magazines

I Wished for You: an Adoption Story (Mom's Choice Award Recipient, Book of the Year Award, Creative Child Magazine)

I Wished for You: an adoption story follows a conversation between Barley Bear and his Mama as they curl up in their favorite cuddle spot and discuss how they became a family. Barley asks Mama the questions many adopted children have, and Mama lovingly answers them all.

Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine"

A Q&A with Author Henry E. Scott

Question: Shocking True Story is a full, behind-the-scenes look at the original scandal magazine that started it all--Confidential. You first came to this story, as you share in your acknowledgements, through another title, James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. How did that book start everything, and where did it take you?

Henry E. Scott: I picked up James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential at an airport bookstore before boarding a flight several years ago from New York City to Istanbul. I was so captivated by Ellroy's book that I spent my first two days holed up in my hotel, finishing L.A. Confidential, before venturing out to explore exotic Istanbul. When I got back to New York, the one thing I wanted to know more about was Confidential magazine, which had a small supporting role in Ellroy’s tale. To my amazement, I couldn’t find a book about Confidential. I couldn’t imagine anything more fun than writing one.

Question: In telling the story of Confidential, Shocking True Story is populated with over-the-top characters--private eyes, movie stars, politicians, moguls--and of course scandal and intrigue of every kind. In all of this, two figures stand out--Robert Harrison, the publisher, and Howard Rushmore, one of the magazine’s most important editors. What were they like and how were they drawn in to this world?

Henry E. Scott: Harrison, Confidential's founder and publisher, and Rushmore, its best-known editor, fascinated me because they were such complete opposites. Harrison was the son of immigrants--Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms of the 1890s; Rushmore bragged that his family traced its ancestry to the Pilgrims. Harrison was a social butterfly, out at clubs with chorus girls on his arm; Rushmore had few friends. Harrison was part of a big family, while Rushmore was an only child. Harrison reveled in the celebrity and notoriety that Confidential brought him; Rushmore appreciated the size of the magazine’s audience, but much of its content embarrassed him. What they had in common was both were on a quest for fame that led to a collision that ultimately destroyed Confidential.

Question: Confidential featured pieces on all of the major movie stars of the time--Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and so on. As you mentioned earlier, these weren’t stories planted or approved by the movie studios, but written in defiance of those studios and the often false images of their stars that they were trying to promote. Among all these stories was there any Confidential piece that shocked you?

Henry E. Scott: I was quite surprised to discover that "outing,” or disclosing that someone was gay against his will, was a common practice at Confidential. Most of us think of outing as something that started in the '90s, when gay activists exposed the sexual orientation of those closeted gays who they thought opposed gay rights. But Confidential, sometimes bluntly and sometimes by suggestion, wrote about the gay lives of people as varied as Tab Hunter, Marlene Dietrich, and Walter Chrysler Jr., heir to the automobile fortune.

Question: You have worked at the New York Times and continue to work in the media today--do you look at our current media moment any differently after learning all you did about Confidential? Where do you see us heading?

Henry E. Scott: I think Confidential’s strategy of exploiting American fears is flourishing today on television, in certain print publications, and certainly online. The wacky idea that the health care bill proposed "death panels" is something I could see Confidential writing about. And the sexual indiscretions of conservative Republican congressmen would have been a major Confidential cover story. As the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The only difference is Confidential’s editorial formula is now found everywhere.

Question: The book features many original articles from the magazine--what was your favorite one?

Henry E. Scott: I think my favorite story is "The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce." I love the idea of several of America’s best-known men hanging in the shadows outside a house where they thought Monroe was hidden with a lover. I wish I could have been there and seen the looks at their faces when they burst into the house and discovered what really was going on. I’ve driven by that house in Los Angeles several times--it’s still there--and I always smile at the thought of that so-called "wrong door raid."

(Photo © Joyce Ravid)

Humphrey Bogart said of Confidential: “Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house” . . . Tom Wolfe called it “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world” . . . Time defined it as “a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction, and plain smut . . . dig up one sensational ‘fact,’ 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.”
 
Here is the never-before-told tale of Confidential magazine, America’s first tabloid, which forever changed our notion of privacy, our image of ourselves, and the practice of journalism in America.
 
The magazine came out every two months, was printed on pulp paper, and cost a quarter. Its pages were filled with racy stories, sex scandals, and political exposés. It offered advice about the dangers of cigarettes and advocated various medical remedies. Its circulation, at the height of its popularity, was three million. It was first published in 1952 and took the country by storm.
 
Readers loved its lurid red-and-yellow covers; its sensational stories filled with innuendo and titillating details; its articles that went far beyond most movie magazines, like Photoplay and Modern Screen, and told the real stories such trade publications as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter couldn’t, since they, and the movie magazines, were financially dependent on—or controlled by—the Hollywood studios.
 
In Confidential’s pages, homespun America was revealed as it really was: our most sacrosanct movie stars and heroes were exposed as wife beaters (Bing Crosby), homosexuals (Rock Hudson and Liberace), neglectful mothers (Rita Hayworth), sex obsessives (June Allyson, the cutie with the page boy and Peter Pan collar), mistresses of the rich and dangerous (Kim Novak, lover of Ramfis Trujillo, playboy son of the Dominican Republic dictator). 
 
Confidential’s alliterative headlines told of tawny temptresses (black women passing for white), pinko partisans (liberals), lisping lads (homosexuals) . . . and promised its readers what the newspapers wouldn’t
reveal: “The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce” . . . How “James Dean Knew He Had a Date with Death” . . . The magazine’s style, success, and methods ultimately gave birth to the National Enquirer, Star, People, E!, Access Hollywood, and TMZ . . . 
 
We see the two men at the magazine’s center: its founder and owner, Robert Harrison, a Lithuanian Jew from New York’s Lower East Side who wrote for The New York Graphic and published a string of girlie magazines, including Titter, Wink, and Flirt (Bogart called the magazine’s founder and owner the King of Leer) . . . and Confidential ’s most important editor: Howard Rushmore, small-town boy from a Wyoming homestead; passionate ideologue; former member of the Communist Party who wrote for the Daily Worker, renounced his party affiliation, and became a virulent Red-hunter; close pal of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and expert witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, naming the names of actors and writers Rushmore claimed had been Communists and fellow travelers.
 
Henry Scott writes the story of two men, who out of their radically different pasts and conflicting obsessions, combined to make the magazine the perfect confluence of explosive ingredients that reflected the America of its time, as the country struggled to reconcile Hollywood’s blissful fantasy of American life with the daunting nightmare of the nuclear age . . .

Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share (Martha Stewart Living Magazine)

A cookie for every occasion. Martha Stewart shows you how to prepare everybody's favorite baked treat with over 175 mouthwatering recipes that cover a whole range of tastes and textures (tm) from crowd-pleasing classics to more exotic indulgences.

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)

GO BEYOND THE BLOG

Smashing WordPress shows you how to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, and provides a creative spark to help you build WordPress-powered sites that go beyond the obvious. You will learn the core concepts used to build just about anything in WordPress, resulting in fast deployments and greater design flexibility.

Inside, WordPress expert Thord Daniel Hedengren takes you beyond the blog and shows you how WordPress can serve as a CMS, a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, and more.

YOU WILL LEARN:

• THE ANATOMY OF A WP INSTALL AND HOW WORDPRESS ACTUALLY WORKS
• HOW TO BUILD BEAUTIFUL WORDPRESS THEMES - INCLUDING CHILD THEMES
• HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM LOGIN FORMS AND ADMIN THEMES
• HOW TO USE THE LOOP TO CONTROL CONTENT, AND EVEN USE ALTERNATIVES TO THE LOOP
• HOW TO INTEGRATE THEME OPTIONS
• HOW TO BUILD PLUGINS - INCLUDING WIDGET FUNCTIONALITY
• HOW TO BUILD YOUR WORDPRESS PROJECTS FOR SEO
• INTEGRATE WORDPRESS WITH THE SOCIAL WEB
• HOW TO CREATE AMAZING NAVIGATION
• HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL CONTROL ELEMENTS

Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Volume Five: Lace Knitting: The Ultimate Stitch Dictionary from the Editors of Vogue Knitting Magazine (Vogue Knitting Stitchionary: ... from the Editors of Vogue Knitting Magazine)

Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2010: Every Recipe...A Year's Worth of Cooking Light Magazine

Think Outside the Sox: 50 Winning Patterns from the Knitter's Magazine Contest

Golf: The Best Short Game Instruction Book Ever! (Golf Magazine)

Concept drew strong purchase intent among male golfers and was a top choice for favorite title and as a gift in research.

· GOLF Magazine has a total readership of 6.1 million.

Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2009: Every Recipe...A Year's Worth of Cooking Light Magazine

Rolling Stone Magazine Sheet Music Classics, Volume 1: 39 Selections from the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (Easy Piano) (<i>Rolling Stone</i>® Easy Piano Sheet Music Classics)

39 of the best songs, all chosen from Rolling Stone® magazines ""500 Greatest Songs of All Time."" Fingering, lyrics, and chord symbols are included in these Easy Piano arrangements by Dan Coates. Titles: Baby Love (The Supremes)
* Beat It (Michael Jackson)
* Blowin in the Wind (Bob Dylan)
* The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
* Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel)
* Bye Bye Love (The Everly Brothers)
* Dancing Queen (ABBA)
* Everyday People (Sly and the Family Stone)
* Gimme Some Lovin (Spencer Davis Group)
* Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac)
* (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher (Jackie Wilson)
* Hotel California (Eagles)
* How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees)
* I Believe I Can Fly (R. Kelly)
* I Only Have Eyes for You (The Flamingos)
* Iron Man (Black Sabbath)
* Killing Me Softly with His Song (Roberta Flack)
* La Bamba (Ritchie Valens)
* Layla (Derek and the Dominos)
* Like a Prayer (Madonna)
* Lola (The Kinks)
* Losing My Religion (R.E.M.)
* Mack the Knife (Bobby Darin)
* Moondance (Van Morrison)
* Mr. Tambourine Man (The Byrds)
* My Generation (The Who)
* The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (The Band)
* Ode to Billie Joe (Bobbie Gentry)
* Runaway (Del Shannon)
* Running on Empty (Jackson Browne)
* (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones)
* Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran)
* Sunshine of Your Love (Cream)
* Sweet Child O Mine (Guns n Roses)
* Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
* Whatd I Say (Ray Charles)
* When a Man Loves a Woman (Percy Sledge)
* Why Do Fools Fall in Love? (Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers)
* Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd).