Confidential Confidential

July 1, 2018
In the 1950s, a sleazy gossip magazine that exposed movie stars' private lives became a bestseller.Historian and law professor Barbas (Univ. of Buffalo School of Law; Newsworthy: The Supreme Court Battle Over Privacy and Press Freedom, 2017, etc.) traces the creation, heyday, and demise of Confidential, a celebrity scandal magazine published by Robert Harrison (1904-1978), whose career in journalism took off in the 1940s with a spate of girlie magazines that featured scantily clad and naked "babes" along with a dollop of sadomasochism and fetishism. Always on the lookout for more readers, in 1953, Harrison focused on America's 50 million moviegoers, who thronged to theaters each week and bought the many fan magazines that had proliferated since the 1920s. Harrison was not content with promoting the whitewashed images of stars put forth by studios. Instead, he gathered gossip from sources including hotel and restaurant workers, celebrities' friends and enemies, hairdressers and bartenders, prostitutes and lovers, film crews, close and distant relatives, and "disgruntled maids and butlers." Vetted by a team of lawyers, the stories in Confidential were written carefully to avoid libel suits--until some stars rose up indignantly and finally brought the magazine down. Harrison, as Barbas portrays him, was cynical, homophobic, and racist, attitudes reflected in his publications; one of his editors derided him as "rude, crude, and unlettered." He was also "shrewd, meticulous, and demanding," a workaholic and micromanager, with a sure eye for what the public wanted; in the 1950s, American readers wanted sleaze. "Confidential," writes the author, "played to the fantasies, curiosities, and fears of a nation that was deeply conflicted about sex" and "offered an enticing vision of what a less-repressed world might look like." Despite a veneer of cultural analysis, Barbas plays into the same desire for sleaze that fuels contemporary exposé publications by reprising in detail the magazine's lewd revelations that shattered marriages, ruined careers, and shamed many individuals.A thoroughly researched history of a lurid publisher and Americans' lust for scandal.

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September 1, 2018

Before there was the National Enquirer and TMZ.com, there was Confidential, the pioneering gossip magazine of the 1950s. Historian Barbas (Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity) delves behind the scenes of the publication developed by Robert Harrison, purveyor of men's "girlie magazines," to detail its blend of racy photos, celebrity exposés, and garish artwork that made it become, for a short time, more widely read than Reader's Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. Despite the conservative values and repressive sexual mores of the day, readers relished the scintillating stories--many of which twisted the truth or were fabricated outright. Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe, and Marlene Dietrich were among the Hollywood stars whose personal lives were laid bare by the tipsters, private eyes, and reporters on Harrison's payroll. Articles revealed celebrities' extramarital affairs and outed homosexuals, often defaming individuals and destroying families, much in the same way that Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade wrecked so many lives. VERDICT Popular culture enthusiasts and media studies students will appreciate how this well-documented tale resonates in today's climate of celebrity scandal and Orwellian politics.--Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2018
In its heyday it was the biggest-selling magazine in America, read by 16 million people, including many celebrities, though few would admit to reading it. Confidential was a raunchy rag, a sleazy scandal sheet, and it pretty much launched the celebrity-gossip brand of journalism. The magazine ran for more than 25 years?it published its first issue in 1952, its last in '78?but its heyday was the 1950s, when it's raison d'�tre was revealing the (alleged) truths behind famous lives and sparking one firestorm after another. Founded by journalist Robert Harrison, whose previous publications included the "cheesecake" magazines Beauty Parade and Eyeful, Confidential presented itself as sensational and boundary-pushing, and it was, but it was also carefully written; for the most part, its stories never quite crossed the line into libel or slander. Although a highly publicized lawsuit in 1957 rendered the magazine toothless and essentially irrelevant, its impact still resonates through popular culture and the world of Hollywood. A fascinating, highly detailed study of a precursor to today's celebrity-obsessed media. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)