In a little more than two years, a 25¢ magazine called Confidential, based on the proposition that millions like to wallow in scurrility, has become the biggest newsstand seller in the U.S. Newsmen have called Confidential ("Tells the Facts and Names the Names") everything from "scrawling on privy walls'' to a "sewer sheet of supercharged sex." But with each bimonthly issue, printed on cheap paper and crammed with splashy pictures, Confidential's sale has grown even faster than its journalistic reputation has fallen. It has also spawned a dozen guttery imitators, e.g., Hush Hush, The Lowdown, Exposed, Uncensored, On the Q.T. In Hollywood Cinemactor Humphrey Bogart reports that "everybody reads it, but they say the cook brought it into the house." In Chicago a society matron summed up the simultaneous appall and appeal that she feels for the magazine: "I've read it from cover to cover, and I think it ought to be thrown out of the house."
This week Confidential's latest issue was on its way to newsstands all over the U.S. ("Loaded with sizzling exclusives"), and the magazine trumpeted its success: "Over 4,000,000 and going up." Like everything about the magazine, the circulation claim was excessive. Confidential has applied for membership in the Audit Bureau of Circulations; if accepted, it will come in with a circulation of about 2,230,000, its average for the first six months of 1955. But its newsstand growth has been so fast (only 30,000 readers subscribe by mail) that Confidential expects to reach its circulation claim in next year's audit.
A Fake. By sprinkling grains of fact into a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction and plain smut, Confidential creates the illusion of reporting the "lowdown" on celebrities. Its standard method: dig up one sensational "fact" and embroider it for 1,500 to 2,000 words. If the subject thinks of suing, he may quickly realize that the fact is true, even if the embroidery is not. Confidential has four libel suits pending against it (including two started by Cinemactors Errol Flynn and Robert Mitchum). But few of its subjects are inclined to go to court over what the magazine prints. Said one Hollywood star: "You've got to have guts or your skirts have to be awfully clean before you mess around legally with these people."
There is an even bigger reason why Confidential has had so few libel suits. Most people damaged by Confidential do not want to draw attention to the article and the magazine by suing, thus spreading the storm. They would rather try to ignore it than be entangled in the dirty fight that a libel suit would bring.
Many a Confidential story is based on facts that newsmen know and could print, e.g., "The Astor Testimony the Judge Suppressed." The magazine specializes in finding one black mark in a subject's distant past, and hammering him with it, e.g., Cinemactor Rory Calhoun's youthful prison record. Sometimes Confidential drops the pretense of reporting altogether, once concluded an article about a Hollywood director and an actress causing a scene in a nightclub with the last line: "It's all a fake."