James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  However, within minutes, two of the world’s most recognizable faces came onto the patio. Katharine Hepburn appeared on the arm of Spencer Tracy, who seemed to be recovering from a hangover. She was rather boyish, dressed in a pair of white slacks. She wore no makeup to cover her bad skin. When Jimmy was introduced, she said, “Welcome to Hollywood, dear boy. You’ll have a hard time hanging onto your virginity in this town.”

  Tracy gave a knowing smirk. “Perhaps he’s already lost it.”

  Brackett fitted in perfectly with this chic crowd, but Jimmy felt out of place and wandered off by himself into the large terraced garden with its Italian statues, many of them male nudes. The ivy-covered walls gave a sense of privacy, one reporter referring to the setting as “a bachelor’s pleasure dome.”

  Platonic Lovers and “Switch-Hitters”: Spencer Tracy with Katharine Hepburn in Without Love (1945).

  When he grew bored, he went into the main house, finding it empty. The furnishings were a strange combination of antiques not well blended with post-war modern. He knew little about art, but Cukor had identified the artists, whose names were engraved on gold-plated plaques on the lower edge of each of the painting’s frames. They included Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Salvador Dalí.

  Eventually, he wandered down a portrait gallery to the bathroom. En route, he saw replicas of the smiling faces of Claudette Colbert, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Garbo, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Rex Harrison.

  At the end of the hall, he came upon a bronze portrait bust of Tallulah Bankhead, whom he’d recently met. Cukor had helmed her in Tarnished Lady (1931).

  Director George Cukor, as he looked around the time he met James Dean

  He had apparently seen Jimmy enter his house, and he decided to come in after him, as he was always nervous having strange young men wandering among his treasures. There had been thefts in the past from hustlers.

  As Jimmy emerged from the toilet, he encountered Cukor in the portrait gallery. “You’re the Dean boy, right? A friend of Rogers?”

  “You’ve nailed me.”

  Cukor followed Jimmy into the main living room, where he looked around proudly at his treasures. “This is my showcase,” he told Jimmy. “It’s perfect for me. Billy Haines was my decorator, but I’ve added my personal touches as well.

  “Never heard of him, but then, I’m not much up on decorators.”

  “Billy was Old Hollywood, the Silents. A big star until Louis B. Mayer kicked him off the lot because he wouldn’t give up his lover, Jimmy Shields.”

  “At least he found a new profession,” Jimmy said. “I hear many of those biggies in the Silents ended up on bad days. Alcoholics, whatever.”

  “Or whatever….” Cukor said.

  “I know Rogers has to report early in the morning to CBS. Why don’t you come by at ten tomorrow for breakfast?”

  “I’d like that,” Jimmy said. “For all I know, you might cast me as the lead in your next picture. I’m the greatest.”

  “That remains to be seen. But there is a part in my next picture, The Actress, that calls for a young actor to play the love interest of Jean Simmons. Spence is the star.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jimmy said. “See you tomorrow morning at ten. Perhaps you’ll find out how talented I really am.”

  “That is my desire.”

  ***

  The next morning, Jimmy arrived at Cukor’s with a sore ass. Rogers had wanted to fuck him, and he didn’t really like it. But he figured he’d better get used to being invaded.

  His old Chevy pulled up in the driveway. After he rang the doorbell, a Japanese houseboy directed him out to the pool patio where Cukor was already serving breakfast to another young man. As Jimmy approached, he was startled to see that it was John Carlyle, “The Black Star” himself, in a bathing suit.

  Although Carlyle had given him his phone number at Henry Willson’s party the week before, Jimmy had not had time to call.

  At first, Cukor seemed shocked that Jimmy knew Carlyle. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he sighed. “All you pretty boys seem to know each other as David knew Bathsheba. If I had been a pretty boy, I could have climbed the Hollywood ladder so much quicker. After all, pretty boys make up their own rules as they go along.”

  The chatter over breakfast was filled with Hollywood gossip, which Jimmy devoured along with a big breakfast. Cukor bragged about the success of Born Yesterday, which he’d directed. It had won a Best Actress Oscar for Judy Holliday, beating out Gloria Swanson for Sunset Blvd., and Bette Davis for All About Eve. “I’m currently directing Spencer and Katharine in Pat and Mike,” he said.

  Carlyle’s eyes lit up when he told Jimmy that Cukor was going to remake A Star Is Born, with Judy Garland in a comeback role. “George here has virtually guaranteed me a part in it.”

  Jimmy was jealous, but figured he should not mention that Cukor might cast him in The Actress, Tracy’s next film.

  After breakfast, Cukor suggested his two good-looking guests strip for a skinny dip in his pool. “Don’t bother with bathing trunks. All of us are men.”

  Both Carlyle and Jimmy realized that this was Cukor’s not-so-subtle attempt to appraise their bodies, especially their genitals. Each actor was also eager to see the other entirely nude.

  With their clothes off, Cukor obviously liked what he saw. So did Carlyle and Jimmy appreciate the sight of each other’s nudity, which they would explore more fully at some future moment.

  Like a protective hen, Cukor seemed to hover over his pool, hawkeyeing their frolicking in the water. Finally, when he’d had enough of that, he yelled “CUT,” as if he were directing one of his pictures.

  He gave each of them a large white bath towel to wrap around their nude bodies before directing them to his bedroom. Despite the size of his sprawling house, only one of its rooms was configured as a bedroom, as Cukor—with the exception of the hustlers who shared his bed—never wanted to house overnight guests,

  From within its precincts, Cukor ordered both of the young actors to lie down. Cukor pulled off his shirt but retained his trousers. Moving above them on the bed, he fondled their balls until they were fully erect.

  As he went down on them, Jimmy and Carlyle began to kiss each other rather passionately. Cukor was thorough in his work, going from one young man to the other until he brought both of them to a spectacular climax. Jimmy didn’t say anything, but Carlyle pronounced it “the most exquisite orgasm I’ve ever experienced.”

  “Nothing like surrendering yourself to a man who knows how to handle you guys,” Cukor said. Then he ordered both of them to the shower before entering it himself. When they emerged, after having soaped each other’s bodies, two one-hundred dollar bills—one for each of them—was waiting for them on Cukor’s bed.

  The director was in his living room pacing up and down, looking at the clock. He told Jimmy that he wanted to discuss something privately with Carlyle, and he asked Jimmy to walk down the hill to the cottage that lay on his grounds. Inside, he said, he’d find Spencer Tracy, and that he should help him get dressed for a two o’clock meeting with Ruth Gordon, who had written the screenplay for The Actress. “He’ll be late if you don’t.”

  “You mean…I mean…you want me to wake up Tracy and get him dressed?” Jimmy asked, astonished.

  “Exactly,” Cukor said. “Spencer will love it. His door is always unlocked. Just walk right in and do whatever you have to do.”

  “See you guys later,” Jimmy said, heading with trepidation out into the garden and down the hill.

  ***

  Spencer Tracy was like a movie god to Jimmy, who always claimed that, “He made acting look so easy, when it’s not.”

  Rumored to be cantankerous, demanding, and difficult, Tracy intimated Jimmy. The idea of waking him up from a drunken stupor and helping him get dressed was beyond his comfort level. Yet he didn’t want to defy Cukor’s command.

  He’d heard all the legendary gossip about Tracy and Hep
burn—that he was an incorrigible drinker involved in a platonic relationship with Hepburn, and that Hepburn was a lesbian, at least with young women with perfect skin.

  Outside the cottage, Jimmy hesitated before testing the doorknob. He found it unlocked, as Cukor had predicted. Stepping inside the living room, he called out, “Mr. Tracy,” but his voice wasn’t very loud.

  The door to Tracy’s bedroom had been left open. He peered inside to discover the actor sprawled nude on top of the bedcovers. He had obviously plopped down there the previous evening when he was drunk. Permeating the room was the distinctive smell of urine.

  “Mr. Tracy,” Jimmy said again, his voice growing louder. Finally, Tracy stirred, slowly, rising up from his pillow and confronting Jimmy through blurry eyes. “Hell, didn’t I pay you for last night?”

  Jimmy assumed that Tracy had mistaken him for a hustler from the night before. He explained that he’d been sent by Cukor to get him ready for his two-o’clock meeting with Ruth Gordon to discuss the script for his upcoming movie, The Actress.

  Tracy got out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, he was in the kitchen making coffee. Jimmy had read that Hepburn claimed that Tracy made the best coffee in the world. After tasting it, Jimmy agreed, although he wasn’t one to judge, having sampled a steady diet of some of the worst coffee in some of the sleaziest diners in Los Angeles.

  Over coffee, and a bit prematurely, Jimmy told Tracy that Cukor might offer him the role of Jean Simmons’ boyfriend in their upcoming movie. This seemed to pique the aging actor’s interest.

  Within twenty minutes, a fully dressed Tracy was walking up the hill to Cukor’s manse. “Kid, I like you. I hope you get the part. I’ve got the script in the cottage. If you’ll call me some night this week, we’ll go over it, and I’ll rehearse you.” He handed Jimmy a card. “My private number’s on the back.”

  Jimmy knew this was a come-on, but he agreed to call him.

  When they reached Cukor’s door, Tracy shook Jimmy’s hand. He noticed that John Carlyle’s car was already gone.

  “Okay, kid, I’ll look forward to your call.” Before going inside, he looked back at Jimmy, who at first thought he’d misunderstood his final remark.

  “I just hope your mother in the hospital didn’t tell some god damn doctor to cut off your foreskin.”

  ***

  When Jimmy arrived for work the next morning at Ted’s Auto Park, Bill Homburg called him into his ramshackle office. “Why didn’t you show up for work yesterday morning?”

  “I was sick,” Jimmy lied.

  “Couldn’t you have called in? We were short-staffed. You’re fired! Here’s your back pay in cash.”

  Jimmy counted the bills for his dollar-an-hour job. “There’s not much cash here. I think you’re cheating me.”

  “You didn’t earn much. Also, I learned you dented George Burn’s fender. The cheapskate wants us to pay.”

  “Won’t you give me another chance?”

  “Get the hell out of here.”

  Once again, out on the street, Jimmy was in a quandary. What to do? The money from Cukor would pay his living expenses for a while, but not for long.

  He decided it was time to make up with William Bast, his former roommate, who was working next door at CBS as an usher.

  James Dean & William Bast

  TOGETHER ON A ROLLER-COASTER THROUGH TINSELTOWN—PASSIONS, BETRAYALS, RECKLESS COMPULSIONS, EARLY STRUGGLES

  The same age as Jimmy, but less good-looking, William Bast was a struggling young actor who also wanted to write. Over time, he had evolved into Jimmy’s best friend, but their relationship was destined to be turbulent, and sometimes violent.

  For a time in 1951, they had shared an apartment together, a studio on the top floor of a modest apartment complex built around a courtyard on Tenth Street in Santa Monica.

  It was a charming little aerie decorated in what Bast defined as the “Santa Fe-cum Mexican style with hand-painted Aztec design motifs.”

  The rent was seventy dollars a month, and they were hoping to make the payment, plus food costs, based on whatever Jimmy could make at odd jobs. Bast worked for twenty dollars a week.

  Bast had met Jimmy when they studied drama together at UCLA. At the time, Jimmy was unhappy housed within the Sigma Nu fraternity house. Likewise, Bast had been sleeping on a bunk bed within one of the university’s dormitories.

  He had not been impressed with Jimmy’s performance in a student production of Macbeth. It has opened at Royce Hall on November 29, 1950. After watching the performance, Bast told his friends, “This guy performed the role of Malcolm with the most dreadful Indiana accent, a terrible farm boy twang. He couldn’t pronounce Shakespeare, couldn’t get his tongue around it.”

  William Bast...was he a friend or foe to Jimmy? Bast could never decide.

  “I thought he was a Hoosier shit-kicker not too long ago slopping the hogs. His knobby knees stuck out beneath his kilt, and he had bad posture.”

  When Jimmy was introduced to Bast, he told him, “Getting cast in Macbeth has been the biggest thrill of my life.”

  Although he may have been secretly attracted to Jimmy, Bast did his best to conceal it. He later told two of their friends, “I think he’s a very stupid boy for his age. And there’s something weird about him. I can’t figure out what it is.”

  When Bill Bast first hooked up with Jimmy, his greatest acting challenge, till then, had been his involvement in a 1950 college production of Macbeth. In it, Jimmy is depicted above, right.

  Eventually, the two struggling actors found common ground in their love of the theater. Once, at the Santa Monica Pier, when both men had each had a few beers, they stood side by side at an open urinal. Years later, Bast recalled, “I found myself staring at his dick, and I wanted it. But somehow, I was too afraid to make an overture. After all, it was 1950. We both were keeping up a macho front and talking about girls.”

  One day, Jimmy approached Bast and told him that he’d been kicked out of his lodgings within the Sigma Nu fraternity house. At a beerfest, one of the brothers had called him a faggot because he was a theater arts major. Enraged, Jimmy had attacked him, hitting him with a large glass ashtray. Even though the blow had practically knocked him out, Jimmy had continued to pound his head, even after he’d fallen on the floor. After pulling Jimmy off the man, two fraternity brothers kicked him out of the building. He returned the next morning and packed his lone suitcase.

  Jimmy suggested that he and Bast should pool their resources and rent an apartment together.

  Eventually, they moved into a small penthouse. It contained a tiny bedroom with just enough space for a double bed. Bast had assured the landlady that one of them would sleep on the sofa. That was not the case—they each wanted the comfort of a bed.

  Bast would later confess that sometimes in the middle of the night, he would feel Jimmy’s erection pressing against his body, but that nothing sexual transpired between them during the early stages of their apartment share. That would come later.

  Dazed and confused, Bast experienced mixed emotions. As he expressed later, “I was jealous of Jimmy, but strangely attracted to him as well. He often paraded around the apartment in the nude, and, on looking back, I was turned on but didn’t want to admit it.”

  After two weeks of living with Jimmy, Bast concluded that he was a manic-depressive. Sometimes, he’d go for two or three days before speaking, just sulking and keeping to himself. Then he’d emerge from this self-isolation and become the life of the party.

  Actually, Bast interpreted some things about Jimmy as rather pompous. “The only greatness for a man is immortality,” Jimmy told him.

  His major at UCLA was Theater Arts, but he began to miss classes, and eventually dropped out completely.

  According to Bast, “At times, this little Indiana farmboy had such inner strength, such self-assurance, such dedication, and, most of all, a streak of independence. He told me he wouldn’t ‘kiss ass to get a job,�
�� but I suspected he was doing just that—or rather getting his ass either kissed or fucked by all those gay directors and producers, even stars.”

  “In spite of this brave façade, he would break down and become a little boy lost—afraid, insecure, battered, and bruised by a world he found increasingly hostile. As Bette Davis once told me, ‘Hollywood is not for the weak of heart. It’s the land of the tarantula.’”

  In his battered old Chevy, a gift from his estranged father, Winton Dean, Jimmy drove from studio to studio to appear at “cattle calls” with dozens of other aspiring actors. He couldn’t afford to buy trade papers, but he read them at newsstands, writing down the addresses and details in a little red notebook he carried. He desperately wanted to make a screen test, but received no offers.

  After a casting call, he’d return, deeply disappointed, to their apartment. When days would pass without any casting calls to attend, he’d sink into despair. During those periods, he often spent the night wandering around Santa Monica or going into Hollywood. On most of those occasions, he’d return to the penthouse at dawn, sleeping throughout most of the day.

  Actor Gregory Bottoms remembered him at the time. “He wasn’t well groomed, often dirty and unshaven, wearing soiled clothes. He looked like he didn’t have a friend in the world, really beaten by life. But he’d save and put on his one good pair of slacks and a freshly ironed white shirt when he’d go on those casting calls. When there were no casting calls, he let himself go. He looked like a bum.”

  According to Beverly, “Jimmy could go through a whole alphabet of emotions. In a single night, when he couldn’t get an acting job, which was often the case, he was bitter about everything and everybody. I hated to see him so blue and depressed. He made me depressed. He told me he hoped to die early so he wouldn’t have to face the even more horrible bitterness of growing old. Yet when he was happy, he was the most lovable and fun person to be around, always cutting up and playing games to amuse people. Once, when he’d eaten some bad Mexican food, and had a lot of gas, he upset the guests at my mother’s house by letting farts, telling people he was imitating a skunk. The guy was outrageous.”