Tarantino’s dad: Agent said do deed or never act again
FILMMAKER TONY Tarantino understands why his Oscar-winning son Quentin stayed silent about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s alleged decades of sexual misconduct.
The elder Tarantino kept his mouth shut for nearly six decades about his own encounter with an influential Hollywood honcho who demanded sex for a career boost, he says.
“You got to stop and realize, all these people (including Quentin), all their careers were made by Weinstein,” Tony Tarantino told the Daily News.
“(They) went from a nobody, know nothing, to a major star. So it’s much easier to turn a blind eye.”
Tarantino, 77, says he was 20 when talent agent Henry Willson offered him acting opportunities and a lavish lifestyle in exchange for sex in 1960.
An up-and-coming actor at the time, Tarantino — who met Willson through actress Zasu Pitts — says the agent promised him a Cadillac, a new wardrobe and a place to live inside his home. There was one creepy caveat. “He says, ‘You will treat me like your best girlfriend.’ … I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t understand,’ ” Tarantino recalled. “He explained in detail what he meant. He explained to me about oral sex . . . . He explained to me about anal sex, and made that very clear.”
Tarantino says he punched Willson in the face, dropping the agent to the ground. “He got up, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, put it over his lip which was all bloody, and he said to me, ‘You’ll never work again in this town, so don’t even try,’ ” Tarantino said. “And don’t even think about New York either.”
Willson, who died in 1978, was wellknown as a sexual predator in Hollywood, according to author Robert Hofler, who wrote the 2005 book, “The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson.”
“To be a Henry Willson client you pretty much had to sleep with him,” Hofler told the Daily News.
Tarantino says he was quickly fired from his role on the TV western series “Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre.” He changed his name to Tony Maro and booked several acting gigs with Paramount as an extra but claims he was thrown off the lot within two hours once his true identity was discovered.
Six decades later, Hollywood is swamped by a tsunami of sex scandals, with dozens of women accusing Weinstein of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.
As the cases against Weinstein piled up, Quentin Tarantino admitted he was aware of the allegations against his friend, mentor and frequent collaborator.
“I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard,” Quentin told The New York Times last month. “If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.”