Confidential (magazine) - Implications For Hollywood

Implications For Hollywood

Confidential was based in New York and could therefore not be silenced by the movie industry by bribing anyone in California. The images the movie companies carefully had groomed for certain stars, were ruined overnight by articles in Confidential. To limit the damage done to their investments, the film industry started to tip off Confidential of the more innocent gossip, which also made for good publicity for coming movies.

Some lesser stars also collaborated with Confidential to produce smaller scandals in order to create interest in themselves. Some of the actors of the day had their careers ruined not by Confidential, but by their own employers. After a while the gossip magazine required larger and larger “sacrifices” and the movie moguls were forced to "sell out" lesser known actors in order to draw negative attention away from their major stars. The homosexual actor Rock Hudson was left alone for a while because Confidential got a tip about Rory Calhoun instead, whose background included armed robberies when Calhoun was thirteen years old.

The development became intolerable for the film industry as Confidential and other gossip magazines demanded more and more sacrifices. Nobody was safe from Confidential's scrutiny, and the articles hurt the stars whether the allegations were true or not.

Among the political figures targeted by the magazine were Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Eisenhower's appointee to be Appointments Secretary Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., both in 1956.