James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  Avery, an expert at rope tricks, had taught Jimmy some of his tricks and techniques, suggesting that they might help him get cast in some B westerns. Jimmy practiced and quickly learned the techniques, which he later used after his casting in Giant. Sometimes, at the Santa Monica Pier, the two friends would put on a show—donations appreciated. Dressed in borrowed cowboy outfits, reminiscent of a young Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, they twirled lariats like Will Rogers, Jr.

  Avery had heard of a job that had become available at Ted’s Auto Park, an outdoor parking facility adjacent to the CBS television studios, near the intersection of Gower and Sunset Boulevards.

  Although the job paid only a dollar an hour, plus tips, Jimmy learned that some guys could make as much as $200 a week on the side, hustling tricks—at least the better looking and better endowed young men. He also was told that a lot of producers, directors, and radio and TV stars, even big screen actors and actresses, parked their cars at Ted’s.

  “Sometimes an attendant gets an acting job—if you get my drift—through somebody he meets in a parking lot,” Avery claimed.

  Jimmy pounded the unforgiving streets of Los Angeles in the 1950s with dreams of replacing Marlon Brando.

  “I’m drifting,” Jimmy said. “Count me in. When those queers get a look at me in my tight jeans and T-shirt, they’ll cream in their pants.”

  An hour later, after telling Avery goodbye on the pavement in front of Ted’s Auto Park, Jimmy headed for its office, which was housed in a plank-sided shed that evoked a boxcar on a railroad. Apparently, the establishment’s founder and namesake (Ted) had long ago departed. Instead, Jimmy faced Bill Homburg, a beefy, burly bear of a man who spoke English with a distinctive German accent. Seven years ago, he had fought in World War II. Jimmy didn’t need to ask which side he’d been on.

  Using his male flash and as much charm as he could muster, Jimmy tried to entice Homburg into giving him a job. He even told the boss what a great driver he was, which was a far stretch. “My lifelong dream is to park cars for the big shots.”

  “That means you want to be an actor,” Homburg said.

  “You nailed it. I plan to take Hollywood by storm. Move over, Marlon!”

  “You’ll fit in well here,” Homburg predicted. “All my guys want to be actors. I hope you’re not averse to the casting couch.”

  “Nope,” Jimmy answered.

  “You look like queer bait to me,” Homburg said. “I only hire guys who look like queer bait. So I guess I’ll hire you. You’ve got to show up at seven every morning, and don’t be late, fucker. The pay is a dollar an hour, plus tips, which can be anything. It depends on how much…”

  “How well I park cars,” Jimmy interjected.

  “That, too.”

  After the interview ended, with the promise of a new job beginning in the morning, Jimmy continued his walk along Sunset Boulevard, that boulevard of broken dreams, with renewed confidence. Nonetheless, his growling stomach told him that tomorrow was a long way off.

  Making a fast decision, he headed for Santa Monica Boulevard, which he’d been told was the best place for a good-looking kid who needed to make cash really quick.

  ***

  Since it was still early in the day, the “buyers and sellers” along Santa Monica Boulevard were not yet out in full force. That happened in the late afternoon before businessmen headed home to their wives and kids. After dark, denizens of the Los Angeles night emerged.

  A UCLA dropout with acting ambitions, here’s James Dean from his college days.

  Jimmy knew that although he didn’t have the best body on the street, his expressive face had always been a winning feature. When asked about his appeal, he said, “I’m a babe for the younger set.” At that time, not many young men referred to themselves as a “babe.”

  Although he was thin, he had an obviously developed musculature. He seemed to evoke a self-awareness that few actors of his day had, except for Brando and Montgomery Clift. He didn’t want to be classified with the pretty boys of the 1950s, especially Tab Hunter, Robert Wagner, or the ultimate narcissist, Tony Curtis.

  His hair color was compared to that of an almond, brownish but with blonde highlights from the California sun. Supple, Cupid-like lips were surrounded by the delicate skin of an angular face. His sleepy, “bedroom eyes” hinted at the potential for adventure.

  Many young men who had never thought of themselves as homosexual found themselves drawn to Jimmy. Exuding a femininity that existed harmoniously with his masculinity, he suggested androgyny. At times shy and awkward, he looked out at the world through horn-rimmed glasses. He was a brooder, rarely indulging in small talk.

  Sometimes, he cocked his head to one side and—with a Chesterfield dangling from his lips—stood slightly hunched over with his eyes squinted. Often, his hands were stuffed into his front pockets. He was invariably dressed in blue jeans with a white T-shirt, setting the style for young men in the 1950s.

  George Beaume, a casual acquaintance at the time, sensed a poetry in Jimmy. “He had this mysterious gaze and could look at his fellow actors without really seeing them. He existed in his own space, his own world. You’d see the sudden tensing of his face, which reeled from one emotion to another like a sinking ship. You’d sometimes hear him laugh, although his voice had a demonic ring. In contrast to his shyness, he could also become preening proud, the cock of the walk. It all depended on what was happening to him that night. If hurt by someone or brutally put down, he’d look like a lost little boy tearing at your heartstrings. I truly didn’t know what to make of him. But I sensed there was something there.”

  As he loitered on the sidewalk beside Santa Monica Boulevard, a short man in his late thirties or forties, dressed in a suit, walked by and gave Jimmy a casual but interested glance before moving on. He’d strolled only about twelve feet before he turned around and came back.

  “Aren’t you Jerry Burns from Cleveland, Ohio?” he asked Jimmy.

  “Cut the shit, man,” he answered. “It’ll cost you twenty.”

  “I don’t usually pay that much, but okay, I guess.” He signaled an oncoming taxi.

  As Jimmy piled into the back seat with him, the man, who had introduced himself as Frank, gave an address in West Hollywood.

  They were driven to an upmarket apartment house with a doorman. As Jimmy and Frank walked past the doorman, Frank told him, “That new television set of mine is acting up. I’ve brought a repairman. Unless television gets better, it’ll never replace radio.”

  “Yeah,” the doorman said with a knowing smile.

  The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, and Jimmy was directed into an ocean-view apartment with plush carpeting.

  “How about a drink?” Frank asked.

  “Too early in the day for me, man,” Jimmy said. “I haven’t got all day. Let’s get on with it.”

  “How romantic!” Frank said sarcastically.

  “I’m not selling romance,” Jimmy said. “I go for girls. Can I have the twenty upfront?”

  The man showed Jimmy the bedroom, where he removed a bill from his wallet. “Get undressed.” He had become a commander.

  Seductively, Jimmy removed his T-shirt before taking off his boots. Then his jeans came down. He wore no underwear. He tossed his jeans onto the floor and, fully naked, lay down on the bed, closing his eyes.

  Frank seemed to devour him as it became obvious that Jimmy was conjuring up images that had nothing to do with the man who serviced him.

  The act itself took no more than four minutes. After that, Jimmy jumped out of bed, asking if he could use the shower.

  There, under the streaming water, he lathered his chest and crotch. Suddenly, Frank pulled back the curtain. “I want to watch you shower,” he said.

  “It’ll cost you another five,” Jimmy said.

  “Okay,” the man said.

  Under Frank’s penetrating gaze, Jimmy didn’t want to prolong the shower. After he’d finished, he stepped out and was handed a large ba
th towel.

  Within five minutes, he was at the door, holding out his hand for that extra five-dollar bill.

  “Thanks for coming,” Frank said. “That’s known as a double entendre.”

  “Whatever,” Jimmy said, heading toward the elevator and the street.

  ***

  At last, and with money in his pocket, Jimmy strolled along Santa Monica Boulevard to Barney’s Beanery, where he ordered two cheeseburgers and a bowl of chili, all for $1.65. He devoured the food under a misspelled sign, “FAGOTS STAY OUT.”

  The dive was famous, and he’d wanted to go there for a long time. Since it was founded in 1927, it had attracted such stars as Clara Bow (“The It Girl”), Jean Harlow (“The Platinum Blonde”), and such matinee idols as Clark Gable and John Barrymore.

  The big names no longer came here. Surrounding Jimmy were mostly out-of-work actors attracted to the place by its 50¢ hamburgers.

  Stuffed, Jimmy pondered what to do for the rest of the day. Should he give some of his just- earned dough to Avery or should he spend it on himself, perhaps paying a photographer to create some portraits as enticement for prospective casting directors. He quickly decided that Avery’s fiscal needs—including his rent money—would have to wait.

  From a phone booth, he placed a call to Beverly Wills, the daughter of the highly successful comedienne, Joan Davis. Beverly was starring as Fluffy Adams, a second banana in the CBS radio comedy, Junior Miss. She had plenty of money of her own; whenever she went out with Jimmy, she always picked up the tab. In Jimmy’s words, “Guys who look like me shouldn’t have to pay.”

  She was one of the so-called “Hollywood brats,” pampered teenagers who had movie stars for parents.

  Beverly Wills...dating Jimmy and picking up the tabs.

  Hardly a beauty, Beverly was not exactly ugly. She made up for any deficiency by her bright, bubbly personality and her sense of fun and humor. She lived in a mansion in Bel Air, next door to the director, Alfred Hitchcock.

  Jimmy was indecisive about pursuing a romance with Beverly, figuring at times that he should be spending his nights in the bed of a bigtime director or producer who might advance his acting career. And whereas Davis would do nothing for him, Beverly, in contrast, had tried to get work for him through Hank Garson, the director of Junior Miss. She had asked him to cast Jimmy in a small part, and, after acquiescing, he had agreed to meet him backstage the following day.

  “This sullen young man showed up, and I felt he looked a bit like Frank Sinatra,” Garson said. “I asked him to stand in front of a microphone and read some lines for me so I could check out his voice—after all, this was radio. But his reaction shocked me: He told me, ‘Go fuck yourself! I don’t do readings!’Then he stormed out. What a prick!”

  Jimmy didn’t fare well with other directors either, most of whom considered his five feet eight inches “too short.”

  To one director, Jimmy angrily asked, “How in Hell can you measure acting in inches?” Then he suggestively grabbed his own crotch with a line that effectively ended his audition: “I’ll show you some inches, faggot.”

  Several other directors told him, “You’re not pretty enough, and you don’t have a good enough build. If you looked like Tab Hunter or Tony Curtis, we might hire you. But you don’t.”

  Jimmy hooks up with the kind-hearted daughter of a famous actress, Joan Davis, depicted above with Jim Backus in a publicity shot for what became her best-known role, the TV sitcom conceived to compete with I Love Lucy, I Married Joan.

  To each of these casting directors, Jimmy uttered the same reaction: “Fuck you, asshole!”

  ***

  Seventeen-year-old Beverly invited Jimmy over right away. He was happy to learn that her mother wasn’t at home. Davis didn’t like Jimmy—in fact, she detested him. And he didn’t like her style of acting —“If that’s what it’s called.” She’d been successful as a B-movie actress and later as a leading star in radio comedy. Jimmy had seen only one of her movies, If You Knew Susie (1948), in which she had co-starred with her lover at the time, Eddie Cantor.

  Joan Davis in the 1948 film that made her famous.

  Davis was currently preparing the launch of a TV sitcom, I Married Joan, in which she would play the manic wife of a mild-mannered community judge, Jim Backus. CBS wanted a show similar to its big hit, I Love Lucy, which had premiered in 1951, starring Lucille Ball and her womanizing, real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.

  Two weeks earlier, Jimmy had met Backus for a dinner at the Davis manse. [Ironically, Backus would later be cast as Jimmy’s apron-stringed father in Rebel Without a Cause.] Jimmy had been introduced to Beverly when he was rooming with William Bast, who later became an author and writer-producer for film and television. At the time, Bast had been dating Beverly, slipping into her bedroom, right down the hall from her mother’s, for lackluster attempts at intercourse.

  Beverly’s mini-memoir of her encounters with James Dean appeared alongside this feature on Kim Novak in March of 1957.

  Within a few weeks, Jimmy had lured Beverly away from his roommate.

  At first, she had not been impressed with Jimmy, as she’d relate in a posthumous article for Modern Screen, published in March of 1957 and ludicrously entitled “I Almost Married James Dean. Who Am I?”

  “I thought he was pretty much of a creep until we got to this picnic and then all of a sudden, he came to life. We began to talk about acting and Jimmy lit up. He told me how interested he was in the Stanislavsky method, where you not only act people, but things, too.

  ‘Look,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m a pine tree in a storm.’ He held his arms out and waved wildly. To feel more free, he impatiently tossed off his cheap, tight, blue jacket. He looked bigger as soon as he did, because you could see his broad shoulders and powerful build. Then he got wilder and pretended he was a monkey. He climbed a big tree and swung from a high branch. Dropping from the branch, he landed on his hands like a little boy, chuckling uproariously at every little thing. Once in the spotlight, he ate it up and had us all in stitches all afternoon. The ‘creep’ had turned into the hit of the party.”

  Jimmy arrived by taxi (a rare luxury for him at the time) at Joan Davis’ Bel Air mansion, with its pool, bar, and tennis court. He was glad that except for the cook preparing an elaborate dinner for a special guest that evening, Beverly was alone in the house.

  She immediately led him to her bedroom for a session of heavy necking. He stopped short of intercourse because he wasn’t in the mood.

  Two hours later, Davis arrived and somewhat frantically set about getting things in order for her dinner party. She found Jimmy sitting in an armchair in her living room with his left leg dangling over an armrest. He was munching on an apple and listening to music on the radio.

  She showed her disappointment at how sloppily he was dressed, telling him that he’d better leave because within the hour, Tallulah Bankhead would be arriving for drinks and dinner.

  Beverly interjected, “But I’ve invited Jimmy to stay for dinner!”

  Very grand, very formidable, very funny, and very debauched: Tallulah Bankhead, as depicted in Jean Cocteau’s 1947 Broadway production of The Eagle Has Two Heads. It flopped.

  Davis looked acutely disappointed before heading into the kitchen to see how dinner was coming along. Jimmy had already bonded with the cook, an obese woman from Alabama. Her name was Odessa, and as time went by, she frequently prepared Jimmy’s favorite dish, pot roast, whenever he stayed for dinner. Knowing that he had very little money, Odessa would leave foodstuff for a week in Jimmy’s car parked in the driveway outside.

  Although Bankhead’s arrival created excitement throughout the Davis household, to Jimmy, she was only a name, vaguely connected to Broadway. He’d never seen her in anything.

  Currently, she was starring in a radio variety show, The Big Show (1950-52), a ninety minutes program that was broadcast every Sunday night. As mistress of ceremonies, Bankhead entertained big-name stars, including Marlene Dietrich an
d Ethel Merman. Davis was a regular on her show. Sometimes, Bankhead would sing, her signature songs including “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

  Immensely powerful in show-biz promotions after World War II, Bankhead was MC of one of Radioland’s most popular shows. Jimmy reacted to her instinctively.

  Here, she’s participating in a staged reading with Laurence Olivier (“Heathcliff”) and Vivien (“Scarlett O’Hara”) Leigh.

  The moment Bankhead barged through the door, she took center stage. Jimmy had never met a woman like her. After Davis introduced her to Jimmy, she immediately asked: “How big is your cock, Dah-ling?”

  Then she plopped down on the sofa, demanding “a bourbon and branch water. Go easy on the branch water.”

  Throughout the dinner, Jimmy was mesmerized by the bigtime star. She was a formidable presence, still showing some of her faded beauty of the 20s and 30s. Davis seemed upset that she was showing more attention to Jimmy than she did to her.

  Tallulah summoned Odessa from the kitchen and ordered her to sit down at the table with her. Both women shared tales of their native Alabama.

  Tallulah kept ordering bourbon. “I drink today, Dah-lings, as the world knows. But when I arrived in New York, Daddy warned me to stay away from men and booze. But he didn’t warn me about cocaine and women.”

  “Incidentally, Dah-ling, don’t believe that shit about cocaine being habit-forming. It’s not. I’ve been snorting it for years.”

  At times, she talked about sex. “I’ve tried many varieties. The conventional position I found claustrophobic. All the other positions give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.”

  Three hours later, in bidding Jimmy good night, she wetly kissed him on the lips. “I haven’t had so much fun, Dah-ling, since the night I went down on Hattie McDaniel.”