In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America’s first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars’ secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out scandalous facts about the stars, including sexual affairs, drug use, and sexual orientation, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities’ carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the bestselling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time , Life , and the Saturday Evening Post . Eventually the stars fought back, filing multimillion-dollar libel suits against the magazine. The state of California, prodded by the film studios, prosecuted Harrison for obscenity and criminal libel, culminating in a famous, star-studded Los Angeles trial.    This is Confidential ’s story, detailing how the magazine revolutionized celebrity culture and American society in the 1950s and beyond. With its bold red-yellow-and-blue covers, screaming headlines, and tawdry stories, Confidential exploded the candy-coated image of movie stars that Hollywood and the press had sold to the public. It transformed Americas from innocents to more sophisticated, worldly people, wise to the phony and constructed nature of celebrity. It shifted reporting on celebrities from an enterprise of concealment and make-believe to one that was more frank, bawdy, and true . Confidential ’s success marked the end of an era of hush-hush —of secrets, closets, and sexual taboos—and the beginning of our age of tell-all exposure. "In 'Confidential Confidential,' law professor Samantha Barbas recounts the inside story of the 'little magazine that could' with drama, humor, and verve...Ms. Barbas paces her terrific story well, and the book ends with her cogent analysis of Confidential's larger significance." -- Wall Street Journal "A thoroughly researched history of a lurid publisher and Americans' lust for scandal" -- Kirkus Reviews "A fascinating, highly detailed study of a precursor to today's celebrity-obsessed media" -- Booklist "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" -- Library Journal "Samantha Barbas's book offers a concise, highly readable history of the publication's rise and precipitous fall, finally weighed down by a welter of legal entanglements that Barbas, as a law professor, is quite qualified to straighten out for the lay reader" -- Film Comment Samantha Barbas  is the author of five books:  Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity  (2001);  The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons  (2005);  Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America  (2015);  Newsworthy: The Supreme Court Battle Over Privacy and Press Freedom  (2017); and  Confidential Confidential: The Inside Story of Hollywood's Notorious Scandal Magazine  (2018).  Confidential Confidential The Inside Story of Holywood's Notorius Scandal Magazine By Samantha Barbas Chicago Review Press Incorporated Copyright © 2018 Samantha Barbas All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-912777-54-2 Contents Title Page, Copyright Page, Introduction, Part I, 1 The Education of a Publisher, 2 The Age, 3 Confidential, 4 Winchell and Rushmore, 5 Asbestos, Part II, 6 The Dream Factory, 7 Hot Hollywood Stories, 8 Hollywood Research Incorporated, 9 Gossip, 10 The Legal Department, 11 1955, 12 Hollywood, 13 The Curious Craze, 14 Public Service, Part III, 15 Libel, 16 Freedom of the Press, 17 The Post Office, 18 The Peak, 19 The Decline, 20 Slander, Part IV, 21 The Kraft Committee, 22 Criminal Libel, 23 The Trial, 24 The End and the Aftermath, 25 Conclusion, Notes, Selected Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 THE EDUCATION OF A PUBLISHER ROBERT MAX HARRISON, THE future publisher of Confidential, was born on April 14, 1904, in Manhattan. His parents, Benjamin and Pauline, had migrated from Latvia fourteen years earlier. Benjamin was born in 1867; Pauline Isralowitz was born in 1871. The name "Harrison" — after President Benjamin Harrison — was bestowed on them by an Ellis Island immigration official. A tinsmith by training, Benjamin took up work at the Duparquet, Huot & Moneuse Co., a well-known maker of heavy-duty kitchen equipment for hotels and restaurants. It was steady, well-paying work, and he held the position until he retired. In 1894 the couple had their first child, Helen. Gertrude was born in 1897. In 1899 the couple had their third daughter, Ida Ettie, who went by Edith. When Bob was born, the family lived in a tiny tenement apartment at 112 East 98th Street in a working-class neighborhood populated by German, Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants. A few years later the family moved to Hewitt Place in the Bronx, another poor immigrant area. By 1920 the family had relocated again