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Howard Rushmore was born in 1911 or 1912. In a 1 Nov 1954 articles in Time magazine he is called "42".
In 1939 he was a movie critic writing for the Communist paper The Daily Worker (Jay Maeder in New York Daily News, 26 Feb 2001) He left or was fired when he refused to write a review slamming "Gone With the Wind".
He then went to work for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal-American on the "anti-Red beat". He got his start there by doing a piece on how he was duped by "false pictures of the Soviet Utopia."
As an ex-Commie, he was called upon often as a speaker and witness before the U.S. House un-American Activities Committee. He named John Howard Lawson as a Communist and said he was quoting Lawson in describing Lionel Stander as one as well.
Joseph McCarthy called him a great American, and he was later to take a job with McCarthy as an investigative reporter. That ended in 1954 when he was fired. He claimed that it was because of his attacks on cronys calling themselves McCarthyites and his criticism of Roy Cohn.
He was next hired by Robert Harrison owner of Confidential, a magazine that exposed the seamy side of Hollywood, to be it's editor. Jay Blotcher in writing about this part of his life, claims that Howard was 6'5", and that he had been born in Mexico City, Missouri. Confidential, after siding with Walter Winchell in a situation, got thereafter regular boosts from Winchell's column. But he didn't really enjoy the celebrity-focus of Confidential, and wanted to do political stories.
Howard disappeared in 1955, only to reappear in Montana claiming that he was investigating the 1949 apparent suicide of James Forrestal. In the 1957 libel trial of Confidential in California, he, now no longer associated with the magazine, testified that most of its information came from prostitutes. Or maybe at least one prostitute named Ronnie Quillan.
On 3 Jan 1958, he and his wife, while arguing, hailed a cab in New York City. But he had a gun and shot her and then himself. Another picture of him from the 1957 trial is at this link.
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| Howard Rushmore, star prosecution witness, testifying at the Confidential trial on August 9, 1957 (LA Times photo) Credit: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials |
In 1939 he was a movie critic writing for the Communist paper The Daily Worker (Jay Maeder in New York Daily News, 26 Feb 2001) He left or was fired when he refused to write a review slamming "Gone With the Wind".
He then went to work for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal-American on the "anti-Red beat". He got his start there by doing a piece on how he was duped by "false pictures of the Soviet Utopia."
As an ex-Commie, he was called upon often as a speaker and witness before the U.S. House un-American Activities Committee. He named John Howard Lawson as a Communist and said he was quoting Lawson in describing Lionel Stander as one as well.
Joseph McCarthy called him a great American, and he was later to take a job with McCarthy as an investigative reporter. That ended in 1954 when he was fired. He claimed that it was because of his attacks on cronys calling themselves McCarthyites and his criticism of Roy Cohn.
He was next hired by Robert Harrison owner of Confidential, a magazine that exposed the seamy side of Hollywood, to be it's editor. Jay Blotcher in writing about this part of his life, claims that Howard was 6'5", and that he had been born in Mexico City, Missouri. Confidential, after siding with Walter Winchell in a situation, got thereafter regular boosts from Winchell's column. But he didn't really enjoy the celebrity-focus of Confidential, and wanted to do political stories.
Howard disappeared in 1955, only to reappear in Montana claiming that he was investigating the 1949 apparent suicide of James Forrestal. In the 1957 libel trial of Confidential in California, he, now no longer associated with the magazine, testified that most of its information came from prostitutes. Or maybe at least one prostitute named Ronnie Quillan.
On 3 Jan 1958, he and his wife, while arguing, hailed a cab in New York City. But he had a gun and shot her and then himself. Another picture of him from the 1957 trial is at this link.