Whether she would have told him, if she had lived long enough and he had become famous enough, is a question with no available answer. Only Ethel May and June held the answer, and only Ethel May outlived June — outlived her by seven years, dying in 1970. And Ethel May, by everything the record shows, did not tell him either.
Part Four: Ethel May’s Role in Raising Him
Of the adults who held this secret, Ethel May Nicholson had the most to do. She was the one who raised Jack. Not June, who remained present as a sister figure but whose primary relationship to him was that identity. Not John, who was the quieter presence in a household Ethel May dominated. It was Ethel May who ran the home, ran the beauty salon, managed the practicalities of raising a child, and maintained, across the full span of Jack’s childhood and young adulthood, the identity of his mother.
She did this while also running a small business. She did this while being, in some accounts, a genuinely talented oil painter. She did this while knowing, every day, that the child she introduced as her son was her grandchild, that the young woman she introduced as her daughter was his mother, that the entire domestic architecture of their household rested on a decision made at the beginning of his life that had never been formally revisited or renegotiated.
What Jack Nicholson has said about Ethel May in various interviews suggests a complicated and warm appreciation. He has referred to her as a woman of genuine personal force, someone with opinions and personality, someone whose artistic sensibility was real rather than affectation. The beauty salon in the home gave her an economic independence unusual for women of her generation, and the oil painting gave her a creative outlet that was entirely her own. These are not the details of a passive or defeated woman.