Robert Harrison and Confidential

October 19, 2006 9:13 PM

The Hollywood moguls were appalled...Hitherto, Tinseltown had the police and politicians in its capacious pocket, yet here, landing like a ton of hot manure, was this crummy magazine from the east coast. A sharp look from British Journalism Review at the career of Robert Harrison, whose 1952 magazine Confidential single-handedly "opened the floodgates of tell-all sleaze." Seems Harrison branched out from publishing a long string of 1940s girlie mags after being inspired by the Estes Kefauver organized crime hearings that gripped early TV audiences in the U.S.A.
posted by mediareport (2 comments total)

Thanks to him we are commemorating half a century of crashing careers, wrecked reputations and marriages split asunder.

Outstanding. But a bit unfair to blame the messenger.

Interesting mediareport, mediareport.
posted by three blind mice at 9:25 PM on October 19, 2006

Fascinating story.

But I could have done without the irony of tabloid-style, overstated assertions within the British Journalism Review's article (at the first link) like:

"For more than four years Confidential devastated the private lives of hundreds of celebrities"

Either "devastated" is simply the wrong word entirely - or this is an absurd claim about the genuine effect of the revelations.

One thing I've always found fascinating is how inexact a science it is to predict the public's take on "scandal". There's such an unfathomable tipping point when/if a loveable rogue becomes a "shit" and vice versa.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 5:59 AM on October 20, 2006