The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [86]
I gather you know you have a reputation as a womanizer. Is that guilt by association, because of your friendship with Warren Beatty?
That’s right, guilt by association. I mean, what night is this? Do you hear women calling me on the phone? They know I’m here, don’t they? Look, that’s just bullshit. I can’t go around saying I’m not a womanizer, because that’s silly. First of all, it’s good for business if people think I’m a womanizer. Beyond that, I’ve no motivation to deny it, unless it begins to dominate the reality of my situation.
As a child, I had one of those scaldingly embarrassing experiences when I realized that all these other boys were lying about their sexual prowess. I always assumed they were telling the truth. I believed them when I was six through ten, and at eleven, I said, “Those guys are lying.” The result of that lag is that it’s very hard for me to lie about my prowess or my experience. It’s apropos of my reputation that I’m a little embarrassed that people look at me that way, because they’re giving me too much credit.
But your audience wants to give you that credit. Men, in particular, like living vicariously. They want to think that being a big-time movie star means having lots of women.
That I like. That part I don’t mind. That’s getting even [flashes the smile].
Are you monogamous? Could you stay faithful in order to maintain an important relationship like, for instance, yours with Anjelica [Huston, who Nicholson had been seeing for eleven years]?
By nature, I am not monogamous. But I have been monogamous, which is the only reason I’m comfortable saying this out loud. It doesn’t make any difference, except in a positive way, primarily for appearances. I only believe this because of experience. Once I’ve had enough experience about something, I don’t give a fuck about anybody else’s theory. I say monogamy doesn’t make any difference; women suspect you whether it’s true or not.
You were raised by women: Ethel May, whom you believed to be your mother, and her two daughters, Lorraine and June, who was seventeen years your senior. Ethel May’s husband, a drinker, wasn’t around much, and she supported everybody by opening a beauty shop in your house in Neptune City, New Jersey. When June died in 1975, the real truth emerged! You were illegitimate. Ethel May was actually your grandmother, posing as your mother, while June, whom you thought to be your sister, was your natural mother. How did you feel about this?
I was making The Fortune, and someone called me on the phone—I think it was turned over by the investigative reporting for the Time cover story they did on me. Ultimately, I got official verification from Lorraine. I was stunned. Since I was at work, I went to Mike Nichols, the director, and said, “Now, Mike, you know I’m a big-time method actor. I just found out something—something just came through—so keep an extra eye on me. Don’t let me get away with anything.”
Do you know who your father was?
Only June and Ethel knew, and they never told anybody.
Who was this woman, June?
Fast-cutting? A talented seventeen-year-old child who goes to New York and Miami as an Earl Carroll dancer and progresses through the gypsy line. . . . [Entertainer] Pinky Lee’s straight lady for a while. . . . And when the war comes, she’s the Irish-American patriot, the girl in the control tower at Willow Run, the central domestic-sending center for the military in World War II. She marries the son of a wealthy Eastern brain surgeon, one of American’s most glamorous test pilots. . . . And they live a very country-club life in Stony Brook, Long Island, where I always spent my summers in this very nice upper-class atmosphere.
All the time