Mr. Confidential

ROBERT (BOB) HARRISON practically invented modern celebrity journalism. Handsome and charming beyond belief, he was catnip to the ladies and men wanted to be just like him. After initial success with publishing girlie magazines like Titter, Wink, and Flirt, the driven, obsessively detail-oriented Harrison created Confidential Magazine, a cultural phenomenon that turned the rules of Hollywood PR upside down, selling 5 million copies of every issue—more than T.V. Guide, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post. No one ever admitted buying it, but no one could put it down: White Glamour Girls with Black Bachelors, Homosexuals in Hollywood, Society Swells in Hock. Harrison swore to Tell the Facts and Name the Names. So he did.

Newspapers called him “The Titan of Titter Tattle” and “The Sultan of Sleaze,” with columnists breathlessly covering his nightclub tours, always with a blonde on his arm, always driving a white Cadillac, wearing a white alpaca coat, and always picking up the check. In the beginning Robert Harrison wanted little more than a lifetime membership in Café Society. Yet he would leave behind a legacy defined by accusations of murder, blackmail, suicide, and libel. Separating truth and fantasy proved impossible as his life became more and more like a story in Confidential. But Harrison loved to laugh. Even when the joke was on him.

Harrison’s niece, MARJORIE MEADE, was a young, newlywed living in Manhattan. She was brought up to be a good wife and mom, but like Joan Crawford in a ‘50s melodrama, all she wanted was to get up, get out, and get something more out of life. Uncle Bob sent her to Hollywood where she headed up his new research organization, a vast network of tipsters and private dicks trolling for Tinseltown trash.

Tabloids called her the “Flame-Haired Femme Fatale” and “The Most Feared Woman in Hollywood.” She risked prison for Harrison, but was bound and determined not to go down with the ship. Sexy. Sure of herself. Marjorie was nobody’s plaything.

JEANNIE is an amalgam of three different women in Bob's life. GEENE COURTNEY is pictured to the right. She and Bob were great friends and often appeared linked in the gossip columns. He put her on the cover of the first issue with "Showgirl Sells Shares in Self!" and she was the dame who supposedly got Harrison shot in the jungle. She released a novelty record that has to be heard to be believed called "Putzie Putz, the Octopus" in the mid-'50s. JUNE FREW was his girlfriend during the height of the Confidential madness. She was, by most accounts, a little high strung. She created a huge scene at the airport during the Dominican Republic "jungle shooting," when she arrived with photographers in tow to meet Bob's plane, and promptly started screaming and hitting him in a jealous rage. REGI RUTA was his girlfriend from the late '50s until his death in 1978. Unlike our Bob in the musical, in real life, Robert Harrison never married nor lived with anyone.

Bring on the goofball-popping, alcoholic, violent, anti-Commie witch hunter, HOWARD RUSHMORE, a man so unpleasant, he wasn’t just hated by the Left and the Middle—but after a stint working for J. Edgar Hoover, McCarthy, and Roy Cohn, the Far Right couldn’t stand him either. At first Harrison relied on Rushmore for one crucial business contact, but soon, Rushmore’s flameouts and betrayals would lead to grisly coast-to-coast headlines and the fall of an empire.

Bob loved to laugh. He wore custom tailored suits, was personally fastidious to a fault, and fit right in with the hoi polloi of Café Society. He never apologized for publishing gossip, and never tried to hide his family roots or how he got his start with girly magazines.

The basis for Jeannie: Geene Courtney was always game for anything Bob dreamed up. In the first issue of the magazine, she was on the cover with a story titled Showgirl Sells Shares in Self! She was also the lynchpin of the 1957 Jungle Love Triangle Shooting that garnered Bob international headlines.

When Bob Harrison's niece saw this publicity shot from the mid-'50s her first question was wondering why Uncle Bob was wearing sunglasses inside. As the magazine became more and more successful, Bob cultivated a devil-may-care public image that was in some ways the exact opposite of who he actually was.

Bob’s niece, Marjorie Meade, was a young wife and mother who was anything but the girl next door. She wasn’t raised to have a career or to have any sort of public life, but by the end of her ride with the magazine, newspapers were calling her The Duchess of Dirt, and a Flame-Haired Femme Fatale.

One of the hammy staged hospital photos that writer Al Govoni took as proof of Bob’s perilous health after the supposed shooting. There were suspicions about the tale’s veracity, but no one was ever able to conclusively prove that it didn’t happen. In the magazine, Bob always had his facts in order if a lawsuit was possible, but in his publicity stunts, truth rarely figured into any of it.

There’s no way around the fact that Howard Rushmore was difficult. His alcoholism, drug use, and bitterness would lead to tragedy. Before he worked for Bob, Senator Joe McCarthy hired him. But McCarthy and Roy Cohn thought Rushmore was too mean. Go figure. In 1958 he shot his wife Frances to death in the back of a taxi, and then killed himself.

At her 1957 trial for obscenity and libel, Marjorie did a 180 degree make-over, wearing Peter-Pan collars every day, simple shirtwaist dresses, and no cleavage to be seen. She even fainted one day, when accused of blackmailing a producer for $1,000 in order not to run a story about him. It was almost certainly a lie. She logically argued that a thousand dollars was insignificant when they were raking in hundreds of thousands every month

All the Peter Pan collars in the world couldn't make Marjorie look like the girl next door.

Geene Courtney in a publicity shot in 1956.

A girl’s gotta make a living. Even as she was at the center of so many of Bob’s publicity machinations, Geene always had her many modeling gigs to fall back on, like being the 1955 Sausage Queen. She even released a novelty record, a song later played endlessly by Dr. Demento called Putzie Putz the Octopus. Don’t ask.

Harrison hired Rushmore to make Walter Winchell happy, and it worked. Winchell boosted the magazine in its early days, promoting it relentlessly on his radio broadcast. Once Rushmore realized that Bob didn’t care at all about his anti-Communist crusade, he felt with some justification that he had been used. He turned viciously against Bob, testifying for the prosecution in 1956 and calling Bob a liar.

Geene Courtney in a publicity shot in 1953.

The State of California delivered 11 indictments of Harrison, his entire family, and his key employees. They charged everyone involved with obscenity and with a new crime, Criminal Conspiracy to Commit Libel. Regular libel didn’t carry any jail time. But the California Attorney General's office didn’t bother to check New York extradition laws. They weren’t able to extradite anyone at all, leaving Marjorie and her husband Fred as the only California residents, and the only available defendants.

A photo shoot at Bob’s apartment for Titter where he had a whole area of the living room set up for photographers and models. His older sisters helped out, nephew Michael went for sandwiches, and Marjorie drank it all in, learning the magazine business.

After the Jungle Shooting, Bob decided tomarket a supposed miracle discovery from the Dominican Jungle. Pega Palo was a Viagra-like herb. There was likely no risk of an erection lasting four hours or longer.

Bob’s girly magazines included titles like Titter, Wink, Flirt, Eyeful, Beauty Parade, and Whisper.

This is one of the publicity shots of Bob pretending to hunt in the Dominican Republic, where a jealous rival supposedly shot him with his own gun, enraged that he couldn’t have the beautiful Geene Courtney for himself. Bob got away with it all, even though not one bit of the story was true.

Frances Rushmore led a troubled life. A writer herself, her violent marriage to husband Howard Rushmore drove her deeper into alcoholism and despair. She was divorcing him and getting sober when he murdered her and then committed suicide.

Geene Courtney in a publicity shot in 1951.

Fred Meade moved to Beverly Hills with Marjorie in the early ‘50s so she could take over the investigative arm of the magazine’s Hollywood operation. In other words, Fred did the heavy lifting and Marjorie had lunch every day at the Polo Lounge with girls who sold stories about their sexual exploits with celebrities. Marjorie insisted until the day she died that these were all Nice Girls with responsibilities to their own mothers and/or children, who had to earn a living somehow.

Fred and Marjorie Meade in Los Angeles smiling outside the L.A. Courthouse for the cameras during the Trial of 100 Stars. After Bob sold Confidential, they divorced. Fred went into real estate. Marjorie married two more times and was widowed both times. She became a fixture on the Beverly Hills society circuit as Marjorie Roth. She never hid her past, but somehow, none of it stuck. She became friends with people who supposedly hated the magazine. But she missed the excitement for the rest of her life.

This is the real Bob. Dapper, handsome, and suave.

The somewhat notorious and always hilarious Francesca di Scaffa was a major source for stories about her sexual escapades with Hollywood He-Men. She claimed Chinese, Hindu, French, and Egyptian ancestry; allegedly spoke four languages; and called herself Countess Francesca di Bourbon y de Scaffa. Sometimes she gave herself a promotion to Princess Francesca de Scaffa. While married to actor Bruce Cabot she often referred to herself as Madame Pellissier de Bujac, after his old French-Indian family. Her highest rank, reserved for special occasions, was Queen Mother of Persia. She based her claim to the Peacock Throne on a mystery son from her well-publicized affair with His Imperial Majesty, the Shah of All Persians. As you do.

Michael Tobias was often left to fend for himself. Younger and less glamorous than his sister Marjorie, he was in awe of the beautiful women that were always around his Uncle Bob. Partly as a publicity stunt, he would be sent to the printing house in Chicago with the print layouts for the magazine in an attaché case handcuffed to his wrist.

The power that Walter Winchell wielded in his day is unimaginable now. Every day, 50 million people either read his syndicated newspaper column or listened to his radio broadcast. When he told his readers and listeners that Bob Harrison and his new magazine were hot, they believed him.

While Bob was taking fake hospital pictures, this photo of Geene was also released to the press, claiming she was also in the hospital suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Fred and Marjorie taking publicity shots during a break in the Trial of 100 Stars.

Poolside with Geene Courtney is how Bob ACTUALLY spent his time in the Dominican Republic. No hunting, shooting, or bloody love triangles. But the food was marvelous.

Until his death in 1978, Bob could be found right here working at this desk, with his sisters Edith and Helen in the next room, fussing over him. He was their baby brother who could do no wrong. When he died, his sisters went to Los Angeles to an assisted living building in Westwood near Marjorie and Michael. Most of the files of business and legal correspondence, the magazine layouts and stories, and the paintings of beautiful girls that were used as covers for the girly magazines, were destroyed. A leather bound set of all of the Confidential Magazine issues published by Bob between 1952 and 1958 was recently put up for auction for $3,500.

Fred and Marjorie with defense attorney Arthur Crowley on a field trip to Grauman's Chinese so the jurors could see for themselves whether it was possible to do what Maureen O'Hara was said to have been doing in the backrow. It was.

After being discharged from the Navy during the Korean War (he didn't see battle) Michael was at the court proceeding when the California indictments were filed, he never quite understood that he, himself was actually charged with committing crimes. His mother, Edith, and his Aunt Helen, and of course Uncle Bob, didn’t want to worry him.

Not quite as torrid as some of her other publicity photos, but Francesca de Scaffa was always aware of her best angles.

Bob a few years before Confidential in the late '40s.

Ronnie Quillan (newspapers dubbed her The Soiled Dove) was a source who reported directly to Bob. She was featured in one Confidential article headlined Hollywood’s Number 1 Madam. When testifying at the libel and obscenity trial, the courtroom audibly gasped when the district attorney asked for her profession, and she matter-of-factly replied that she was a prostitute. Marjorie was emphatic about the fact that she NEVER had lunch at the Polo Lounge with the likes of her.