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announced that he was preparing new charges against the magazine. The prosecution vowed that
Confidential
and Robert Harrison would be “reindieted,regardless of the pending verdict.” And this time, Brown vowed, Harrison would not be able to escape extradition to Los Angeles. Hollywood circled the wagons to make sure nothing like
Confidential
would ever publish again; the Motion Picture Industry Council formed a permanent committee to combat scandal magazines. “What we are trying to do,” said a spokesman for the group, “is expose people connected with smear magazines and to alert the industry of their presence whenever they come around. Now that the wraps are off, we will act.” Ronald Reagan headed up the board.
    On October 1, the jury—exhausted by thirteen days of contentious deliberation, a rumor of jury fixing, screaming fights over where to have lunch, and smog that got so bad that one day several jurors collapsed—reported that it was “hopelessly deadlocked.” Harrison, who had spent more than $400,000 defending
Confidential
—was emotionally and financially wiped out. Rather than go through another trial, he reached a plea bargain with Brown’s office. The Attorney General would drop the charges if
Confidential
would change its editorial policy and publish only flattering stories about movie stars and politicians. Harrison was required to take out ads in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles newspapers, announcing that
Confidential
was going to “eliminate exposé stories on the private lives of celebrities.” Most of the stars dropped their suits against the magazine—although Liberace ended up getting a $40,000 settlement for the article suggesting he was gay. After several issues of celebrity-friendly articles,
Confidential’s
circulation plummeted and Robert Harrison sold the magazine.
Confidential
limped along under various incarnations for over a decade.
    Howard Rushmore, the former
Confidential
editor who was the key witness for the prosecution, briefly worked for other scandal magazines, but after
Confidential’s
collapse, the exposé business wasn’t the same, and Rushmore became depressed. One day, while riding up Madison Avenue in a taxi with his wife, Rushmore took a gun and blew out her brains, and then his own.
    Robert Harrison disappeared from the headlines. When he ran into Walter Winchell on the street or at a nightclub, his oldally would practically run away from him. “How did I get mixed up with
Confidential?”
Winchell used to complain to friends. “I still don’t understand it.” Harrison tried to launch a few other magazines, including an “investigative journalism” newsletter called “Inside News,” but none of his new ventures was very successful and he died virtually forgotten in 1978.
    “This keyhole stuff is dead,” Harrison glumly said several years after he lost
Confidential.
    He was wrong.
Confidential’
s legacy had just begun.
    * It didn’t bother Otash that Rock Hudson himself had also been a client. The actor had hired him to get some overly amorous ex-boyfriends out of his life.
    * There have been subsequent suggestions, including one from Hollywood private eye Don Crutchfield, that Monroe was actually having an affair with Sheila Stuart.
    * The defense claimed that the state threw out some prostitution charges against her in exchange for her testimony, which Brown’s office denied.

3

mike Wallace—shaking the building
    “The name of this program is
Night Beat,
and here’s what it is all about,” Mike Wallace said. It was 11 P.M . on October 9, 1956, the night of the debut of his new television talk show, and Wallace was sitting on a four-legged stool in the studio of WABC in New York. The room was dark except for an unforgiving spotlight; smoke from his cigarette curled up and encircled his face, which had been ravaged by acne when he was a teenager. The scars were now an asset, however; they made him seem tough as well as handsome, as if