[4] During the 1920s Harrison began his journalistic career as a copy boy[5] for Bernarr McFadden's New York Evening Graphic,[6] an ancestor of the supermarket tabloids that would emerge in the 1960s.

In 1935 Harrison joined the editorial staff of the Motion Picture Herald,[8][9] a film trade publication whose conservative Catholic owner, Martin Quigley, Sr., had close ties to the Hays Office.

When he was caught and fired on Christmas Eve, 1941, his sisters Edith and Helen rallied around him and raised several thousand dollars in capital, $400 of it from his favorite niece, Marjorie, who would later become a central figure in his most famous enterprise.

The models still had the girl-next-door look ("Glorifying the American Girl") and would feature a Wall Street secretary, Bettie Page, then supplementing her income for acting lessons.

Farrell, a psychology major from Hunter College, "introduced her new boss to Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis and the idea that whips and chains and spike heels would sell.

"[18] To enhance sales he used three leading Petty Girl-like artists of the day to do the covers: Peter Driben, Earl Moran (AKA Steffa) and Billy De Vorss.

[23] In addition to rival imitators, Harrison "could not compete with the new celebrity focused men's magazine, Playboy, whose first issue, released in 1953, featured a full color centerfold of Marilyn Monroe.

"[26] Supposedly inspired by Virginia Hill's testimony to the Kefauver Committee hearings,[27] Harrison launched his tabloid-style gossip magazine: Confidential.

As with the earlier New York Graphic, it concentrated on exposing the substance abuse habits, criminal records and hidden political and sexual preferences of celebrities.

")[30] Apart from spreading gossip, Confidential combined the exposés with a conservative agenda especially targeted at those who sympathized with the left wing and in identifying those engaged in "miscegenation."

"The Confidential house style was laden with elaborate, pun-inflected alliteration and allowed stories to suggest, rather than state, the existence of scandal.

Film historian Mary Desjardins described Confidential's editorial style as using "research methods and writing techniques that recycled old stories or created 'composite' facts as the basis of new ones.

"[33] After the "facts" of an article were assembled, a staff of four would rewrite it several times to achieve Confidential's "toboggan ride" style: "racy and free of embroidery, keeps the reader on the edge of his seat.

[37] Harrison would rent 4000 square feet of office space at 1697 Broadway in New York City, but never had more than 15 staff members,[38] mostly family relations of whom the most important were his sisters Edith and Helen.

[33] However, the informants could rise to the level of prominent Hollywood columnists like Florabel Muir[43] and in some cases, all the way up to a producer like Mike Todd[44] or even a studio head like Harry Cohn.

By 1955, Confidential had reached five million copies per issue with a larger circulation than Reader's Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, Look, The Saturday Evening Post or Collier's.

Rushmore hoped to use Confidential as a new venue to expose communists, though he often had to settle for suspected Hollywood "fellow travellers,"[49] whom were implied in stories to be sexual "deviates.

"[53] Beside Rushmore-authored pieces unmasking communists and homosexuals in Washington and Hollywood, he also wrote how-to articles on divorce and conducting extra-marital affairs, echoing his past relationships with his two wives.

[57] Contrary to the popular legend that the magazine double-checked its facts before publishing its articles, as well as being vetted by Confidential's lawyers as "suit-proof," the later 1957 court case would show otherwise.

John was taken to the head tough guy and recognized him—it was Fred Otash, a notorious ex-LA cop turned private eye, Hollywood fixer, problem solver, leg breaker, a big mean Lebanese, looked like Joe McCarthy with muscle.

Or more typically, either Meade or an agent would visit the subject and present a copy as a "buy-back" proposal, or the story be held back for in exchange for information on other celebrities.

On March 7, 1956, Los Angeles Supreme Court judge Leon T. David quashed Lizabeth Scott's suit on grounds that the magazine was not published in California.

[71] In September 1956, Harrison generated front-page headlines around the world when he allegedly was shot in the shoulder during a safari in the Dominican Republic by Richard Weldy, a travel agency owner and former executive for Pan American Grace Airways.

[72] Weldy, variously described as a "jungle trapper and guide"[73] or "a big game hunter,"[74] purportedly harbored a grudge over a Confidential story about his ex-wife, Pilar Pallete, a Peruvian actress who was then married to John Wayne.

According to newspaper accounts, Weldy fled the scene, leaving Harrison to die alone in the jungle with his blonde girlfriend; the two were eventually rescued by the Dominican Army.

[76] During a television interview with Mike Wallace, Harrison fooled the CBS film crew into thinking that a birthmark on his back was the bullet wound.

But Harrison, seeing an opportunity of a lifetime for front-page headlines, wanted to avoid a trial in absentia and encouraged the Meades to return to Los Angeles with defense attorney Arthur Crowley to pleaded their case.

[78] Film industry executives, who previously tried to convince Edmund Brown to charge Robert Harrison with conspiracy to publish criminal libel, now tried to backpedal for fear of adverse publicity from what would be "heralded by the press as the 'Trial of a Hundred Stars'.

On January 3, 1958, at 6:15 pm, a few days before Frances was scheduled to lead a junket of editors to Brazil, the Rushmores met in a final attempt at a reconciliation.

[105] But lacking the financial pressures that drove Harrison to create his previous magazines, he was essentially retired, living his remaining years at the Delmonico Hotel, at 59th Street and Park Avenue.