Books and other sources: Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale, Brian Neve, and Peter Stanfield, eds., “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (Rutgers University Press, 1995); Andrew Horton, Henry Bumstead and the World of Hollywood Art Direction (University of Texas Press, 2003); Victor Navasky, Naming Names (Viking, 1980); Edmund H. North, Oral History, UCLA Special Collections; Lee Server, Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care” (St. Martin’s Press, 2001); Lee Server, Screenwriter: Words Become Pictures (Main Street, 1987); Steven C. Smith, A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (University of California Press, 1991); George E. Turner, “Heart of Darkness,” American Cinematographer (July 1998); “Report on Atomic Espionage (Nelson-Weinberg and Hiskey-Adams Cases)” (House Un-American Activities Committee publication, 1949); Shots in the Dark (Allan Wingate, 1951); Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (Random House, 1999).
SEVEN: BREAD AND TAXES
Special collections: Ben Maddow papers, University of California–Riverside; Clifford Odets papers, University of Indiana; Jerry Wald papers, University of Southern California.
“Actually had almost thirty pages . . .” from Camera Three. “Nick and I, both stoned . . .” from the Lochte interview in Mitchum: In His Own Words. (In his interview at the National Film Theatre, also included in Mitchum: In His Own Words, the actor further confabulated about The Lusty Men: “We didn’t have a script when it started. We had a letter from Tom Lee—it was about a seven-page letter—and we had something like twelve or thirteen pages of ideas, and sort of a beginning.”) “Please be sure that I okay . . .” from Wald’s Dec. 17, 1951, memo to production officials. The anecdote about Hayward’s meeting with Ray and Mitchum from Talking Films. “Mitchum would bare his stomach . . .” from “Nick Ray Promises a Movie on ‘Chicago Seven’ ” by Roger Ebert, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 8, 1970. “A strange guy . . .” is Arthur Kennedy quoted in Meredith C. Macksoud’s Arthur Kennedy: Man of Characters: A Stage and Cinema Biography (McFarland, 2003). Mitchum’s brother John wrote about “the Mystic” in Them Ornery Mitchum Boys (Creatures at Large Press, 1989).
Betty Utey is quoted from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. The anecdote about Richard Brooks at the racetrack comes from “Notes by Ray,” as described in a footnote to chapter 25 of the Eisenschitz book. “He was known to be great in the sack . . .” from Gavin Lambert’s interview in Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause.” Hanne Axmann from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. Lambert discusses the love affair of Ray and Edie Wasserman in Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire by Kathleen Sharp (Carroll & Graf, 2003). Unless otherwise noted, Philip Yordan is quoted from interviews and correspondence with the author and from his unpublished autobiography—two distinct uncompleted versions, “A Bio” and “100 Films.” I was encouraging Yordan’s progress on these manuscripts before his death in 2003. In addition, I consulted Yordan’s MGM Archival Project interview, which covered his collaborations with Ray.
“I’ve always felt that the psychology of color . . .” is from “Color Plays Top Role in New Movie” by Ron Burton in the Pasadena Star-News (CA), June 28, 1958. Veteran Associated Press reporter Bob Thomas’s reliable biography Joan Crawford (Simon & Schuster, 1978), for which Ray, a longtime friend of Thomas’s, was interviewed, was my primary reference for what happened behind the scenes of Johnny Guitar. But I also drew on Crawford’s memoir (with Jane Kesner Ardmore), A Portrait of Joan: An Autobiography (Paperback, 1964) and other books about the actress, including daughter Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest (Morrow, 1978), Roy Newquist’s Conversations with Joan Crawford (Citadel, 1980), Jane Ellen Wayne’s Crawford’s Men (Prentice Hall, 1988), Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell’s Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography (University Press of Kentucky, 2002), Michelle Vogel’s Joan Crawford: Her Life in Letters (Wasteland Press, 2005), and David Bret’s Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr (Carroll & Graf, 2007). “One of the worst human beings” is from Gavin Lambert’s interview in Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause.” “Quite a few times . . .” from Ray’s Take One interview. Sterling Hayden is quoted from his 1984 interview with Gerald Peary, archived at www.geraldpeary.com.
Winston Miller is quoted from John A. Gallagher’s 1989 transcribed interview with the screenwriter found among Miller’s papers at the University of Wyoming. (A shorter version was published in Films in Review, Dec. 1990.) “What do they do . . .” from “Conversations with Nicholas Ray & Joseph Losey” by Penelope Houston and John Gillett, Sight and Sound, Winter 60/61. Viveca Lindfors is quoted from her Southern Methodist University oral history. Ray on Cagney from his Movie interview. “Both Nick Ray and I . . .” from John McCabe’s unfettered Cagney (Knopf, 1997). I also consulted Cagney’s autobiography Cagney on Cagney (Doubleday, 1976), which was ghostwritten by McCabe. “I should have had my head examined . . .” from Conversations with Joan Crawford. Truffaut’s comments on Johnny Guitar from The Films in My Life, as translated by Leonard Mayhew (Simon & Schuster, 1975).
Books and other sources: Richard Baer, A Memoir: I Don’t Just Drop Names to Sell Books (iUniverse, 2005); Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968 (Viking, 1971); Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan, 2008); Connie Bruck, When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence (Random House, 2003); Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, Truffaut: A Biography (Knopf, 1999); Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut (Indiana University Press, 1993); Scott Eyman, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille (Simon & Schuster, 2010); Arthur Gregor, A Longing in the Land: Memoir of a Quest (Schocken, 1983); Charles Higham, Hollywood Cameramen: Sources of Light (Indiana University Press, 1970); Jim Hillier, ed., “Cahiers du Cinéma”: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave (Harvard University Press, 1985); Annette Insdorf, François Truffaut (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Ron Lackmann, Mercedes McCambridge: A Biography and Career Record (McFarland, 2005); Beverly Linet, Susan Hayward: Portrait of a Survivor (Atheneum, 1980); Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford: A Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2001); Patrick McGilligan, Cagney: The Actor as Auteur (Oak Tree, 1982); Dennis McDougal, The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood (Crown, 1998); Jean Narboni and Tom Milne, eds., Godard on Godard (Viking, 1972); Brian Neve, “Elia Kazan’s First Testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Executive Session, 14 January, 1952,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (June 2005); David Sterritt, Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews (University of Mississippi Press, 1998); Shelley Winters, Shelley: Also Known as Shirley (Morrow, 1980) and Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (Simon & Schuster, 1989); Peter Wollen, “Never At Home,” Sight and Sound (May 5, 1994).
EIGHT: THE GOLDEN WORLD
Special collections: Stewart Stern papers, University of Iowa; Warner Bros. production files, University of Southern California.
Few motion pictures have been covered so exhaustively in articles, books, and documentary films as Rebel Without a Cause. I have done my best to collect all the literature, a great deal of which recycles or overlaps the earliest accounts. The Warner Bros. production files and Stewart Stern’s papers helped guide my coverage.
“Hollywood dinner dates . . .” from “Nicholas Ray Still a Rebel with a Cause” by Vincent Canby, New York Times (Sept. 24, 1972). “Wisconsin has never been so beautiful . . .” from “Healthy Condition of Film Industry Pointed to by Ray” in the La Crosse Tribune (July 13, 1954). Because Ray often told the anecdote of his post-Dragnet conversation with Lew Wasserman leading to the making of Rebel Without a Cause, there are multiple versions of what was said and what later transpired; my version is derived principally from Ray’s Camera Three interview.
“An adventurous studio . . .” also from Camera Three.
Again and again I drew from Ray’s lengthy Variety article “Rebel—The Life Story of a Film,” published to coincide with the first anniversary of James Dean’s death. Ray’s first encounters with Dean, Dean crossing paths with Clifford Odets, Ray’s trip to New York pursuing Dean, the last time he and Dean saw each other, and Ray’s comparison between Dean and a Siamese cat are among the key anecdotes, retold by Ray in later interviews, recounted in the Variety article for the first time. Inevitably anyone who interviewed Ray asked him about Dean or Rebel. Asked about the star during his American Film Institute seminar in 1973, the director said, “I no longer give interviews about Dean. I don’t talk about him as I want to keep the reservoir filled up.” But later, in fact, Ray did give other interviews about Dean.
Invaluably supplying Ray’s perspective on the writing stages of Rebel Without a Cause was his bylined article “Story into Script,” first published in Sight and Sound (Autumn 1956). Interestingly, “Story into Script” treats the progress of the script under the first two writers—Leon Uris and Irving Schulman—while stopping before the hiring of final writer Stewart Stern. Ray rarely discussed Stern, who is, for example, mentioned only twice in passing in I Was Interrupted, once pejoratively. Stern doesn’t appear to have been interviewed for Nicholas Ray: An American Journey.
I repeatedly consulted Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel’s meticulously sourced Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause” (Touchstone, 2005) and have tried to credit their original material in the text. Their evocative phrase “the teenage trinity,” describing the lead trio of Jim Stark, Judy, and Plato, I adopted. “I think he hated himself . . .” from Gavin Lambert’s interview for Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause.” “Find the keg of dynamite . . .” and “That one single concept . . .” from “In Class IX” in I Was Interrupted. “Exploitation campaign . . . ,” “He’s 25, looks 28 . . . ,” and “intellectual approach . . .” from Ray’s Oct. 18, 1954, memo to producer David Weisbart. “Is not only gaining insight . . .” from Ray’s Oct. 7, 1954, memo to Weisbart. “Made me vomit . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “It was like an eye test . . . ,” “His talent for inventing . . . ,” “as I have two sons . . . ,” and “Confronted with a giant replica . . .” from “Story Into Script.”
“Aloof and solitary . . .” “Maybe a Siamese . . . ,” and “intensely determined . . .” from “Rebel—The Life Story of a Film.” “A far, far sicker kid” is Kazan quoted in Donald Spoto’s Rebel: The Life and Times of James Dean (HarperCollins, 1996). “He could never quite forgive . . .” is Ray from “Movie Fame for Dean Is Posthumous,” Bob Thomas, syndicated by the Associated Press in the Robesonian, Lumberton, NC (Nov. 18, 1955). “I put him together with my son . . .” from Camera Three. “A monster . . .” is Leonard Rosenman from Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean. “He wanted to belong . . .” is Ray from “Great Films of the Century: East of Eden” by Robin Bean, Films and Filming, May 1964. Silvia Richards is quoted from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “I didn’t like working with Ray . . .” is Irving Shulman quoted from David Dalton’s James Dean: The Mutant King (Straight Arrow, 1974).
Stewart Stern is often quoted from our e-mail exchanges and longtime correspondence. But I have also drawn from a number of other sources that feature interviews with the principal writer of Rebel Without a Cause, including Margy Rochlin’s interview with Stern in my book Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s (University of California Press, 1997). “His ‘moo’ in Rebel is a souvenir . . .” from “Dialogue on Film: Stewart Stern” in American Film (Oct.1983). “Nick was in agony . . .” and “Without meaning to use specific . . .” from Kent R. Brown, The Screenwriter as Collaborator: The Career of Stewart Stern (Arno Press, 1980). “Who was having a terrible time . . .” and the inspiration of On the Waterfront from William Baer’s Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters (Praeger, 2008).
My view of Natalie Wood is indebted to Gavin Lambert’s compelling Natalie Wood: A Life (Knopf, 2004), which drew on the author’s friendships with Ray and (later on) the actress to depict her behind-the-scenes romance with Ray during the making of Rebel. Wood and Dennis Hopper are frequently quoted from Lambert’s book. Suzanne Finstad’s Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood (Harmony, 2001) is equally authoritative, however, and Lambert often draws material from the earlier Finstad book.
“I felt exactly the way . . . ,” “who wanted my ideas,” and “golden world” is Natalie Wood from Natasha. (The latter may be a contraction of a statement from one of Wood’s last interviews—Dick Moore, “A Last Visit with Natalie Wood,” McCall’s, Oct. 1984—in which the actress is quoted as saying, “He [Ray] opened the door to a whole new world. It was just glorious.”) “This kid with a fresh scar . . .” and “All the other guys . . .” from Natasha. “Mysterious, laconic and powerful . . .” and “That [first] interview took place in the first week of February . . .” are Gavin Lambert quoted in “Dangerous Talents” by Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair (Mar. 2005). Jayne Mansfield’s audition from Natasha. Ray’s Mar. 1, 1955, memo (“We just spent three days . . .”) from Natasha.
There are numerous versions of the anecdote Ray often told of Dean rehearsing the milk bottle scene, leading to the change in setting, the redesign of the living room to match Ray’s residence, the blocking of the scene (Jim Stark’s argument with his parents and physical tussle with his father), and the POV camerawork aligned to Dean’s movements. My version borrows from the Camera Three interview in which Ray got up and acted out the moves. “It was all based on the . . .” from Ray’s Daily Cardinal transcript. Ken Miller quoted from Live Fast, Die Young. Marsha Hunt quoted from Natasha.
“More like a Plato than a Billy Gray . . .” is Ray from Natalie Wood: A Life. The story of Sal Mineo’s casting (including “I thought I dressed pretty sharp . . .” and Ray’s frowning, “Sal. Every once in a while . . .”) from H. Paul Jeffers’s Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder and Mystery (Carroll & Graf, 2000). Richard Beymer from Natalie Wood: A Life. Ray’s “Jimmy himself said . . .” and “as if he is your driver’s license” from the Jeffers book, while “look at me the way I look at Natalie” is from Natalie Wood: A Life. “The first gay teenager . . .” is Mineo quoted in Boze Hadleigh, Conversations with My Elders (St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
Stern recounts his visit to Kazan in Classic American Films. “Remember I worked with Frank Lloyd Wright? . . .” from Ray’s Take One interview. Ray’s claim that when Warner’s threatened to shut down the production he tried to buy “all the rights to the film” (per footnote) is reported in James Dean: The Mutant King, for which the director was interviewed. “When you first see Jimmy . . .” from James Dean: The Mutant King. “That helps in the most external way . . .” from Ray’s Movie interview. “Beautiful moods . . .” from Camera Three. “I taught him how to walk!” from Wim Wenders’s book of photographs Once (D.A.P./Schirmer/Mosel, 2001). Ann Doran quoted from Natasha. Corey Allen quoted from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “Practically a codirector” from Jim Backus’s Rocks on the Roof (Putnam’s, 1962). “Jim Backus is an asshole” is Ray quoted in “55 Days with Nick Ray” by Mel Neuhaus in Film Journal (Spring 1994). “I liked Nick . . .” is Leonard Rosenman from Natasha. Dennis Hopper’s “On the set Sal seemed always to be . . .” from Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder and Mystery.
“He was determined to do it . . .” from Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters. “Bit by bit emasculation” from Stern’s May 5, 1955, letter to Steve Trilling. “I was glad that you finally realized . . .” from Stern’s interview in Live Fast, Die Young. Stern’s letter to Ray (“one of the happiest . . .”), dated May 19, 1955, is reproduced in Douglas L. Rathgeb’s The Making of “Rebel Without a Cause” (McFarland, 2004). “My name is Nick Ray . . .” from Ray’s June 7, 1955, interoffice communication to J. L. Warner. “Excellent”
and “Dean beyond comprehension” from Jack Warner’s July 1, 1955, memo to Steve Trilling. Jesse Lasky Jr. and Cornel Wilde from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “We had our holiday place . . .” from Ray’s Take One interview.
Books and other sources: Patti Bellantoni, If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling (Focal Press, 2005); Peter Biskind, “Rebel Without a Cause: Nicholas Ray in the Fifties,” Film Quarterly (Autumn 1974); Joe Hyams (with Jay Hyams), James Dean: Little Boy Lost (Warner Books, 1992); Jesse L. Lasky Jr., Whatever Happened to Hollywood? (Funk & Wagnalls, 1975); May Mann, Jayne Mansfield: A Biography (Pocket Books, 1973).
NINE: CIRCLE OF ISOLATION
Special collections: Paul Gallico papers, Columbia University; Richard Maibaum collection, University of Iowa; 20th Century-Fox production and legal files, UCLA.
“I didn’t think anyone would pick up . . .” is from Camera Three. “He almost persuaded me . . .” from Ray’s conversations with Lambert as recounted in Mainly About Lindsay Anderson, which treats Ray’s life intimately in the immediate post-Rebel period and throughout the making of Bigger Than Life, The True Story of Jesse James, and Bitter Victory. “Without losing any scenes . . .” from Jack Warner and Steve Trilling’s Sept. 20, 1955, telegram to Ray in Paris. Warner’s publicity executive Carl Schaefer reports on his meetings with Ray and the strategy of promoting Rebel Without a Cause as a “sincere and intelligent” story as opposed to the “controversial” Blackboard Jungle, in his Sept. 16, 1955, letter to Arthur S. Abeles Jr. in Warner’s London office. Roger Donoghue and Hanne Axmann from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “Much as I love the picture . . .” from Ray’s Oct. 14, 1955, Convair aircraft company postcard to Steve Trilling. “Possibly if the timing . . .” from Trilling’s Oct. 18, 1955, letter to Ray. “Never drove it” from Ray’s Take One interview. “Tall, attractive . . .” is Jayne Mansfield as quoted in a nationally syndicated newspaper column item cited in May Munn’s biography. Ray “cut absolutely no ice” from a Nov. 28, 1955, letter from Arthur S. Abeles Jr., London office, to Wolfe Cohen, Warner Bros.
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