Word: lait
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...Jack Lait, editor of the New York Daily Mirror, and his nightclub columnist Lee Mortimer are old hands at libel. In their first three "Confidential" books they picked up no fewer than six libel suits.* By last week their latest slapdash gutter-side view of America, U.S.A. Confidential (TIME, March 17), was well on its way to outstripping the other three. A $1,000,000 suit brough by Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, for bringing her into "scandals as an associate of and sympathizer with Communists," was the sixth in three months. The others...
...authors: Jack Lait, aging (69) editor of Hearst's New York Mirror and onetime topflight Chicago reporter, and the Mirror's 47-year-old Nightclub Columnist Lee Mortimer, who had a brief brush with fame when Frank Sinatra knocked him down, supposedly because Mortimer had called him names...
...Editor Lait, who has been subbing for Columnist Walter Winchell,* is an old partner-in-letters with Mortimer. In their first three "Confidential" books, they gave a tabloid-eye view of New York, Chicago and Washington, landing on bestseller lists with two of the books and picking up at least 14 threats of libel suits. U.S.A. Confidential may do even better. It is a city-by-city shotgun blast at the whole country, with special treatment for Chicago ("captive to the mobsters and political thieves"), Los Angeles ("a hokum-happy haven for psychopaths and confidence workers"), Milwaukee ("loaded with deadfalls...
...Kansas City's Green Hills, where gambling is "open," has been closed for months. Billie Bennett, billed as one of Los Angeles' leading madams, has been dead for six months. The names of many streets and people are misspelled; some are even nonexistent. One reporter, to whom Lait mailed an autographed copy of the book as a reward for a tip, complained that Lait wrote his name wrong. Chicago's Democratic Boss Jack Arvey was amazed at the charge that he profited from public projects while "County Commissioner," since he has never held the job. Said Arvey...
...letter, dated March 11, says the Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer book contains "defamatory statements concerning Mr. David Beck of Seattle, Washington, which tend to expose him to hatred, contempt, and ridicule... Mr. Dave Beck intends to sue the authors and publishers of this book...