Boxoffice-September.1997

iie IGia Picture
In
calling his dark period novel on '50s movieland corruption
"L.A. Confidential," mystery writer James Ellroy got it right.
Back in the supposedly placid 1 950s, Confidential Magazine was
eveiry studio publicist's worst nightmare—the tinseltown tattler,
ready to go to any sleazy extreme to tell the trashy truth about the
sacred cows and tinhorn idols of the movie elite.
For decades, the Hollywood powers that be had kept a Ud on the
often scandalous off-screen antics of the glamorous young millionaires
who made up the movie colony. Mindful of the destructive
controversies of the '20s (the Fatty Arbuckle manslaughter case, the
death by overdose of "all-American" actor Wallace Reid, the kinky
revelations accompanying the unsolved murder of director William
Desmond Taylor), the film
bosses had taken steps by the
early '30s to control every aspect
of their top stars' public
images. The founding of the
Hayes Office and the institution
of Hollywood's first production
code kept movie
content from offending the
tender sensibilities of the
American public, while a complex
and powerful network of
industry flacks orchestrated
carefully stage-managed public
appearances for the Hollywood
talent pool, calculated
to make some of the most
notorious hedonists in American
history seem like nothing
more nor less than exemplars
of the mainstream Middle
American value system who
got lucky and made good.
Confidential changed all
that. The brainchild of Robert
Harrison, a former adman for
the now-defunct Motion Picture
Daily, and A.R Govoni, a
sometime editor for the National
PoUce Gazette, Confidential
took the Hearstian
"yellow journalism" approach
pioneered in such outlets
as The New York Graphic
and The Los Angeles Mirror
and applied it in full-throttle, lunge-for-the-jugular fashion against
the cream of the Filmtown crop. Journalistic ethics were loose at
best: In addition to "sourcing" the usual crowd of industry hangerson
with an ax to grind. Confidential deployed its own network of
private detectives, including the notorious Fred Otash, a former L.A.
cop who became legendary within the Hollywood community for
his implacable exposure of the most iiltimate details of celebrity
misbehavior, both public and private.
Pay-offs to movietown hookers were commonplace, and Confidential
wasn't shy about running the most intimate details culled
from these less-than-reputable sources. "I'm a Hollywood call girl,"
ran the lead to one article published in March of 1957. "For a price,
I've been up against the best of the movieland wolves. But for sheer
novelty, give me Danny Kaye every time."
public lapped it up. At the height of its power. Confidential
Theracked up a whopping four million monthly nsaders, with
more copies sold of each issue than the circulation of such
emblems of ' 50s Americana as Look or The Saturday Evening Post.
"Everyone [in Hollywood] reads Confidential," Humphrey Bogart
once said. "But they deny it They say the cook brought it into the house."
But not everyone, as it turned out, read it with pleasure. In 1955,
under pressure from the film industry, the U.S. government took
steps to suppress Confidential. The Postal Service ruled that sexy
stories about Sammy Davis Jr, Guy Madison and Walter Pidgeon,
among others, were demonstrably obscene, and ordered
Confidential's publishers to submit advance copies to the Solicitor
General's office, which would rule (presumably very harshly) on
their suitabiUty to be distributed through the mail. It was a naked
violation of the First Amendment, and with the help of ace attorney
Edward Bennett WiUiams, Confidential beat back the challenge.
After that came the deluge.
In 1957, a California
state senator launched an investigation
into whether
Confidential was encouraging
Cahfomia-based private
detectives into selling out
their clients. When that tactic
failed, California governor
Goodwin Knight directed
state attorney general Edmund
G. Brown to mount a
full-scale investigation of
Confidential and its scores of
imitators.
In a star-packed trial that
included testimony from the
likes of Dorothy Dandridge,
Maureen O'Hara and
Liberace, Confidential
fought the state of Cahfomia
to a draw. After 15 days of
deUberations, the jury hung,
and a mistrial was declared.
With legal costs mounting,
Harrison accepted a plea bargain
that included a guilty
plea to one obscenity charge
and a binding agreement to
lay
off Hollywood, h took
Harrison just three issues to
realize that a defanged Confidential
was finished; he
sold out, and though the
magazine continued to publish
well into the 1960s, its era of notoriety and influence was over
Though its hyped-up tabloid style makes it a period piece today,
the ghost of Confidential looms large over American celebrity
journalism. Stories that would have rocked the public back in the
Eisenhower era are now considered so commonplace that they are
fit cover subjects for the likes of People and TV Guide. The more
errant stars have themselves gotten into the act, often collaborating
on their own carefully orchestrated "triumph ofa survivor" publicity
campaigns in which the most intimate and sordid details are passed
out like ftiee beer, accompanied by a "but that's all behind me now"
chaser.
Meanwhile, the hold stardom has on the American consciousness
has in many ways become its defining characteristic. Broadcast at
us 24 hours a day, screaming at us from every supermarket checkout
line, as close as the nearest moviehouse and as far away as the latest
satellite transmi.ssion, celebrity has become pervasive, omnipresent.
Proud of its outsider status, it's doubtful Confidential could survive
in such a star-obses.sed world. In America as well as all over the
worid, there simply no longer seems to be an outside. Ray Greene
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