When this permanent A-list actress/comedienne/sex symbol said she would take a few secrets to the grave, she was not kidding around. No it's not the rumor you think (yes she was born a woman), the big secret was that she was illiterate. She never got past her freshman year of high school, so she said, but her educational career was spotty at best probably because she was dyslexic and ashamed of it. Yes, she even had people write letters and sign autographs for her. An actual autograph from her is extremely rare, because she also used auto-pen. Even though she took credit for all of the play and movie scripts she wrote, she had other people write them for her. One of the people who helped her create her works and develop her persona was the man who was briefly married to her at the beginning of her career. She kept him on her payroll for decades. Even though she had the marriage annulled, the husband didn't contest the divorce and technically remained married to her until this secret marriage was exposed during the height of her popularity in the mid 1930s and the marriage was dissolved not too long after. Between then, he helped write her scripts and develop some of her classic one liners. When he died in the mid 1960s, she paid all of his funeral bills as a kind of thank you
