Jack Lait was an American journalist, author and playwright. During a 50-year career he wrote prolifically and became renowned as one of the leading newspapermen of the first half of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known as co-author, with Lee Mortimer, of the controversial "Confidential" books, written in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Early years
Jacquin Leonard Lait was born March 13, 1883 in New York City. His family then moved to Chicago, where Lait grew up. In 1901, Lait graduated from the Lewis Institute. Soon afterwards he began his journalistic career, working as a picture messenger for Chicago newspapers.
Journalistic career
Lait readily adapted to the newspaper world of gangland-era Chicago, quickly learning the ins and outs of the police beat. Developing a knack for sensational reportage, he moved rapidly through the Hearst newspaper ranks from reporter to columnist and from editor to executive. In 1923, Lait became an editor of King Features Syndicate in New York. He wrote a syndicated column called All in the Family, which ran for two decades in Hearst papers. He also had a comic strip, Gus and Gussie, illustrated by Paul Fung, which ran from April 13, 1925 to February 24, 1930. In 1936, Lait was appointed editor of the New York Daily Mirror, succeeding Walter Howey. For 50 years, Lait was associated with the Hearst newspaper organization in one capacity or another. During his tenure as editor of the New York Daily Mirror, the tabloid doubled its circulation and claimed the second highest circulation of any U.S. newspaper. In 1963, nine years after Lait's death, it ceased publication following a strike and was absorbed into the then top-selling paper the New York Daily News. Lait was known as a taciturn, tireless digger of news stories. In July of 1934, as the FBI was closing in on John Dillinger in Chicago, he was on the scene for an exclusive when Dillinger was killed. Lait's story, dispatched to the International News Service in New York, reached that city before even the Chicago papers were aware of what had happened.
The "Confidential" Books
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lait, with co-author Lee Mortimer, wrote a series of four controversial books detailing the seamy underside of America and three of its main cities. Each of the four books had the word "confidential" in its title. Mortimer was a New York Daily Mirror newspaper columnist whom Lait had hired in the 1930s when he was editor. The first book to appear was New York Confidential: The Lowdown on Its Bright Life, published in 1948. Chicago Confidential and Washington Confidential followed soon afterwards, with USA Confidential appearing in 1952. The books sold very well, and Washington Confidential became a bestseller in 1951. The books garnered much criticism in the press and elsewhere for their sensational, salacious tone and "nonfactual accounts of alleged crime-politics links, vice and scandal." In a New York Times review USA Confidential was labeled "a rather hard-breathing lecture on coast-to-coast depravity that represents about as discouraging a picture of America as you can find at the moment." Several lawsuits were filed against Lait and Mortimer due to the "Confidential" books. Perhaps the most prominent lawsuit was by the Neiman Marcus Co., which alleged that it and its employees had been libeled in U.S.A. Confidential. Neiman sought damages totaling $7,400,000. In August 1952, a federal judge dismissed the suits on the grounds that plaintiffs had not been sufficiently identified in the book to claim damages. In April 1953, Lait and Mortimer counter-sued seeking $1,500,000 for "conspiracy and agreement to restrain commerce, and suppress the printing, publication and distribution" of the book. Sixty-three years after its publication Washington Confidential was described in an account as an "infamous guide to the D.C. demimonde" written by "a pair of right-wing hacks determined to peel back the city's white-frosted veneer to expose a fetid underbelly of Communist sympathizers, Chinese bookies, call girls, Mafiosi, and homosexuals." It adds that while the book drips with disdain, it's "an underhanded ethnography rich in fascinating period detail." Lait and Mortimer's books inspired the films New York Confidential and Chicago Confidential and the television series New York Confidential.
Personal
Lait married Laura Belle Leusch on March 6, 1906. Together they had a daughter, Lois, and two sons, Jack Lait, Jr., who became the radio and television editor at The Los Angeles Examiner, and George Lait, a director of publicity at Columbia Pictures. Jack Lait died April 1, 1954 of a circulatory ailment at his home in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 71. He was survived by his wife and his three children.
