Howard Rushmore, the former Confidential editor who was the key witness for the prosecution, briefly worked for other scandal magazines, but after Confidential’s collapse, the exposé business wasn’t the same, and Rushmore became depressed. One day, while riding up Madison Avenue in a taxi with his wife, Rushmore took a gun and blew out her brains, and then his own.
Robert Harrison disappeared from the headlines. When he ran into Walter Winchell on the street or at a nightclub, his old ally would practically run away from him. “How did I get mixed up with Confidential?” Winchell used to complain to friends. “I still don’t understand it.” Harrison tried to launch a few other magazines, including an “investigative journalism” newsletter called “Inside News,” but none of his new ventures was very successful and he died virtually forgotten in 1978.
“This keyhole stuff is dead,” Harrison glumly said several years after he lost Confidential.
He was wrong. Confidential’s legacy had just begun.
* It didn’t bother Otash that Rock Hudson himself had also been a client. The actor had hired him to get some overly amorous ex-boyfriends out of his life.
* There have been subsequent suggestions, including one from Hollywood private eye Don Crutchfield, that Monroe was actually having an affair with Sheila Stuart.
* The defense claimed that the state threw out some prostitution charges against her in exchange for her testimony, which Brown’s office denied.
3
mike Wallace—shaking the building
“The name of this program is Night Beat, and here’s what it is all about,” Mike Wallace said. It was 11 P.M. on October 9, 1956, the night of the debut of his new television talk show, and Wallace was sitting on a four-legged stool in the studio of WABC in New York. The room was dark except for an unforgiving spotlight; smoke from his cigarette curled up and encircled his face, which had been ravaged by acne when he was a teenager. The scars were now an asset, however; they made him seem tough as well as handsome, as if he’d been through a battle. “It’s about people—people we think you will be curious about because they are news and because they make news,” he went on. “Even if Night Beat must occasionally step on some toes, we will try to get you stories of success and sorrow, trial and error, hope, folly, and frustrations.”
At the time, talk shows were tame, tepid chat fests. “They were pap, pabulum,” said Wallace. “You’d put the microphone and the flowers on the table between the interviewer and the interviewee and the interviewee would say ‘I wrote or sang or appeared in.’ It was basically that. There was obviously a thirst for a different kind of interview.” And Wallace delivered it. He set out to grill his subjects, and Night Beat, broadcast locally four nights a week from eleven to midnight, soon became a citywide sensation. Every morning, blurry-eyed New Yorkers were abuzz over what some stumbling, stuttering movie star or government official or society swell had confessed under Wallace’s relentless interrogation. “Mike Wallace, a dark-haired 39-year-old with a prizefighter’s face and the velvety voice of a musical-comedy performer has become one of TV’s most talked about performers,” noted Newsweek. “For his guests’ pains, he has been called a muckraker and scandal monger; the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie of interviewers, as well as the bravest man on TV.”
Wallace did do some important political interviews—but it was the scandals and salacious revelations he managed to produce that generated the most attention. His show became a forum for sex and scandal. It made headlines when social arbiter Elsa Maxwell blurted out: “Sex is the most tiring thing in the world. I was never interested for one minute, ever.” Wallace asked society designer Mr. John why the fashion world attracted so many homosexuals. “That’s not worth talking about,” Mr. John snapped. When Jayne Mansfield was a guest, Wallace asked, “Are you irritated by the theory of evolution?” Of Zsa Zsa Gabor, he asked: “Tell me, Zsa Zsa, what are clothes really for?”
“As soon as Mike Wallace began his relentless prying and probing into the pasts, the actions, and the attitudes of the celebrities on his TV ‘hot seat,’ ”Nightbeat” exploded into a television sensation that delighted and sometimes shocked New Yorkers,” noted Parade. “The candor of Wallace’s approach, the daring of his caustic questions, and the frankness of his victims’ answers have started a revolution in television interviewing.”
Most journalists sneered and scoffed. “Mike Wallace, the television inquisitor with a liking for blondes, became famous by cross-examining celebrities on embarrassing intimate matters,” noted Uncensored, which, like Confidential and many other tamed scandal magazines, had taken to attacking sensationalism in journalism. “Sex has figured so largely in Wallace’s questioning of men and women famous in Hollywood, and Broadway, on Park Avenue and in industry that loud-mouthed labor leader Mike Quill once emerged from Wallace’s verbal torture to call him ‘the Peeping Tom of TV.’ ” Critics maintained that Wallace, whose previous credits included hosting game shows, serving as the announcer on The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet, and starring in the Broadway musical The Reclining Figure, was more of a performer or entertainer than a reporter. “Wallace burst into the Tinker Toy world of timorous TV like a young bull storming into a china shop,” noted Hush-Hush. “A moderately successful announcer even a few years ago, he became a national celebrity virtually overnight by getting answers to some rude questions no one else dared to ask on television. His wasn’t the cliché interview program, plugging a star’s upcoming epic or a delicatessen mogul’s new king-sized franks. Mike’s gimmick was to club his guests with queries on video’s four taboo subjects—religion, politics, sex, and personal habits.”
Wallace was accused of being a “muckracker and a scandal monger,” and of having a prurient focus on sex. “Why be afraid of it,” Wallace shot back. “As one of the basic drives in all human beings, it is a perfectly legitimate interest.”
It was also a real ratings grabber: by 1957, the year of the Confidential trial, Night Beat had captured a then astonishing audience of more than 1.5 million New Yorkers a night and ABC asked him to take the show—the young medium’s first real foray into the world of tabloid journalism and the true precursor to the “tabloid television” of the eighties—national.
Myron Leon Wallace was raised in what he would describe as a “Jewish/Irish section of Boston.” Brookline, Massachusetts, was hardly a working-class neighborhood; Wallace’s neighbors included John F. Kennedy and Leonard Bernstein. Both of Wallace’s parents had immigrated from Russia as children; his father Frank, who changed his last name from Wallik, was a wholesale grocer and later an insurance broker. Wallace, the youngest of four children, was a B-minus student with a fairly happy childhood, marred primarily by his severe acne, which scarred his ego as well as his skin. “In some strange way [it] helped form my personality and character,” he said. “You look into the mirror and you don’t like what you see.” Wallace’s brother, Irving, recalled that Mike “was a moody kid, very self-centered, an egoist who was always searching for the purpose in life.”
Wallace graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939, married his college sweetheart, Norma Kaplan, and had two children, Peter and Chris. He held a number of jobs as a radio announcer, including one at a 500-watt station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with the unlikely call letters WOOD-WASH—it was owned jointly by a furniture store and a laundry service. In 1946, after serving in naval communications during World War II, he moved to Chicago, where he did regular newscasts for the Chicago Sun-Times and appeared on leading daytime radio dramas, including Road of Life, Ma Perkins, and The Guiding Light. In 1948, he and Norma were divorced. “I married too young,” he said. His second wife was the beautiful and socially prominent actress Buff Cobb, whose grandfather was the humorist Irvin S. Cobb. In Chicago, he was the host of a number of television and radio shows, including There’s One in Every Family and I’ll Buy That, and, before their divorce in 1955, he and his wife co-hosted a breakfast-time television program called The Mike and Buff Show.
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Still, Night Beat was merely a local show. When ABC head Leonard Goldenson came to Wallace and his producers and asked him to take Night Beat national, he was eager for the opportunity—and the exposure. It meant going from five days a week to once a week and a salary cut from around $150,000 to $100,000. “Leonard Goldenson was beginning to change the whole business,” Wallace recalled. “ABC was third. He needed attention for his network. He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse … it was the biggest mistake we could have made.” Wallace’s provocative questions worked well in New York, but Wallace wasn’t sure if they would play with a national audience. Moreover, he was concerned that the often controversial content of the show would upset network officials. “Unless this building shakes every couple of weeks,” Goldenson said, “you’re not doing your job.”
The Mike Wallace Interview went on the air in April 1957. It was broadcast Sundays at 9:30. Wallace took a cue from the legendary Edward R. Murrow and scheduled Joe McCarthy as his first guest. At the last minute, however, the ailing McCarthy— who would die about a month later—canceled and the bookers scrambled to get Gloria Swanson. The actress was too savvy to be tricked into saying something indiscreet, and the show’s debut was a disappointment. For his second national segment, Wallace was determined to create a stir. One of hottest subjects of the day was organized crime, and Wallace invited Mickey Cohen, the former mobster and confessed murderer, to appear on the show. Cohen, who had left the underworld and owned a flower shop and an ice cream parlor, did not disappoint. Once the cameras were rolling, he erupted into a tirade on live television, calling Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker a “sadistic degenerate,” an alcoholic, and a “reformed thief.”
Parker was watching the show. “I hope Mike Wallace has a lot of money,” he said. Parker and the LAPD sued Wallace and every ABC station that carried the show for a total of $33 million. “Has Wallace’s prying gone too far?” asked one reviewer. “There are those who believe that if Wallace continues sinking his scalpel too deep, it eventually will plant itself between his own shoulder blades.” The network rushed onto air with a profuse apology and retraction, ABC made an out-of-court settlement with Parker, and Wallace was told to tone down the show. Things went downhill from there.
“Is he a sadist, as some contend?” Newsweek asked in September 1957. “Does he really think he is performing a public service by allowing ex-hoodlum Mickey Cohen and scandal sheet private eye Fred Otash to give their questionable views a public airing? What are his rebuttals to the charge that he is an untrained reporter and a sensation hound, and that his show, ‘Mike Wallace Interviews,’ is no better than the TV equivalent of Confidential magazine?”
Shortly after the Cohen fiasco, Wallace invited Drew Pearson to be a guest on his show. Pearson was at the time one of the most respected newspapermen in the country, an investigative reporter with a syndicated column who had dared take on the powerful Kennedy dynasty. In the late 1950s, Pearson had written a number of columns attacking the Kennedys, pointing out Joseph Kennedy’s ties to organized crime and the disgraced anti-Communist Joe McCarthy. Pearson also wrote a column questioning the political ascendency of the young Senator John F. Kennedy. Wallace thought that the controversial but highly credible Pearson would make an ideal guest on his show.
“You wrote that Senator Kennedy’s—and I quote—‘millionaire McCarthyite father, crusty old Joseph P. Kennedy, is spending a fortune on a publicity machine to make Jack’s name well-known.’ ” Wallace said to Pearson on air. “What significance do you see in this, aside from the fact that Joe Kennedy would like to see Jack Kennedy president of the United States?”
“I don’t know what significance other than the fact that I don’t think we should have a synthetic public relations buildup for any job of that kind,” Pearson replied. “Jack Kennedy’s a fine young man,” the reporter continued, “but he isn’t as good as that public relations campaign makes him out to be.” Then Pearson let loose a bombshell: “[John F. Kennedy] is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him.”
Wallace’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. “You know for a fact, Drew,” he asked, “that the book Profiles in Courage was written for Senator Kennedy … by someone else?”
“I do,” Pearson said, who maintained that Kennedy speech-writer Ted Sorensen actually wrote the book.
“And Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for it?” Wallace asked. “And he has never acknowledged the fact?”
“No, he has not,” Pearson said. “You know, there’s a little wisecrack around the Senate about Jack…. Some of his colleagues say, ‘Jack, I wish you had a little less profile and more courage.’
ABC executives didn’t congratulate Wallace for his scoop. To the contrary. Joe Kennedy called his lawyer, Clark Clifford, yelling, “Sue the bastards for fifty million dollars!” And in no time, Clifford and Robert Kennedy had showed up at ABC and told executives there the Kennedys would sue unless the network issued a full retraction and apology. Mike Wallace and Drew Pearson insisted that the story was true and refused to back off. Nevertheless, ABC issued a full retraction and apology. Wallace was furious. It was one thing to apologize for the rantings of a former mobster like Mickey Cohen, but Pearson was a serious investigative journalist whose allegations about Kennedy’s authorship of Profiles in Courage would later prove to be true. Nevertheless, Oliver Treyz, then head of the network, appeared on Wallace’s show and offered a full retraction and apology. It was a terrible blow to Wallace and the credibility of his show. He became such a pariah around the network that John Daly, the vice president at ABC as well as the host of What’s My Line, refused to moderate the show when Wallace was booked as the mystery guest. Wallace’s appearance was canceled and Sammy Davis Jr. appeared instead.
“Along Madison Avenue it is no secret that veteran news commentator John Daly did not like the switch of headline-grabbing Mike Wallace to ABC. Daly is said to have stated that he did not believe there was any place for a show on TV that dealt with such controversial issues,” noted one magazine.
Goldenson had assured Wallace that he wanted him to “shake the building,” but the moment he did, the network executives were not willing to stand behind him. The Mike Wallace Interview went off the air in the summer of 1958. The networks were not yet ready for scandal.
4
the birth of a tabloid
At twilight on a warm day in early May 1957, just as the Confidential trial was getting underway in Los Angeles, a young publisher lumbered into the East Fifty-fifth Street restaurant L’Aiglon in New York City, took a seat at his usual table, and settled back to enjoy a taste of a world that was about to disappear. Generoso Pope Jr. had been having a rough time lately. Five years earlier, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, Pope had bought a floundering weekly tabloid called the New York Enquirer. In the first issue, Pope published his credo on the front page:
In an age darkened by the menace of totalitarian tyranny and war, the New York Enquirer will fight for the rights of man—the rights of the individual, and will champion human decency, dignity, freedom and peace.
Decency, dignity, freedom, and peace didn’t sell so well, so within a few months, Pope had turned the New York Enquirer into a scandal magazine. Recently, city and state officials had begun to take issue with the unseemly content of Pope’s paper. Gene Pope didn’t mind a battle; he was aggressive and cocky and came from a wealthy, influential family. He assumed he would always win. Besides, he had a powerful ally: the man he was meeting for dinner that night, his benefactor and godfather, gangster Frank Costello, who at that moment was perhaps the most powerful mobster in America.
Costello entered L’Aiglon shortly after Pope arrived. The two men embraced and ordered Scotches. The solicitous waiters arranged the carnations on their table and fussed over the men as they brought the food: risotto Milanese and piccata a la romana, served on plates so hot that you couldn’t touch them—just the way Costello l
iked. Frank Costello was treated like a celebrity in New York. His incredible influence over city politics had been exposed several years earlier during the televised Kefauver hearings; Costello controlled Tammany Hall, appointed judges, and, the inquest concluded, controlled a “government within a government.” Costello served some time for income tax evasion, but even from jail, his power was immense. The New York Times called him the Prime Minister of the Underworld, but to Gene Pope, he was still “Uncle Frank”—an old family friend who helped him out when he got into financial binds and political scrapes.
Several friends and business associates joined them that evening, but as usual during Pope’s frequent dinners with Costello, Uncle Frank did most of the talking. The topic that night was Joe McCarthy. The news was yet to be released, but Costello had just learned that the controversial, communist-bashing Senator had died. “All that booze finally got to him,” Costello said. McCarthy was such a heavy drinker that he sometimes ate a stick of butter before a night on the town just to coat his stomach against the alcohol. It wasn’t simply his appetite for liquor that destroyed McCarthy, however; the senator did everything to extremes, and that, in Costello’s opinion, is what created McCarthy’s problems. “He was going after the Commies, and that was a good thing, right?” Costello said. “But then he started doing wrong things and accusin’ everyone of being a Commie. Like I always say, you got to do things in moderation.”