James Dean Told Elizabeth Taylor His Childhood Priest Sexually Abused Him, 'Shared His Deepest Pain' with Her

When James Dean became a huge movie star in 1955 with a string of classics East of Eden and A rebel without a causehe set a new standard for iconic masculinity. And while that grumpy, dangerous but squishy-inside swagger made women swoon and paved the way for the appearance of rock & roll teenage idols like Elvis Presley, Dean was, according to old Hollywood tradition, secretly gay.

His sexuality is explored in detail in Jason Colavito’s book Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean. The new biography covers the women and men who came in and out of Dean’s short life — including lovers like Liz Sheridan (best known as Jerry’s mother on the sitcom Seinfeld) and publicist Rogers Brackett and Hollywood rivals like Marlon Brando and Rock Hudson.

James Dean on the set of the film ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ from 1955.

John Kobal Foundation/Hulton Archive/Getty

One of the more significant relationships the book deals with is the one Dean had with Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in the 1956 film. Div. According to Colavito, the two got off to a rocky start as Dean “intentionally provoked Taylor by ignoring her early on.”

“When she demanded to know why,” Colavito writes, “she showed him she cared and they became fast friends. She saw him as a wounded puppy, and he saw her as sensitive, caring and (most importantly) safe.”

They were never romantically involved, more “like brothers and sisters,” notes Colavito, and Taylor became a confidante of the sensitive but impenetrable star.

James Dean in ‘East of Paradise’ in 1955. John Kobal/Getty Foundation

“They stayed up long nights talking, and Dean found that when he started letting out bits of emotional truth, the words poured out,” Colavito writes. “He told Taylor that his priest—he almost certainly meant the reverend [James] DeWeerd — had sexually abused him, and Taylor felt that the trauma of the abuse had hurt him deeply and deeply.”

“As he shared more of his life, his love and his pain,” adds Colavito, “Taylor got the distinct impression that Dean was trying to tell her he was gay.”

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After Taylor died in 2011, writer Kevin Sessums said she told him about the abuse during a 1997 interview. POZ magazine, but made him promise that it would remain unrecorded until her death, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“I think it haunted him for the rest of his life,” Taylor said, according to Sessums. “Actually, I know it is. We’ve talked about it a lot. During Div we would stay up at night and talk and talk, and that was one of the things he admitted to me.”

Taylor was well-known as an ally of the LGBTQ+ community decades before “ally” became a buzzword, and had close friendships with closeted actors Roddy McDowall, Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson, the latter of whom starred with Taylor and Dean in the film Div. Colavito notes that this may have made her more sympathetic to what Dean was going through as a closeted gay man in 1950s Hollywood.

Natalie Wood and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause from 1955.

ullstein bild via Getty

“For the first time, he shared his deepest pain with someone who neither dismissed him, nor ridiculed him, nor blamed him,” Colavito writes. “Yet even now, his discomfort and his fear prevailed. After baring his soul, he couldn’t look Taylor in the eye and would sulk in silence for days, tormented by guilt or shame, until he mustered the courage to share more of himself .”

Dean was killed in a car accident in 1955 at the age of 24, just as his star was beginning to rise. Div was released the following year, and Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in it. (His first was for East of Eden.)

‘Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean’.

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“The story of James Dean is also the story of our time,” Colavito writes in the introduction to his book, “and there is still much to be learned from one who forged a path forward, trying, however imperfectly, to live a 21st-century life in a suffocating embrace 20th century.”

Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean published by Rowman & Littlefield and available wherever books are sold.

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Source: HIS Education