Sewer Trouble

For Confidential magazine and two of its imitators, legal troubles were piling up last week. In Los Angeles Superior Court, Tobacco Heiress Doris Duke slapped a $3,000,000 libel suit on Confidential and Publisher Robert Harrison for a scurrilous article about her and a Negro handyman and chauffeur whom the magazine said she once employed. Confidential's implication of "indecent acts" is "completely and entirely false and untrue," said her suit (the fifth libel action now pending against Confidential), and exposed her to "disgrace, contempt and ridicule.'' Hollywood Attorney Jerry Giesler, who filed the suit, said his client was not interested in a monetary settlement, would turn over any court award to charity. Her real purpose, said he, was "to defend her good name against the ugly, unfounded and scurrilous attack, ... to discourage this magazine and others of its ilk from making similar unfounded attacks on innocent people." Giesler followed up with a $3,000,500 suit in behalf of Negro Entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. against Hush-Hush magazine. The suit was based on a recent article about Davis and a blonde night club dancer.

Giesler was encouraged in his suits by what happened last week to another Confidential imitator, Rave. After Humphrey Bogart filed a $1,000,000 suit for accusing him of misbehaving in Paris, Rave agreed to print a complete retraction in the issue coming out in August. Rave also got in trouble with a story about the married life of the Hollywood James Masons. Actor Mason slapped on a $1,199,000 suit, and last week won a retraction and a $1,000 settlement out of court. Rave was too broke* to pay the $1,000 damages in one lump. It will pay the Masons in nine monthly installments.

*Wealthy Philadelphia Contractor John B. Kelly decided not to sue Rave for a story about his daughter, Cinemactress Grace Kelly, when he learned that its editor (then on the masthead as "Victor Huntington Rowland") "didn't have a dime." Said ex-Olympic Sculler Kelly: "If my son or I ever meet him, we'll take him on ... We'll settle it in our own way without a lawsuit."

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