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Confidential was a magazine founded in December 1952 by Robert Harrison. The magazine was a pioneer in scandal, gossip, and exposé, featuring what Newsweek called "sin and sex with a seasoning of right wing politics".^[1]

Harrison is said to have been inspired by the live televised covering of the Kefauver hearings.^[2] To gather material for his new magazine, Harrison established an organization called Hollywood Research Inc., operated by his niece and her husband, which, fifty years later was described by a British celebrity interviewer as:

a spy network of hack journalists, private investigators, waiters, call girls, and 75-dollars-a-week starlets who were on the rosters of the major studios and were going nowhere except to bed with anyone who might boost their careers.^[2]

By July 1955, Time was decrying its success:

In a little more than two years, a 25¢ magazine called Confidential, based on the proposition that millions like to wallow in scurrility, has become the biggest newsstand seller in the U.S. Newsmen have called Confidential ("Tells the Facts and Names the Names") everything from "scrawling on privy walls" to a "sewer sheet of supercharged sex." But with each bimonthly issue, printed on cheap paper and crammed with splashy pictures, Confidential's sale has grown even faster than its journalistic reputation has fallen.^[3]

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.^[4] By May 1958, Harrison sold the magazine to a group led by Hy Steirman. The magazine went through a number of further changes in format and ownership and eventually ceased publication entirely in 1978.^[1]

Following a highly-unflattering article about Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, an attempt was made to ban the magazine from sale in Cuba.

In July 1955, Doris Duke sued the magazine for $3 million, claiming libel when Confidential wrote about her and a "Negro handyman and chauffeur" whom the magazine said she once employed.^[5]

In August 1955, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield barred Confidential from the mails, citing objectionable content such as a racy description of a stripteaser's gyrations and a "questionable" cheesecake photograph of Terry Moore.^[6] (The American Civil Liberties Union unsuccessfully objected to the ban.)

The July 1957 issue featured a cover story on Liberace headlined "Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be 'Mad About the Boy.'"^[7] 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.^[8]

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 Movie Theatre. As she recounted in her 2004 autobiography "'Tis Herself,"^[9] her passport proved that she was in Spain on the date alleged by Confidential; the public exposure and large settlement were instrumental to 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."^[2]

Frank Sinatra threatened to sue Confidental 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."

Confidential inspired the name of James Ellroy's novel L.A. Confidential, and is fictionally portrayed as the tabloid Hush-Hush, with Harrison fictionalized as Sid Hudgens, played in the film by Danny DeVito.

• Supermarket tabloid
• Gossip magazine

1. ^ ^{a b} Vintage Smear, a MediaDrome article
2. ^ ^{a b c d} The father of scandal, a 2002 British Journalism Review article
3. ^ TIME, July 11, 1955
4. ^ TIME, May 26, 1958
5. ^ TIME, August 1, 1955
6. ^ TIME, September 19, 1955
7. ^ http://www.bobsliberace.com/decades/1950s/1950s.17.html
8. ^ http://www.bobsliberace.com/decades/1950s/1950s.9.html
9. ^ Tis Herself by Maureen O'Hara, Simon and Schuster, 2004

• Previews of TIME articles about Confidential:
  • Success in the Sewer (July 11, 1955)
  • Sewer Trouble (August 1, 1955)
  • Cat-o'-Nine-Tale (August 8, 1955)
  • Lid on the Sewer (September 19, 1955)
  • Confidential Wins a Round (October 17, 1955)
  • Ssh! (April 2, 1956)
  • Putting the Papers to Bed (August 26, 1957)
  • High Price of Virtue (May 26, 1958)
  • [http://www.bobsliberace.com/decades/1950s/1950s.9.html
  • [http://www.bobsliberace.com/decades/1950s/1950s.17.html Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be Mad About the Boy"
  • Tis Herself by Maureen O'Hara, Simon and Schuster, 2004