A Biltmore bellboy tipped us right off: Gary Cooper and a jailbait jill jumped into that bugged bedroom. BAM! —our system socks in sync. Bedsprings bounce, voices vibrate, mikes pick up tattle text and lay it to the listening post. BAM! —my Marine Corps mastiff retrieves the tape. BAM! —the babe is 16 and a Belmont High coed. Coop says, “You’re built, honey. Tell me your name again.” The girl gasps, “I’ve always loved your pictures, Mr. Cooper. And, wow, you’re really big. ”
The dirt, the dish, the scandal skank, the lewd libels revealed as real. It was all starting to come to me and to Confidential .
Jimmy edited his movie and dubbed in a sizzling soundtrack. The priapic premiere was the L.A. moment of fall ’53. I served pizza, booze, and pills from a felonious pharmacy. My pad was packed with movie machers and Marines, stupid starlets, stars, and studs. Dig: Liz, Joi, Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don. Ronnie Reagan, Harry Fremont, Arthur Crowley, Bondage Bob, and Jean-Paul Sartre—existentially seeking the scene. A six-foot-six drag queen, Rock Hudson, ex–U.S. senator Helen Gahagan Douglas. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, nodding on Big H.
It’s the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America. It’s a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the expatriots of exultant extremity. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured society that is our nation today.
I dimmed the lights. Race Rockwell ran the projector. The soundtrack hit: Bartók, Beethoven, bebop by way of Bird. There’s the opening titles: “ The Stacked and the Hung, starring Donkey Don Eversall and June Christy.” “Photographed, Edited, Produced and Directed by James Dean.”
The applause was apoplectic. There’s the establishing shot—a coontown motel room, shot surreptitiously through a hole-in-the-wall peek.
June Christy enters the room and drops her purse on the bed. She looks apprehensive. She lights a cigarette, she checks her watch, she taps her toes and paces. It’s soundless cinema. The camera stays static—the lens is lashed to that wall peek.
There—June hears something. She smiles, she walks offscreen, she walks back on with Donkey Don. Donkey winks at the wall peek—he’s in on it. June sits on the bed. Donkey Don whips it out and wags it. My pad shakes and shimmies. There’s gasps, wolf whistles, shrill shrieks.
I looked around for Jimmy. June devoured Donkey Don, tonsil-deep. Where’s Jimmy? Fuck —he’s jacking off by the pizza buffet!
* * *
Calendar pages flicked, flew, sheared, and shape-shifted. They’re sales graphs now.
’53 into ’54. Vertical lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes a million and a half in rabid record time.
It’s all ME . I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE .
My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.
’53, ’54. A-bomb blast parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Those cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.
Calendar pages, sales graphs, Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, Commies, feckless fools all. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in purgatory as I pause my pen.
May 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on
The dirt, the dish, the scandal skank, the lewd libels revealed as real. It was all starting to come to me and to Confidential .
Jimmy edited his movie and dubbed in a sizzling soundtrack. The priapic premiere was the L.A. moment of fall ’53. I served pizza, booze, and pills from a felonious pharmacy. My pad was packed with movie machers and Marines, stupid starlets, stars, and studs. Dig: Liz, Joi, Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don. Ronnie Reagan, Harry Fremont, Arthur Crowley, Bondage Bob, and Jean-Paul Sartre—existentially seeking the scene. A six-foot-six drag queen, Rock Hudson, ex–U.S. senator Helen Gahagan Douglas. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, nodding on Big H.
It’s the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America. It’s a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the expatriots of exultant extremity. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured society that is our nation today.
I dimmed the lights. Race Rockwell ran the projector. The soundtrack hit: Bartók, Beethoven, bebop by way of Bird. There’s the opening titles: “ The Stacked and the Hung, starring Donkey Don Eversall and June Christy.” “Photographed, Edited, Produced and Directed by James Dean.”
The applause was apoplectic. There’s the establishing shot—a coontown motel room, shot surreptitiously through a hole-in-the-wall peek.
June Christy enters the room and drops her purse on the bed. She looks apprehensive. She lights a cigarette, she checks her watch, she taps her toes and paces. It’s soundless cinema. The camera stays static—the lens is lashed to that wall peek.
There—June hears something. She smiles, she walks offscreen, she walks back on with Donkey Don. Donkey winks at the wall peek—he’s in on it. June sits on the bed. Donkey Don whips it out and wags it. My pad shakes and shimmies. There’s gasps, wolf whistles, shrill shrieks.
I looked around for Jimmy. June devoured Donkey Don, tonsil-deep. Where’s Jimmy? Fuck —he’s jacking off by the pizza buffet!
* * *
Calendar pages flicked, flew, sheared, and shape-shifted. They’re sales graphs now.
’53 into ’54. Vertical lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes a million and a half in rabid record time.
It’s all ME . I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE .
My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.
’53, ’54. A-bomb blast parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Those cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.
Calendar pages, sales graphs, Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, Commies, feckless fools all. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in purgatory as I pause my pen.
May 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on
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