Happy Birthday, George Hamilton!

 

 Actor George Hamilton is eighty-five years old today. In observance of his birthday, here’s a story about one of his early experiences:

“'When I was very young, twelve, I had a relationship with my stepmother,' he told the ladies of the View on Thursday.

 

"The tanned star released his memoir Don’t Mind If I Do on Tuesday which includes the revelation that he slept with the wife of his father, bandleader George 'Spike' Hamilton.

 

“It actually went on for a short period of time when I was twelve and then strangely enough when I was of age, and I was an actor in Hollywood, I met her again and she was as beautiful as ever and we had a sort of follow-up,' Hamilton said.

 

"The star of The Godfather Part III and Zorro, The Gay Blade said that his stepmother was about 28 or 30 at the time of the first sexual encounter.

 

“My father never knew about it, and it was a very strange thing. But it was very normal, in a strange – she didn’t make me feel bad about it,' Hamilton said on the program. It wasn’t dirty.'

 

"Hamilton said that his stepmother called it 'cuddling' and he didn’t feel abnormal about it.

 

“'I was molested?' he said. 'Damn, I’m down for it again.'” (from a October 17, 2008 Fox News story reprinted in Positive Memories by T. Rivas)

 

Note: until a couple years ago, the Wikipedia article about Hamilton read a bit differently. It claimed Hamilton described himself as a victim in his memoir, which in light of the above quotes is obviously not accurate. It also failed to mention that it happened more than once, and that Hamilton renewed the relationship as an adult. Evidently the previous editor of the article was more concerned with political and moral "correctness" than with factual correctness, something that is true of many pages on that site these days. Of course I fixed it.