Elizabeth Taylor revealed a secret about James Dean during an interview for POV magazine 14 years ago — but she made writer Kevin Sessums promise not to publish it until she died.
“I loved Jimmy. I’m going to tell you something, but it’s off the record until I die. OK?” she said, according to Sessums in a new piece for The Daily Beast.
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“When Jimmy was 11 and his mother passed away, he began to be molested by his minister. I think that haunted him the rest of his life,” alleged Taylor. “In fact, I know it did. We talked about it a lot. During Giant we’d stay up nights and talk and talk, and that was one of the things he confessed to me.”
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Taylor also opened up about working with Tennessee Williams.
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“I adored Tennessee,” she told Sessums. “He was one of my best friends. He was hopelessly naive, however. He had no business sense. I stepped in and tried to act as his agent when I found out what he was not getting. He thought he had himself a good deal. He was getting 5 percent of the profits of the films of his plays. So I said, ‘Tennessee, there is no such thing in the movie business as a profit, much less 5 percent of it. It’s about the gross. Have you ever made any money off your films?’ He said, no, he had not. ‘Tennessee!’ I screamed at him. ‘That’s why!’ So I took him in hand. I loved him dearly.”
Taylor explained why she didn’t want to write a memoir: “I would have to give up today. And dive into yesterday. You can’t predict tomorrow. And my life has had so many startling tomorrows that I don’t think they’ve stopped.”
Taylor was 15 minutes late to her own funeral Thursday.
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