A Q&A with Author Henry E. Scott 
Question: Shocking True Story is a full, behind-the-scenes look at the original scandal magazine that started it all--
Confidential. You first came to this story, as you share in your acknowledgements, through another title, James Ellroy’s
L.A. Confidential. How did that book start everything, and where did it take you?
Henry E. Scott: I picked up James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential at an airport bookstore before boarding a flight several years ago from New York City to Istanbul. I was so captivated by Ellroy's book that I spent my first two days holed up in my hotel, finishing L.A. Confidential, before venturing out to explore exotic Istanbul. When I got back to New York, the one thing I wanted to know more about was Confidential magazine, which had a small supporting role in Ellroy’s tale. To my amazement, I couldn’t find a book about Confidential. I couldn’t imagine anything more fun than writing one.
Question: In telling the story of Confidential, Shocking True Story is populated with over-the-top characters--private eyes, movie stars, politicians, moguls--and of course scandal and intrigue of every kind. In all of this, two figures stand out--Robert Harrison, the publisher, and Howard Rushmore, one of the magazine’s most important editors. What were they like and how were they drawn in to this world?
Henry E. Scott: Harrison, Confidential's founder and publisher, and Rushmore, its best-known editor, fascinated me because they were such complete opposites. Harrison was the son of immigrants--Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms of the 1890s; Rushmore bragged that his family traced its ancestry to the Pilgrims. Harrison was a social butterfly, out at clubs with chorus girls on his arm; Rushmore had few friends. Harrison was part of a big family, while Rushmore was an only child. Harrison reveled in the celebrity and notoriety that Confidential brought him; Rushmore appreciated the size of the magazine’s audience, but much of its content embarrassed him. What they had in common was both were on a quest for fame that led to a collision that ultimately destroyed Confidential.
Question: Confidential featured pieces on all of the major movie stars of the time--Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and so on. As you mentioned earlier, these weren’t stories planted or approved by the movie studios, but written in defiance of those studios and the often false images of their stars that they were trying to promote. Among all these stories was there any Confidential piece that shocked you?
Henry E. Scott: I was quite surprised to discover that "outing,” or disclosing that someone was gay against his will, was a common practice at Confidential. Most of us think of outing as something that started in the '90s, when gay activists exposed the sexual orientation of those closeted gays who they thought opposed gay rights. But Confidential, sometimes bluntly and sometimes by suggestion, wrote about the gay lives of people as varied as Tab Hunter, Marlene Dietrich, and Walter Chrysler Jr., heir to the automobile fortune.
Question: You have worked at the New York Times and continue to work in the media today--do you look at our current media moment any differently after learning all you did about Confidential? Where do you see us heading?
Henry E. Scott: I think Confidential’s strategy of exploiting American fears is flourishing today on television, in certain print publications, and certainly online. The wacky idea that the health care bill proposed "death panels" is something I could see Confidential writing about. And the sexual indiscretions of conservative Republican congressmen would have been a major Confidential cover story. As the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The only difference is Confidential’s editorial formula is now found everywhere.
Question: The book features many original articles from the magazine--what was your favorite one?
Henry E. Scott: I think my favorite story is "The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce." I love the idea of several of America’s best-known men hanging in the shadows outside a house where they thought Monroe was hidden with a lover. I wish I could have been there and seen the looks at their faces when they burst into the house and discovered what really was going on. I’ve driven by that house in Los Angeles several times--it’s still there--and I always smile at the thought of that so-called "wrong door raid."
(Photo © Joyce Ravid)
Scott concentrates on ur–scandal rag Confidential proper more than mercurial publisher Robert Harrison (so see also Samuel Bernstein’s Mr. Confidential, 2006) in a short, punchy book replete with pictures (not, apparently, reprints from the mag) of the celebs tarred in its pages. Scott presents excerpts from the likes of “Why Joe DiMaggio Is Striking Out with Marilyn Monroe” and “How Rita Hayworth’s Children Were Neglected” and discusses their background and how they affected their subjects and Confidential’s circulation and legal affairs. Salacious many stories were (e.g., “What Makes Ava Gardner Run for Sammy Davis, Jr.?”), but since Harrison insisted on rigorous fact-checking, there was usually a modicum of truth in the claims made. Obsessed with miscegenation, homosexuality (“Lizabeth Scott in the Call Girls’ Call Book”), and Communist affiliations, Confidential also managed to do consumer-interest stories (“The Big Lie about Filter Cigarettes”). The last couldn’t pay the rent by themselves, as Harrison found out after being induced to give up celeb scandals. Circulation plummeted. An excellent wallow in the pop-cultural swamps. --Mike Tribby
Review
“Revealing. . . Scott finds the perfect length to capture the absurdity and significance of Confidential without wallowing in the dirt and hatred it peddled.”
—Jeffrey Westhoff, Chicago Sun-Times
“Entertaining . . .”
—Peter M. Gianotti, Newsday
“Marvelous pop history . . . incredibly timely.”
—Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY
“Swift and rapturous . . . Scott’s behind-the-scenes anecdotes solidly track the mag’s meteoric rise . . . When pitted against today’s TMZ snipes and Perez dick doodles, Confidential’s pun-filled, “aw, shucks” patter is almost charming, its prurient prying vaguely sweet.”
—Modern Tonic
About the Author
Henry E. Scott grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Scott, a former journalist, is a media consultant and the head of an executive search firm. He lives in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
"Why Joe DiMaggio Is Striking Out with Marilyn Monroe!"
He put the wood to the best fastballs ever served up in the American League, but "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio kept swinging at and missing those lovely curves in his world series of the heart-that gallant attempt to make Marilyn Monroe his wife.
The "pitcher" in this case had the male half of the North American continent sighing in frustration when gossip columnists said she'd jiggle down the aisle with the famed Yankee slugger. Marilyn and the headline-conscious publicity department of Twentieth Century-Fox made a six-month riddle out of the question: "Will or won't the wedding bells ring?" For months on end, the bosomy beauty made much of the fact that she hadn't even been asked for her hand and what came with it. Many a baffled male thought this was bedrock proof that DiMaggio was cracking up.
DiMaggio Isn't Talking
From his place in the matrimonial batter's box, Joe said practically nothing. It wasn't unusual. DiMaggio's always been the kind of man who let his actions speak for themselves and his devoted attention to Marilyn spoke volumes. He even prompted the wrath of his ex-wife, Dorothy Arnold, who sued for complete custody of their nine-year-old son, on grounds that DiMaggio was taking Joe, Jr., along on his dates with the chesty blonde.
It was as obvious as a line drive into Yankee Stadium bleachers that Joe was wearing his heart on his sleeve for Marilyn. But he, too, knew he was fanning out like a bush leaguer with Marilyn. He couldn't figure out, for some time, who the opposition manager was.
Fans of Joe's and Marilyn's, who are still scratching their heads over this puzzle, can relax. The answer is Joe Schenck, an old artist at the fade-away pitch in the Hollywood league. Genial Joe (Schenck, that is) said "No dice," when Marilyn went to him to confess palpitations of the heart over one of the best ball players since Babe Ruth. In effect, he told her, "Have fun, kid, but don't get serious." That was enough to change a four-bagger into an easy out.
Sultry Marilyn Listens to "Daddy"
The uninitiated may well inquire how a balding, squat little gnome old enough to be her grandfather could exert such a strong influence over the beauteous Miss Monroe. Insiders will confess they, too, are often a little baffled over Joe's Rasputin-like powers. But none deny his abilities.
Schenck, they point out, occupies the role of a "father" in Miss Monroe's life. He guides the luscious blonde's career, inspires her ambitions, lauds her triumphs and lulls her fears. He's always there with a paternal hug or a strong shoulder to cry on.
It was he who assigned top designers to create a wardrobe that beautifully just misses clothing Miss Monroe. To him go the honors for putting witty writers to work spinning those headline-catching remarks she makes (sample comment against sun-bathing: "I like to be blonde all over"). To others, Joe Schenck might be a bald-headed old man. To Marilyn, he was, and is, the kind of guy every little girl wants-the man who snaps his fingers and gets results.
If Marilyn was ripe for such a relationship, there can be no argument that Schenck is a cum laude graduate of the university for "Daddies, De Luxe." This stubby Galahad has been a knight in a cream-colored convertible for years to gals from six to 36 (beyond that age bracket, a girl isn't supposed to need a pop).
Excerpt from "Why Joe DiMaggio Is Striking Out with Marilyn Monroe!"
(August 1953)
On this summer afternoon the businessmen in the gray flannel suits and the secretaries who assisted them were at their desks. Outside, it was amateur hour on the streets of New York City as aimless tourists, their heads bobbing down to look at maps and up to look at tall buildings, meandered along Broadway. Robert Harrison, forty-eight, blue-eyed, deeply tanned, and dapper as always in his white suit and white fedora, glided through this crowd like a broken-field runner, the ever-present cigarette dangling from his lip and a copy of Confidential magazine in his hands. It was August 1953, and Harrison smiled the smile of a man who knew he was at the top of his game in the greatest city in the greatest country in the world. On almost every corner he passed in the five blocks between his home at the Parc Vendôme on West Fifty-seventh Street and his Broadway office, there was a newsstand. And on each newsstand only Harrison's magazine promised the answer to the question that was on every American's mind: "Why Joe DiMaggio Is Striking Out with Marilyn Monroe!"
Harrison had launched his semimonthly Confidential nine months earlier with a press run of 150,000 and a racy mix of stories that included a feature on a homosexual wedding, a portfolio of pictures of women in their underwear, an exposé entitled "I Was Tortured on a Chain Gang," and a "science" story by a Manhattan psychiatrist that revealed that athletes are lousy lovers. No matter that the gay wedding, purportedly set in Paris, was staged and photographed in Harrison's New York City apartment, that the chain gang story was utter fiction, and that the underwear pics were retreads from Harrison's stable of girlie magazines—Beauty Parade, Whisper, Eyeful, Titter, Wink, and Flirt. Readers loved the pulp paper magazine with the lurid red and yellow covers that used exclamation marks as often as other magazines used periods. Now, by issue number 3, Harrison knew that Hollywood was the country's richest source of sensational stories. And with the August issue of Confidential he was to learn for sure what Twentieth Century-Fox already knew—Monroe sells.
In 1953 her three films—Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire—grossed more than $25 million, making Marilyn the studio's most valuable property. With its promise of "the story behind the story" on the Monroe-DiMaggio romance, Harrison discovered Marilyn was equally valuable to Confidential, whose circulation for the August 1953 issue would climb to a stunning 800,000 copies, far surpassing tame movie industry favorites such as Photoplay. Harrison himself had written the story, using the pseudonym Harrison Roberts. It said that Joe Schenck, co-founder and chairman of Twentieth Century-Fox and one of Hollywood's richest and most powerful men, opposed the Monroe-DiMaggio marriage. Heavy with innuendo, the Confidential story said Schenck was Monroe's "daddy," a role it averred he had played with a number of other young actresses. Indeed, Hollywood insiders knew Monroe as one of Schenck's "girls," invited to sit in on the high-stakes card games at his Holmby Hills estate where aspiring actresses met, and slept with, studio executives and producers. Confidential offered titillating details, reporting, for example, an IRS investigation into Schenck's attempt to deduct as business expenses the new car and furniture he supplied to a young woman he met in Miami and brought to Los Angeles as a "secretary."
In some ways, the swipe at Schenck was a foolhardy move for a publication in business less than a year. After all, Schenck wasn't a public figure whose foibles would interest the average reader. He was, however, a powerful Hollywood aristocrat so concerned about his image and reputation that he was rumored to have backed Hollywood Reporter, then as now one of the film industry's major trade organs, to assure a steady flow of good news, or at least forestall any bad publicity.
To Hollywood insiders, the Monroe story was a clear sign that Confidential wasn't going to play by the unwritten rules that governed timid fan magazines such as Photoplay, Film Pictorial, Modern Screen, Motion Picture Classic, and Silver Screen, and docile trade publications such as Variety and Hollywood Reporter, all financially dependent on or easily intimidated by the studios. The very existence of so obstreperous a publication was another in a growing number of signs, albeit initially a small and easily overlooked one, that the studios were losing their tight grip on the film industry, its stars, its theaters, its public, and even its sense of magic.
Hollywood in the Golden Age of the thirties and forties had become the funhouse mirror in which the country checked its reflection. And America had become accustomed to a reassuring, if remarkably distorted, image. The mirror showed America's men in the image of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart—strong, solid, exemplifying the integrity and rightness of America herself. And America's women? In Hollywood, they ran the narrow gamut from Doris Day to Betty Grable, from beauty, integrity, and wholesomeness on one end of the spectrum to beauty, integrity, and sexiness on the other. Thanks to legions of publicists and an inept and sometimes corrupt press, magazines and newspapers propounded the myth that the real Hollywood, spread across affluent neighborhoods in central and west Los Angeles, was every bit as wholesome as the cinematic one.
The Motion Picture Production Code was partially responsible for Hollywood's image of America and America's image of Hollywood. "No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it," the code stipulated. In the service of that principle, it stipulated that "passion should be treated in such manner as not to stimulate the lower and baser emotions." Its earliest versions demanded moral retribution for every sin, including sex out of wedlock. Thanks to its strictures, abortions and illicit drug use were as rare on the screen as were homosexuality and miscegenation.
The code was a way to gild with legitimacy an industry born in the nickelodeons of America's crime-ridden immigrant slums. It was a great device for deflecting attacks from the Catholic National Legion of Decency and various state censorship boards. It appeased federal legislators, who moved on to regulate the television industry inst...
