Richard Pryor’s widow has confirmed that the late comedian slept with late actor Marlon Brando.
The confirmation comes after record producer Quincy Jones let slip about their fling in an interview with Vulture magazine, reports telegraph.co.uk.
Responding to reports of her late husband’s encounter with the Oscar-winning star of “The Godfather”, Jennifer Lee Pryor wrote on Twitter: “If you listen to Richard’s comedy — the early stuff — he was way ahead of his time on gay rights”, before adding that in the seventies “everyone was bi!”, and using the hashtag “#noshame”.
Jones also claimed that Brando had slept with the singer Marvin Gaye, and with novelist James Baldwin.
Jones said: “Brando used to go cha-cha dancing with us. He could dance his a** off. He was the most charming motherf***er you ever met. He’d f**k anything. Anything! He’d f**k a mailbox.”
Brando, who died in 2004, had occasionally spoken about his same-sex encounters, but had never named Richard as a partner.
In a 1976 interview, the actor told a French journalist: “Homosexuality is so much in fashion, it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed.”
Jennifer Lee was the fourth of the comedian’s six wives, having married him in 1981 and divorced him the following year, but later remarried the star in 2001 and remained with him until his death in 2005.
