Robert Harrison (publisher)
Encyclopedia
Confidential (magazine)
Confidential was a periodical published quarterly from December 1952 to August 1953, and then bi-monthly until 1978. It was founded by Robert Harrison and is considered a pioneer in scandal, gossip, and exposé journalism. Newsweek said it featured "sin and sex with a seasoning of right wing...
in 1952. Confidential is seen as the progenitor of today’s gossip magazines and modern celebrity journalism. Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
nicknamed Harrison "The King of Leer".
Early life and career
Robert Harrison was the son of Russian immigrants and grew up in the Bronx in New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He started out as a copyboy on a New York tabloid and worked his way up to advertising space salesman. Later he started up smaller publications specializing in material seen at the time as sexually titillating and perverted. He was not beyond posing himself with the models (among them the famous Bettie Page
Bettie Page
Bettie Mae Page was an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. She has often been called the "Queen of Pinups"...
), “playing everything from pith-helmeted white slaver to wife spanker.” At one time he was arrested for having staged pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
pictures at a golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
Harrison's early publications
During the 1940s Harrison published ”girlie magazines”, with pictures of partially clothed women. To enhance sales he used three leading pin-up artists of the time: Peter DribenPeter Driben
Peter Driben, an American pin-up artist, was perhaps one of the most productive pin-up artists of the 1940s and 1950s. Although both Alberto Vargas and Gil Elvgren have extensive catalogues of work, neither came close to the output of Driben...
, Earl Moran (aka Steffa) and Billy De Vorss.
Beauty Parade (”The World's Loveliest Girls”) was Harrison's first ”risqué” publication, started in October 1941. It contained, as the title suggests, pictures of pretty women, although not as raunchy as his later works.
The magazine Eyeful (”Glorifying the American Girl”) was created in 1942 and was very similar to Beauty Parade. The depicted women were still fully, or partially, clothed but were placed in more intimate positions. Eyeful often featured Bettie Page
Bettie Page
Bettie Mae Page was an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. She has often been called the "Queen of Pinups"...
posing on the centrefold.
Wink also imitated the style of Beauty Parade, but contained a stronger element of fetishism, with women in bondage, handling whips or being spanked.
In 1947 Harrison created Flirt, which mainly featured the same kind of models as Beauty Parade, but with more fetishist themes.
Titter (”America's Merriest Magazine”) was another of Harrison's publications, which focused on the burlesque.
The only one of Harrison’s magazines that differed from the Beauty Parade format was Whisper, started in April 1946. The contents were more explicit, violent and blatantly sexual, and Whisper reached sales figures of 600,000 copies per issue.
After Harrison had created Confidential
Confidential (magazine)
Confidential was a periodical published quarterly from December 1952 to August 1953, and then bi-monthly until 1978. It was founded by Robert Harrison and is considered a pioneer in scandal, gossip, and exposé journalism. Newsweek said it featured "sin and sex with a seasoning of right wing...
many of Confidentials articles were reproduced in the magazine. Harrison sold Whisper in 1958, but it survived into the early 1970s.
The creation of
Confidential The idea for the ConfidentialConfidential (magazine)
Confidential was a periodical published quarterly from December 1952 to August 1953, and then bi-monthly until 1978. It was founded by Robert Harrison and is considered a pioneer in scandal, gossip, and exposé journalism. Newsweek said it featured "sin and sex with a seasoning of right wing...
gossip concept, Robert Harrison supposedly got while watching the U.S. Senate hearings on organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
, conducted by Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver
Estes Kefauver
Carey Estes Kefauver July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S...
in the early 1950s. The hearings exposed the underworld in the USA, with mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
bosses who had colorful nicknames, lavish lifestyles and private lives full of scandalous details. The televised hearings often revealed real life people that were more interesting than the made-up characters of Harrison’s publications.
After the hearings Harrison started to build up the concept for his new magazine. He realized that he couldn’t target the mob without personal protection, and instead turned to the world of movies. Hollywood was a similar environment that seemed to live by its own laws, and contained the same glamorous lifestyles with promiscuity and temptations.
Confidential’s success
The first Confidential issue was published in December 1952 under the caption "The Lid Is Off!". It was quarterly until August 1953, when it became a bi-monthly product and became the fastest growing magazine in the US. After only a couple of issues, Harrison claimed its circulation reached four million, and because every copy was estimated to be read by ten persons, it might have reached a fifth of the US population.Harrison soon started making approximately half a million dollars per issue. By 1955, Confidential had reached five million copies per issue with a larger circulation than TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
, Look
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
, The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
or even leading magazines such as Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
and Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
.
Confidential’s concept was to insinuate about and expose the private lives of celebrities. For example the magazine alleged that Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
was a wife beater, that Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...
and Liberace
Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
were homosexuals ("Lavender Lads"), and that Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
had been charged, convicted, and jailed for smoking marijuana. (Mitchum had been arrested for marijuana possession on September 1, 1948 in Los Angeles, and spent 43 days in February and March 1949 in a prison farm in Castaic, California
Castaic, California
Castaic, California, is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Los Angeles County, California, north of Santa Clarita and a few miles from Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. It is approximately 39 miles from the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center. As of the 2010...
but the Los Angeles District Attorney dismissed the charges on January 31, 1951.) Apart from spreading gossip and outing homosexuals, Confidential combined the exposés with a conservative agenda especially targeted at those who sympathised with the left wing and in identifying those engaged in so-called ”miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
”.
The trial against
Confidential and Harrison
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
to publish criminal libel." When the trial started Defense Attorney Arthur J. Crowley subpoenaed more than 100 Hollywood stars as witnesses. This turned out to be a stroke of genius for the marketing of the scandal magazine. At the beginning of the trial
Trial
A trial is, in the most general sense, a test, usually a test to see whether something does or does not meet a given standard.It may refer to:*Trial , the presentation of information in a formal setting, usually a court...
the defense started reading the juiciest magazine pieces for the court record. This meant that the libellous stories could be reprinted by the more serious press, which was devastating for the film industry.
After a record 15-day deliberation the jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
announced that it was hung
Hung jury
A hung jury or deadlocked jury is a jury that cannot, by the required voting threshold, agree upon a verdict after an extended period of deliberation and is unable to change its votes due to severe differences of opinion.- England and Wales :...
and could not reach a conclusive verdict
Verdict
In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. The term, from the Latin veredictum, literally means "to say the truth" and is derived from Middle English verdit, from Anglo-Norman: a compound of ver and dit In law, a verdict...
. A retrial 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 there would be no new trial.
Harrison after the trial
After the mistrial Robert Harrison struck a deal with the film industry, which stated that the charges were dropped in exchange for leaving the movie stars alone. The deal became the effective end of Confidential, as the magazine was no longer able to publish the juiciest gossip. Eventually Harrison settled with all individuals who had charged him with libel to salvage his income from six profitable years. In 1958 he sold off both Confidential and Whisper.Later Harrison was only heard of publicly when he was shot in the arm during a safari in the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
by a man who still harboured a grudge from the Confidential days. In his later years he ran a much smaller magazine called Inside News. Robert Harrison died in 1978; the same year that Confidential was shut down.
Further reading
- Henry E. Scott,
External links
- Samuel Bernstein, "Mr. Confidential site", samuel-bernstein.com
- Victor Davis, "The father of scandal", British Journalism Review, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2002
- Larry Harnisch, "Aug. 10-15, 1957 Los Angeles", Los Angeles Times blogs, August 10, 2007
- John Nelson, "Vintage Smear", themediadrome.com
- TIME, "Success in the Sewer", Monday, Jul. 11, 1955