James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  At one point, Jimmy told Haggart that he’d been invited to go yachting that August with Ayers and his wife, Shirley. “We’ll be cruising around Cape Cod.”

  Haggart asked him about the status of See the Jaguar and whether Ayers had decided to cast him as the young male lead in lieu of giving the role to Perkins.

  “Not yet,” Jimmy answered. “But it’s just a matter of time.”

  Brackett seemed unaware of the sexual and emotional link that had developed between Jimmy and Ayers. In fact, based on their perceived status as “a couple,” Brackett and Jimmy received two separate invitations to the Ayers family’s country house in Stony Point. Sometimes, both of them were included in evenings at The Algonquin, along with Alec Wilder, Haggart, and David Swift with his wife, Maggie McNamara. Sarah Churchill sometimes joined the coven. Behind her back, Jimmy referred to his former conquest as a “dipso.” [A dipsomaniac is someone with an uncontrollable craving for alcoholic liquors.]

  This confusion, or lack of communication, about the status of the relationship between Jimmy and Brackett was a precursor of the changes that were about to take place. Both Haggart and Wilder shared front-row seats to watch as they unfolded.

  ***

  The changes became obvious late one Saturday afternoon when Jimmy arrived alone at Haggart’s apartment, wanting to talk privately. He looked agitated and troubled.

  “He seemed filled with indecision,” Haggart said. “He admitted quite frankly that at this point in his career, he did not want to sleep with older men as a means of getting ahead in the theater, and that he wanted to have sex with men or women his own age.”

  “More than a sleeping arrangement, I want to forge ahead on my own talent, not having someone offering me roles because of my performance on a casting couch.”

  Unknown to Haggart, Jimmy had expressed the same sentiments to others, too.

  “Besides, except for you and Lem, none of Rogers’ friends like me,” Jimmy said.

  “I’ve seen you around Rogers’ friends,” Haggart said. “You become surly and withdrawn.”

  “That’s because I don’t like to be fawned over by a pack of queers,” Jimmy protested.

  “If you’re going to stay in show business, you’d better get used to being surrounded by ‘a pack of queers’ as you call them. Half the guys you meet will be gay. And they won’t like you calling them queer. Let’s face it: Being a star involves getting people to like you—those who will cast you in roles and, of utmost importance, the public. That’s the price of stardom. Get used to it or get out.”

  “I hate being used by Rogers like some Saturday night whore,” he said. “He makes me feel cheap. I’m more than some floozie.”

  “I can’t advise you about what to do,” Haggart said. “And in addition, I’m a friend of Rogers. He gets jobs for me, he sometimes hires me as an art director, and I have to maintain some loyalty to him. So if you’re expecting me to urge you to leave the comfortable life he’s providing for you, I won’t do it. My point is that if you feel compromised because you’re living a comfortable life, then go live on the hard, cold streets. “

  “What you’re telling me is that I have to make up my own mind and suffer the consequences,” Jimmy said.

  “Suffer, perhaps, or else triumph on your own. I think you have the talent for it. But it’ll be a rough ride.”

  “What if, after staging a dramatic walkout from Rogers, I fail to become a big star?” Jimmy said.

  “Do what I did,” Haggart said. “In the 1930s, I had dreams of becoming a leading man in Hollywood, a romantic leading man, that is. But it didn’t happen for me. So I came to New York, reinvented myself as an art director, and here I am, leading the good life.”

  “I can’t imagine myself being anything but an actor.”

  “Then you must go out there and succeed at any price,” Haggart advised.

  When Jimmy left the apartment, Haggart didn’t know whether he’d move out of Brackett’s apartment or not.

  He would soon find out.

  ***

  Unexpectedly, Jimmy received a call a few days later from William Bast, his former roommate from Santa Monica. Bast told him he’d just arrived in New York and that he’d checked into the YMCA, where Jimmy had once stayed during leaner times. Bast had been graduated from UCLA in late May.

  Over a “get re-acquainted” breakfast, Jimmy told Bast that he was back living with Brackett, who was procuring small roles for him in teleplays.

  Jimmy was not forthcoming with a lot of additional information, but Bast assumed that he also had another involvement. He spoke of a dancer named Dizzy Sheridan. “She’ll be joining us for breakfast.”

  Almost as soon as he’d said that, she appeared. Bast later remembered her as being a “long. lithe, supple beauty with pixie humor. She was warm and friendly, and very broke. She wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense, but she was right there where you could touch her and know that she was real.”

  Over breakfast, Bast spoke of his dilemma in finding a place to live. “I don’t want to spend every night running from the homos at the Y.”

  Dizzy suggested that he and Jimmy pool their resources and look for a place together. She was not aware that Jimmy and Bast had once shared a lodging in Santa Monica as part of a union that had ended violently.

  After breakfast, all three of them strolled along the sidewalk, spotting the Royalton across the street. “I know someone there,” Jimmy said.

  Dizzy had to leave them. After her departure, Jimmy, with Bast, walked across the street and into the lobby of the Royalton. After riding the elevator to one of the upper floors, they arrived at the door to one of the apartments and rang its bell.

  After a while, Jimmy rang again. Finally, the door was opened a crack. Recognizing who had rung, Roddy McDowall opened the door more fully, standing there sleepily, wearing only a pair of briefs. “Oh, it’s you, Jimmy. Come in. Who’s your friend?”

  “William Bast, a writer from Hollywood.”

  When McDowall disappeared into the bathroom, Bast turned to Jimmy. It was obvious to him that Jimmy was having a fling with this former child star. Bast remembered him from playing opposite an 11-year-old Elizabeth Taylor in Lassie Come Home (1943).

  Bast later recalled, “Count on Jimmy. Although Brackett’s boy, he was slipping off banging Dizzy Sheridan, Roddy McDowall, and God knows who else.”

  Fully dressed, McDowall emerged from the bathroom and listened to their plight about finding a place to live. He suggested that they check at the desk in the Royalton’s lobby.

  Half an hour later, at the door, McDowall kissed Jimmy on the lips. “See you at five this afternoon,” he said before turning to shake Bast’s hand.

  At the desk, Jimmy and Bast learned that the only accommodation available in their price range was the size of a broom closet.

  Jimmy remembered his stay at the Iroquois and asked Bast to walk over with him. There, their luck improved. For ninety dollars a month, they rented a room with twin beds and a bath. It was more expensive than what they’d paid in Santa Monica, but this was Manhattan.

  As the day drifted into night, Bast came to know a different Jimmy. “Whatever the price he’d paid, he owed Brackett an enormous debt for opening up his narrow world to greater resources of knowledge, experience, and awareness, as well as valuable social contacts. Sadly for Brackett, he failed to recognize his protégé’s almost pathological abhorrence of indebtedness, and that Jimmy could not merely bite, but eventually devour the hand that fed him.”

  “Jimmy was stronger than he’d been in Hollywood, more independent. He had greater confidence in himself. After all, he was now hanging out with Sarah Churchill. He had an aura of contained excitement about him.”

  Bast did not know if he’d phoned Bracket or not, but he spent the night with Jimmy in their drab new lodgings at the Iroquois. Bast later wrote: “It felt good to be reunited with my teammate. Or was ‘teammate‘ the right word for it? Maybe it was something m
ore. Our new relationship had not been defined. Surely anything was possible.”

  The next morning, Jimmy escorted Bast to Brackett’s apartment after he’d departed for a day’s work at his ad agency. Hurriedly, Jimmy packed his belongings, including some new clothes Brackett had recently purchased for him. He also took Sidney Franklin’s blood-soaked matador cape, which he would use to decorate the bare wall of his new lodging. He left a note for Brackett to read when he returned from work.

  In a taxi, Jimmy turned to Bast. “I’ll never live with him again.”

  From their new lodgings, Jimmy set out to show Bast the world he’d discovered. Sometimes, Dizzy joined them; at other times, she was busy.

  Jimmy never specifically informed Bast whether he’d called Brackett for a concluding dialogue, but Bast suspected that such a talk took place. Even though he’d moved out without notice, he obviously didn’t want to lose a valuable contact like the producer.

  Within two weeks, Bast had found a job at the New York headquarters of CBS, based at least to some extent on his successful stint as an usher at a CBS theater in Los Angeles. At the company’s New York location, he started out in the mail room with the assurance, “You can work your way from here to the top.”

  Announcing “Christine White,” an Ambitious Newcomer

  BUT IS IT LOVE?

  Even though Jimmy was still romantically involved with Dizzy Sheridan, another pretty young woman was about to enter his life. Their meeting began unexpectedly.

  Late one morning, he visited the office of his agent, Jane Deacy, hoping to “goose her into stirring up some more gigs for me. Summer was coming, and reruns were dominating the TV set.”

  In her reception area, he encountered a thin, blonde-haired, and rather pretty young girl in a red polka dot dress typing away. He assumed that she was Deacy’s new secretary.

  He approached her and stood looking down at her, perhaps surveying her bosom, or perhaps checking out what she was typing. “Get lost!” were her first words to him. “I’m busy.”

  Although he moved away, retreating to sit on a couch, he continued staring at her. Every now and then, she looked up from her typing. “You’re spoiling my concentration. If you don’t stop staring, I’ll charge admission.”

  He picked up the latest copy of Photoplay and pretended to read it, but he kept staring at her until it was time for a 12:30PM luncheon break. So far, Deacy had been tied up with other actors trying to cement deals.

  Picking up her purse, the young woman walked past Jimmy. Perhaps she felt guilty for treating him so rudely. She glanced back at him. “What’s your name?”

  “James Dean…but you can call me Jimmy.”

  I’m Christine White. My friends call me Chris. But you can call me Miss White.”

  “I could be your friend if you’d go with me for a cup of coffee. We could split a hamburger. I’m low on bread.”

  “So am I,” she said. “But OK. Let’s walk over to the Blue Ribbon Café.”

  Over a shared burger, her wall of indifference began to crumble. She genuinely liked Jimmy, although she thought he was much too short for an actor—and those horn-rimmed glasses had to go. Under questioning, he gave a highly edited version of his life.

  She was more forthcoming. Born in Washington State, she had come to New York to try to break into the theater. She’d developed a desire to be an actress since appearing in college plays at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She later graduated from Catholic University, where she majored in speech and drama. Along with three other underfinanced and wannabe actresses, she was living in a studio apartment on Madison Avenue at 92nd Street.

  She told him that she wasn’t a secretary, but a new client of Deacy’s, and that instead of typing anything associated with her new agent, she’d been typing a scene she’d written for presentation at Actors Studio as part of an audition.

  “I’ve been wanting to get into the Actors Studio ever since I came to New York,” he told her. “I have a letter of recommendation from James Whitmore to Elia Kazan. I figured they did all right for Monty Clift and Marlon Brando, so why not me?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “My scene takes place on a beach with another actor playing a bum who’s at least twelve years older than me. Perhaps you’ll do.”

  “I’ll help you with your script. We’ll work together, rehearsing and polishing it. How about it?”

  Christine White

  “I’ve been looking for an actor,” she said. “Perhaps you’re it.”

  “I’m not only it, I’m more than it. I’ll become Laurence Olivier to your Vivien Leigh.”

  “Let’s go for it,” she said. “You can call me Chris.”

  ***

  Three nights later, Jimmy escorted White to Haggart’s apartment. “We’re working on this skit together to rehearse for an audition at Actors Studio. Do you mind if we use the little apartment in back?”

  Haggart was most gracious, but first he introduced them to his dinner guests. They included the actress Kim Stanley and her lover, Brooks Clift, an advertising executive who was the brother of Monty Clift.

  Both White and Jimmy were delighted to meet and talk with Kim because they knew she had been a student of the Actors Studio, and famously trained by both Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg.

  Kim had made her Broadway debut in 1949 and was considered by some at the time as the most promising young actress on Broadway. Haggart invited Jimmy and White to join their dinner party, and it was at around midnight that his quartet of guests broke up.

  Kim Stanley...in love with Monty Clift’s older brother, Brooks Clift.

  Brooks and Kim left for her apartment, and Jimmy and Chris retreated to Haggart’s rear studio. Before bidding good night to Haggart, Jimmy said, “Chris and I are virgins. This will be the first time we’ve ever done it. We’re just going to let nature take its course, and see what happens. It’s all learned as you go.”

  Haggart was amazed that Jimmy could say that with a straight face, but—in front of White—he remained discreetly silent, and otherwise wished them luck.

  Brooks Clift (left) shown with his more famous, and more screwed-up brother, Monty.

  Over the course of the next few weeks, Chris and Jimmy came and went from Haggart’s rear apartment. Their host was aware that Jimmy had reconciled to some degree with Brackett, and that their friendship was now being conducted on radically different terms from what it had been in the past. Jimmy, who confided to Haggart that he planned to seduce his roommate, William Bast, was still carrying on his affair with Dizzy.

  “I’m working up to it, like giving him gentle little kisses on the mouth and indulging in teenage talk like ‘Have you ever tasted semen?’”

  When White was alone with Haggart, she told him, “Jimmy is still a very young boy. Rather impish, but with a certain kind of charm. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “My sentiments completely,” Haggart assured her.

  She then made an odd comparison. “Jimmy and I are like two mudlarks splashing around on the street.”

  Throughout most of the summer, Jimmy spent whatever time he could with White, writing and rewriting her script and rehearsing it endlessly. Haggart witnessed the first tryout, and he made several helpful suggestions which they incorporated. In the script, White, a very nervous girl, meets a beach bum. The setting is Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. A hurricane is looming.

  Roots was the title of the skit. It had been inspired by a dialogue between Jimmy and White, after she asked him, “What have you done for most of your life?”

  He answered: “Ripping off the layers to find my roots.”

  After they rehearsed their audition skit in front of Haggart, Jimmy told him, “Chris and I are partners in crime. We are soulmates.”

  Late one night before closing, the manager of Jerry’s Tavern allowed Jimmy and Chris to perform their skit in front of his diners, who applauded loudly. They also rehearsed in Central Park, often in front of otherwise idle curiosit
y seekers.

  An interlude in their respective commitments fell upon them in August. Taking advantage of it, Jimmy accepted an invitation to sail with Lemuel and Shirley Ayers aboard their yacht around Cape Cod.

  [Years later, White wrote about her first meeting with Jimmy for International Press Bulletin. For some reason, she chose to express herself in the third person: “He walked slowly back to the doorway. She looked at his hunched shoulders, the pockets with hands in them. If he were an actor, she might have talked to him, but ambition was too precious a power to waste on a funny-looking guy with glasses who couldn’t possibly be an actor. She watched him hesitate in the doorway, then careen around the frame and disappear into the waiting room.”

  Christine White (left) about a decade after her first introduction to James Dean, in an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1963).

  In the 1960s in Hollywood, years after Jimmy’s death, Haggart by chance encountered White. She was appearing in roles on television in shows that included Bonanza, Perry Mason, The Rifleman, and The Untouchables. Her most famous TV role had been Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, aired in 1963 for the TV series, The Twilight Zone.

  She spoke with sadness about Jimmy. “In that summer of 1952, we believed the world was ours, and that everything was possible. He seemed like such an all-American boy to me. At first, I didn’t see this moody, promiscuous, even dangerously suicidal young man. At least not at first. I thought about marrying him and settling down and having joint stage careers. How foolish dreams can be.”

  Haggart never saw her again.]

  ***

  For their annual yachting vacation aboard The Typhoon, Lemuel and Shirley Ayers invited Jimmy to accompany them as their cabin boy, although he’d had absolutely no prior experience sailing.