Mr. Confidential

Sung by Howard McGillin and Robert Yacko

The State of California was determined to prosecute with the possibility of jail time. Since neither libel nor obscenity carried anything beyond fines, they came up with Crimincal Conspiracy to Commit Libel, making it a potential felony. It didn't work out at all as they had hoped.

When the State of California indicted eleven members of the Harrison family and magazine staff, the prosecutors never thought to research whether libel and obscenity were extraditable offenses in New York. They were not.

Howard Rushmore worked for Senator Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn as part of the H.U.A.C.'s reign of anti-Commie terror. Even they thought he was unpleasant and hard to work with, and they fired him, leaving Bob to pick up the pieces.

Angry that Bob was cutting back on political stories in favor of celebrity gossip, Howard quit, and ended up as a prosecution witness when California put the magazine on trial.

These staged hospital photos were taken by editor Al Govoni. Though the Jungle Love Triangle Shooting was a tabloid sensation, it also linked Bob with guns in the public's mind, helping along the confusion over people thinking it was Bob, and not Howard, that killed his wife and himself.

This photo of the aftermath of Rushmore's alcohol and drug-fueled murder of his wife Frances, and subsequent suicide in the wee hours of the morning on January 4, 1958, ran in tabloids all over the world. It was taken by Hy Rothman for the Daily News. He was one of those night-crawlers who listened to a police radio all night long.

Bob recycled some stories as a whole book.

Howard ended his life with headlines that were mistaken by some to be about Bob. In fact, the morning of the murder-suicide, Bob got into a cab and the cabbie asked him if he'd heard that the publisher of Confidential had killed his wife and himself. The tragedy left a taint on how people remembered Harrison, putting a dark spin on the whole Confidential era. Bob's Jungle Love Triangle Shooting was likely a direct result of Howard's own stunt, going on a weekend bender and then claiming he had been kidnapped by Commies.

While many tabloids were printing the news of Bob's Jungle Love Triangle Shooting with a straight face, one of Confidential's copycat competitors, On the Q.T., wasn't shy about accusing Bob of staging the whole thing.

In happier times, Howard and Frances Rushmore dining out at the Stork Club.

As the supposed search widened for the missing Bob, more headlines resulted.

The truth of Bob's stunt wasn't ever confirmed on the record by anyone in the Harrison family until Marjorie spilled the beans in 2003 when being interviewed for the book on which this show is based.

Bob recruited Howard Rushmore as a way of getting on the good side of media titan Walter Winchell. It worked. But Howard turned into a dangerous enemy when Bob stopped featuring his ant-Communist rants. Strangely enough, Howard started his working life as a loyal member of the Communist Party and wrote for <em>The Daily Worker</em>. Famously, he left the party after being pressured to give <em>Gone with the Wind</em> a negative review.

After publishing a story involving a drunk Joe DiMaggio accompanied by Frank Sinatra and a private detective, breaking down a door looking for Marilyn Monroe, the California Senate held the Kraft Hearings, where Frank Sinatra testified, and that led to the Trial of 100 Stars.

c. 2025