Reporter reveals Elizabeth Taylor's James Dean Secret

USMagazine, Friday, March 25, 2011, 7:49am (PDT)

It was a Hollywood secret Elizabeth Taylor took with her to the grave -- well, almost.

When the late actress spoke to journalist Kevin Sessums back in 1997, she allegedly had one big-time revelation that had to wait until after she was gone.

The shocker concerned James Dean, her friend and handsome costar in the classic film, "Giant," which was released in 1956. Dean died a year earlier at age 24 in a car crash, and received a posthumous Oscar nomination for his performance in the movie.

"I loved Jimmy," Sessums writes in a Daily Beast item about his 1997 conversation with Taylor. (Taylor passed away in L.A. at age 79 of congestive heart failure, and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, Calif. Thursday.)

"I'm going to tell you something, but it's off the record until I die. OK?"

In the chat 14 years ago, Taylor reportedly revealed: "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. 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."

Sessums points out that Taylor never published her own tell-all memoir about her life or her famous friends.

"I would have to give up today," she said in the 1997 conversation. "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."

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