Manhattan Adult Entertainment: ‘Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, ‘America’s Most …
It might be more accurate to say Harrison built Confidential on sex and the female anatomy, for he had been publishing a string of “girlie mags.” Noticing that many were following the Senate hearings on organized crime on the new medium of television, Harrison concluded that people liked the sense of having “inside” information, of exposing the gamy reality about figures whose names they heard day in and day out.
And that is just what he gave them starting in August 1952 when the first issue of the bimonthly with the lurid red-and-yellow cover hit the newsstands. It was immediately so successful that it spawned a dozen imitators. Today’s “entertainment” magazines, whether in print or on television, descend directly from it.
Confidential used a network of tipsters to get the dirt on Hollywood:
Adultery, homosexuality and lesbianism (then, of course, illegal and considered immoral in most of the country), stars caught in brothels, mixed-race sexual dalliances.
Its story catching Desi Arnaz consorting with a prostitute came out almost simultaneously with a Look magazine puff piece showing Arnaz and Lucille Ball and children as the ideal American family.