The colorful and controversial publisher of Physical Culture, Bernarr Macfadden, started a new magazine in 1919 called True Story. Readers sent in accounts of their triumphs and tragedies in love, and Macfadden and a panel of young readers selected those that best held their interest. They received seventy thousand to one hundred thousand entries per year. Each entry had to be accompanied by an affidavit from someone other than the writer that the story was true, but many readers nonetheless found the tales so shocking that they refused to believe they were genuine.

Despite the titillation that these stories of girls gone astray, jealous husbands, and love triangles provoked, each one had to end with a strong moral lesson. Macfadden maintained a five-person advisory board made up of three ministers, a priest, and a rabbi. With its bold tabloid format, True Story influenced many other...