushmore saw as a
less consequential celebrity gossip. In turn, Harrison was annoyed by

(55:27):
Rushmore's obsessive focus on politics. By nineteen fifty five, the
two men had fallen out, and Rushmore left the magazine
that September under less than amicable terms, though Confidential gave
him severan's pay and promised to assume liability for any
libel suits on articles published under his watch, as he
had done with the Communist Party. Rushmore became determined to

(55:50):
destroy the organization he felt spurned by. He took his
severance pay and bought a plane ticket to California, where
he met up with an A. Turneri, who was representing several
celebrities in suits against the magazine. He would eventually testify
at Pat Brown's grand jury hearings, where his testimony that
quote some of the stories are true and some have

(56:13):
nothing to back them up at all, would go a
long way towards convincing the grand jury to bring an
indictment against Confidential. At the trial, Rushmore testified for the prosecution,
continuing his assault on the magazine. When Arthur Crowley pressed
Rushmore on cross about his goals in writing for Confidential,
asking did you have this specific intention yourself to injure someone?

(56:37):
The lawyer clearly expected a no, but Rushmore shocked Crowley
in the courtroom by replying, I certainly did. Though Rushmore
seemingly got what he wanted with the destruction of Confidential,
the trial also ruined him. This was the second time
he had publicly turned against an organization that had employed him,
and no one could trust him anymore. THEO. Willson, who

(57:00):
reported on the trial for the New York Daily News,
called Rushmore quote a professional turncoat on the skids. He
was unemployable, unlikable, and sinking ever deeper into the bottle.
When prosecutor Clarence Lynn approached Rushmore in the fall of
nineteen fifty seven about testifying in a potential confidential retrial,

(57:21):
he found a broken man, he told me. Lynn said
that he thought he had been ruined by his activities
in the Confidential trial. Much of Rushmore's anger ended up
being channeled against his wife, Francis, who he physically abused.
On January third, nineteen fifty eight, the worst happened. Rushmore
killed Francis and then himself in a taxi in New

(57:44):
York City. Robert Harrison received the news in another taxi
on his way home from the airport. The driver asked
him if he'd heard the news that the publisher of
Confidential had just shot himself. Harrison, who was actually the
publisher of Confidential, was baffled. Howard Rushmore's story is a
sad and sordid one, but his journey also tells us

(58:05):
so much about the country he lived in. As a
young man, he witnessed terrible things and hoped for a
better world. When he could not achieve that, he set
out to watch the world burn. He wrote the progressive
wave of the nineteen thirties, rallied behind nationalist causes in
the nineteen forties, and played on fears during the Red
Scare in the nineteen fifties. He recognized the country's interest

(58:28):
in celebrities, and he made money off of it, but
it sickened him too. He was a mess of contradictions,
a difficult man, and despite his protests that Confidential was
beneath him, there is probably no better avatar for the
magazine's potent brand of scandal. Thank you for listening to
History on Trial. The main sources for this episode were

(58:52):
Samantha Barbas's book Confidential Confidential, The Inside Story of Hollywood's
notorious scandal magazine and Henry E. Scott's book Shocking True
Story The Rise and Fall of Confidential, America's most scandalous
scandal magazine. For a full bibliography, as well as a
transcript of this episode with citations, please visit History on

(59:16):
Trial podcast dot com. History on Trial is written and
hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Trevor Young and
executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward.

(59:36):
Learn more about the show at History on Trial podcast
dot com and follow us on Instagram at History on
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