James Lipton’s Big Pimpin’ and Other Jaw-Dropping Celebrity Revelations

James Lipton (WireImage) Yes, James Lipton, the erudite host of "Inside the Actors Studio," used to be a pimp, and, no, you couldn't have seen that one coming. Lipton dropped the bombshell during an interview with Parade earlier this week. "It was only a few years after the war. Paris was different then, still poor," he explained in his typical thesaurus-friendly manner. "It was perfectly respectable for them to go into le milieu. "There was no opprobrium because it was completely regulated.
Every week they had to be inspected medically. The great bordellos were still flourishing in those days before the sheriff of Paris, a woman, closed them down. It was a different time.
" And Lipton sparked to the role. "I did a roaring business," he said. "I was going through my rites of passage, no question about it. It was a great year of my life.
" However, in a new interview Thursday with "CBS This Morning," Lipton went to pains to say he wasn't a pimp in the traditional, contemporary sense of the term. "A pimp exploits and abuses the women who work for him. A mec [or mackerel, is slang for men who managed bordellos] does nothing of that sort…The mackerel works for the women. He's a procurer. He's an agent, so to speak.
"I'm not ashamed of it," Lipton added. "And we had some amazing adventures." Apparently so.
Well, in honor of Lipton's eyebrow-raising admission, here are a few other Hollywood revelations that shocked the world: var LIGHTBOX_DARLA_CONFIG ={servicePath:'http://omg.yahoo.com/__darla/php/fc.php', beaconPath:'http://omg.
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