29 Facts About Howard Rushmore

Howard Clifford Rushmore was an American journalist, nationally known for investigative reporting.

Howard Rushmore was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, the only child to Clifford Glen Rushmore and Rosa Lee Rushmore.

Howard Rushmore was a tenth-generation American whose father's New England ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

Howard Rushmore's father found work as a brickyard worker but the family was hit hard economically by the Great Depression, which started Howard Rushmore's lifelong interest in politics.

Howard Rushmore grew up in poverty in Mexico, and his family moved constantly from house to house.

Later that year, Howard Rushmore joined the Young Communist League USA in St Louis despite having neither a technical knowledge of Marxist philosophy nor its history.

All staff members of the Young Worker were assigned to a political unit of the YCLUSA; Howard Rushmore belonged to the Harlem unit, where he met Ruby Bates, a recent recruit to the youth league.

One of the most prominent columnists of the era, Westbrook Pegler, gave Howard Rushmore rousing support in his December 29,1939, column.

On December 22,1939, the day most papers published news of Howard Rushmore's firing, the Worker published an official notice of his termination and gave the reasons.

The next day, the Journal-American published "Red Paper's Lies Bared by Ex-Critic", in which Howard Rushmore defended his film review.

In early 1940, Howard Rushmore applied for a job at Time magazine via fellow ex-communist Whittaker Chambers.

Not knowing Howard Rushmore and fearful as to how he realized he was a fellow ex-communist, Chambers turned him away.

At the Journal-American, Howard Rushmore reinvented himself from a communist sympathizer to an anti-communist investigator of the very industry that produced the films he once reviewed.

In 1945, after obtaining a Mexican divorce from his first wife, Howard Rushmore married McCoy in a ceremony in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In 1947, Howard Rushmore became a key witness in the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings in Washington, DC, the first of two investigations of the film industry to assess communist infiltration of Hollywood through the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and labor unions, and the extent of communist propaganda that made it into films.

The public's unawareness of Venona enabled Howard Rushmore to exaggerate the threat of communists in Hollywood.

On November 27,1949, Howard Rushmore published in the Journal-American allegations of communist infiltration of US naval vessels.

In July 1948, in Olympia, Washington, Howard Rushmore testified before the Canwell Committee, a state committee to investigate subversive activities at the University of Washington.

Under Winchell's sponsorship, Howard Rushmore became the chief editor of a New York scandal magazine, Confidential.

Howard Rushmore, having earned the enmity of McCarthyite papers like those of the Hearst chain, found himself cut off from his usual employment.

Howard Rushmore did spare his mentor from Missouri, Jack Conroy, from the pages of Confidential.

In January 1955, Howard Rushmore flew to Los Angeles to confer with old Harrison informants like De Scaffa and Quillan.

Howard Rushmore recruited new ones like Mike Connolly of The Hollywood Reporter and Agnes Underwood of the Los Angeles Herald Express.

Howard Rushmore considered his employer a "pornographer," even though he himself was a collector of erotica.

Meanwhile, Howard Rushmore tried to get Harrison to publish a story about former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt having an alleged affair with her African-American chauffeur.

Back in New York, Howard Rushmore used his severance pay from Confidential to buy a plane ticket to California, where he contacted Giesler's office and offered to become a witness in exchange for a job in Hollywood; Giesler refused.

Howard Rushmore then became a witness for California Attorney General Edmund "Pat" Brown.

Howard Rushmore was no longer an editor at the Police Gazette, though he would stop by to scrounge up work.

In December 1957, Howard Rushmore chased his wife and teenaged step-daughter Lynn out of their Manhattan home with a shotgun.