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reported that while John Wayne was visiting his old friend Weldy in Lima, Wayne stole the hunter’s wife, Pilar Palette. The jilted husband got into several public shouting matches with Harrison about the article. Eventually, Weldy took a rifle and shot at the publisher. The bullet hit Harrison in the shoulder, causing only a flesh wound. “Weldy is a nice fellow,” John Wayne said after the incident, “but I deplore the fact that he is such a poor shot.”
    Weldy and Harrison both later claimed that the shooting was an accident, but it made headlines and the publisher happily posed for pictures from his hospital bed. Harrison even went on television where an aggressive reporter named Mike Wallace accused Harrison of faking the incident for publicity.
    “[Mike Wallace] starts after me right away,” said Harrison. “He’s very sarcastic: ‘Why don’t you admit it, Harrison, that so-called shooting in the Dominican Republic was a fake, a publicity stunt, wasn’t it? You weren’t shot at all, were you?’ ”
    “Would you know a bullet wound if you saw one?” Harrison asked.
    Wallace insisted he would. The show was live and Harrison, a born showman, seized the moment; he took off his shirt in front of the stunned television crew. “Everybody is running around the studio like crazy!” Harrison recalled. “Those guys didn’t know what to do, die or play organ music.” The cameraman didn’t notice the small puncture in Harrison’s shoulder and instead zoomed in on a nickel-sized birthmark on his back. “On television, it must have looked like I’d been shot clean through with a cannon!” Harrison hooted. “That was funny! They never heard the end of it, about that show!” That was great publicity, Harrison said, but putting
Confidential
on trial—he declared—now
that
was going to be a headline bonanza.
    Harrison hired private detective Fred Otash and his team of ten investigators to subpoena the biggest names in the movie industry: people like Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, and Mike Todd,the high-profile producer of
Around the World in Eighty Days,
who was married to Hollywood’s hottest star, Elizabeth Taylor. “Can you imagine those stars on the witness stand?” Harrison asked. “They’ll have to testify that the stories about them are true!” He cackled.
    “Hollywood’s jitters have mounted toward hysteria,” noted the New York
Daily News.
“Defense attorney Arthur J. Crowley says he is prepared to parade up to 200 movie colony greats including the ‘king’ himself Clark Gable before Judge Herbert V. Walker in an attempt to prove that
Confidential
magazine’s exposés were true but not malicious.” Crowley estimated that the trial would last at least six months. As the court date drew near, however, a funny thing happened in Hollywood: It emptied out. Frank Sinatra hid out in Las Vegas and put up other celebrities
Confidential
was trying to subpoena. Cary Grant stayed there and nervously kept tabs on the court proceedings. Clark Gable fled to Hawaii. Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor left the country for a yachting cruise. Errol Flynn, Dean Martin, Joan Crawford, and others were all hiding in various parts of the country. Stars were going to ridiculous lengths to avoid being subpoenaed. One day, Otash and his team cornered popular crooner Dan Daily at the Hollywood Bowl while the singer was giving a concert there. Otash posted detectives with subpoenas at all the stage door exits. “Daily walked boldly into a process server’s ambush and escaped—without the dreaded summons—through an athletic display worthy of the elder Douglas Fairbanks,” reported the New York
Daily News.
At the end of the concert, Daily took a deep bow and then shocked the fans as he “vaulted over the footlights when the curtain fell. Then as the surprised detectives gave chase, Daily snake-hipped through the aisles, jumped into a friend’s car at a street entrance to the amphitheater, and rolled