The fact that she did confirm, when asked, is itself significant. The arrangement had been maintained through decades of not asking. When someone who had been kept outside the secret asked directly, the person inside it answered directly. The family silence was, it turns out, conditional on the absence of the direct question from the person most affected.
Extended Section: What the Record Shows and What It Cannot Show
Pulling together the full evidentiary picture of Jack Nicholson’s family secret requires distinguishing between what is established and what remains uncertain.
Established, across multiple reliable sources including Wikipedia’s Jack Nicholson entry (which draws on McGilligan and other biographical work), the Grunge.com summary, the Cheat Sheet coverage, and Nicholson’s own statements in interviews:
Jack Nicholson was born April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey. His biological mother was June Frances Nicholson, born 1918, who also used the stage name June Nilson. His maternal grandparents, John and Ethel May Nicholson, raised him as their son, presenting June as his older sister. June died of liver cancer in 1963. Ethel May died in 1970. In 1974, Time magazine researchers discovered the arrangement while preparing a profile connected to Chinatown’s release. Nicholson was informed, sought confirmation from Lorraine, received it, and described the discovery as “pretty dramatic” but not traumatizing. The magazine ran the story. Nicholson has spoken about the discovery in various interviews since.
The key quote that appears consistently and is attributed to Nicholson across multiple sources: “It was a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn’t what I’d call traumatizing… it made quite a few things clearer to me. If anything, I felt grateful.”