What ingredients do you need to sell a tabloid? On this cover of Top Secret from July 1962, you see two of the most effective in Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra. They were the equivalent of clickbait back then, because there was always something interesting happening in their lives. If we were to dig out all our old tabloids from the ’50s and ’60s, we bet we’d find Sinatra on the cover, in an interior feature, or in the Hollywood roundup section of 80% of them. That’s a cautious estimate—the percentage could be higher. This time he gets second billing on the cover—a mere inset photo.
Top Secret reserves the majority of its dishing for Taylor and her epic drama Cleopatra, which wouldn’t premiere until a year later, in July 1963. The reason there was such advance curiosity had partly to do with the film’s prolonged production time. Principal photography was to have begun in September 1960, but Taylor fell gravely ill, causing a delay. Soon after filming started, director Rouben Mamoulian resigned. That was in January 1961. When replacement Joseph L. Mankiewicz was hired he announced a totally new concept for the movie, which meant the footage already shot was binned. More delay.
We could go on forever—the shooting of Cleopatra certainly did—but the point is, the public had been hearing about the movie for a long time. It made for good tabloid fodder, as the production eventually became the most expensive ever. Adjusted for inflation it still might be. In 2025 money the movie would cost more than $450 million.
Top Secret refers to Taylor’s “daringly naked” scenes. All the tabloids were flogging that idea. We have a running joke around the Pulp Intl. metroplex that if there was no bush there was no nudity. Therefore, we wouldn’t say Taylor got naked in Cleopatra. She did show a lot of PG-level skin during a massage scene, but nothing more. The rumors, though, were newsstand catnip. We’ve seen dozens of tabloids from 1961 to 1963 that spread the nude Taylor rumor. It has ever been thus that when you’re a big star, people want to see as much of you as they can—in every sense.
Meanwhile, over in the inset, Frank Sinatra supposedly cancelled a wedding. The almost-bride in question was dancer-actress Juliet Prowse, and Top Secret labels the engagement a publicity stunt to boost her film career. Prowse and Sinatra had first met in 1959 while filming Can-Can, and the pair hit it off. In 1962 they announced their plans to wed, but six weeks after that called it quits. It happens. But tabloids are supposed to be skeptical, so Top Secret‘s take was that it was a planned manipulation of the public. We doubt Frankie noticed the magazine’s attacks—far worse had been written about him.
Elsewhere in Top Secret the editors offer up Brigitte Bardot, Ingrid Bergman, Jayne Mansfield, Ava Gardner, Jack Paar, Alicia Purdom, and many other notable figures. While the stories are generally negative, they could be worse. By 1962 the editors were being careful to stay on the right side of the libel line. The magazine had launched in 1953 before clarity on such matters had been established (the clarity: be careful or get your ass sued off). Even so, it’s interesting how vicious the tone of Top Secret remains even at this late stage. We’ll have more down the line.
