Thomas Wolfe called Confidential (1952-58) "the most scandalous scandal
magazine in the history of the world." Today, that statement may
no longer be true, but in the relatively tame decade of the 1950s, Confidential went where no publication had gone before
in exposing to a curious public the private lives of celebrities.
In so doing, the magazine earned the wrath of powerful Hollywood
figures who persuaded California's attorney general to file an
array of criminal charges that, it was hoped, would silence Confidential and its flamboyant publisher, Robert
Harrison....
