James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  In his words: “I directed Shirley Booth, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor, but James Dean was my biggest headache. When Billy Rose, phoned me from New York about casting him, I told him, “That Dean’s acting is like a fox trying to fuck a football. He’s all around it, but he can’t get into it.”

  Bill Gunn, an African-American actor and playwright, had been cast as Jimmy’s understudy. “I predicted fireworks would result from Mann’s attempts to direct Jimmy, and, indeed, some Fourth of July blasts went off.”

  Soon after Mann’s takeover of the play’s direction, the other cast members, mainly Jourdan, expressed harsh appraisals of Jimmy and his work habits. Only Page took up for him.

  During their first encounter, Mann told Jimmy, “I’m not going to sugar-tit you.”

  “Too bad, Jimmy replied, defiantly. “Most men claim my tits are sweeter than any honey a bee ever made.”

  “Forget everything you’ve ever learned from the Jewish Pope [a reference to Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio] and listen to me,” Mann demanded.

  Then, much to Jimmy’s annoyance, Mann set about revising the script, cutting out many of Bachir’s lines.

  “I think the bastard wants to write me out of the play,” he complained to Page.

  From then on, Jimmy launched a war against Mann, at least when he wasn’t battling with Jourdan.

  Ruth said, “The battle raged through and included the final rehearsals. At times, Dean seemed to be performing in a play that he’d written himself, something that had nothing to do with my script.”

  According to Page, “One day, Jimmy stormed out of the theater, and we didn’t think he was going to return. Finally, after a few hours, he showed up to discover Bill Gunn rehearsing Bachir’s part with the other actors. This sobered Jimmy, and he was back in the role.”

  Mann wanted to fire him altogether until he discovered that from the beginning, he’d had a run-of-the-play contract, which meant that he would have to be paid whether he worked as a participating actor or not.

  Rose told Mann, “If the little prick doesn’t cut the shit, he walks, contract or no contract. Let him sue me.”

  Jimmy’s big scene was the so-called “scissors dance,” where moved sinuously, suggestively, even frenziedly, while brandishing a pair of scissors.

  According to Gunn, “For the first time, I think Jimmy really listened to Mann’s direction.”

  Mann had advised, “For this dance, imagine you’re bouncing up and down on a very big cock. From what I hear, that is something you really know how to do.”

  Geraldine Page (above, left) claimed that Jimmy looked “the least like an Arab boy of anyone you could imagine. That face, that blonde hair. But he made us feel he was an Arab—not by his looks, but by his acting.”

  As Gunn later said, “Jimmy was no Yvonne de Carlo, but his dance would become the highlight of the show.”

  Jimmy discussed his scissors dance with Page. “It was the strings I was snipping away, the strings that bound the Frenchman’s character to the staid middle class morality of his early days in Normandy. The more I snipped and cut away with the scissors, the more I removed Michael from his hopeless respectability.”

  For the play’s out-of-town opening in Philadelphia, Jimmy, as Bachir, appeared onstage with brown makeup and a seductive leer. From there, he attempted to entrap Michael with his sensual charm and that homoerotic scissors dance.

  Ruth was amazed by the brilliance of Jimmy’s performance that night. “Backstage, he’d been a terror, the most unprofessional actor ever. But that night, he was a pro, playing the role perfectly and winning the approval of most of the Philadelphia critics.”

  “Louis Jourdan truly detested Jimmy, based partly on his behavior during rehearsals, but I adored him,” said Geraldine Page, pictured above with Jourdan in a publicity photo for The Immoralist. “But it was hard to forgive him for walking out on the play after only two weeks, especially after getting such rave reviews. When he left, the play seemed to lose its power.”

  Jimmy’s good behavior didn’t last long. At a Wednesday matinee, to demonstrate his loathing for Jourdan, Jimmy upstaged him. During the French actor’s execution of one of his key scenes, Jimmy reached into his pocket and took out an imaginary lollipop. Then he went through “pretend” motions of putting it in his mouth and vigorously sucking it.

  When the curtain went down, Mann was furious. He chased Jimmy out through the stage door and into the street. He yelled, “If I get my hands on you, I’ll kill you, you bastard punk.”

  The next day, Jimmy’s friend, Martin Landau, called from New York. “How’s it going, working with Jourdan?”

  Louis Jourdan, onstage, with James Dean his bitter enemy, in The Immoralist. “We have a juvenile delinquent on our hands,” he told the director.

  “He’s great,” Jimmy said in a mocking voice. Last night, he wasn’t his usual wooden self. He even managed to raise both of his hands at the same time.”

  ***

  Cast and crew rode the train from Philadelphia back to New York to prepare for the play’s opening night on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on February 8, 1954. Its big-time debut, coincidentally, occurred on Jimmy’s 23rd birthday.

  On opening night, fifteen minutes before the curtain, Jimmy, outfitted in full Arab makeup and drag, took off on his Triumph motorcycle from an alley beside the theater.

  Mann went into a frenzied panic, as did the rest of the cast and crew. Jimmy’s understudy, Bill Gunn, was ordered to prep himself as a replacement.

  “I had never seen such tension backstage,” Page said. “Finally, at the last minute, Jimmy returned. I had been very patient with him, but this act to deliberately alarm everybody pissed me off, too.”

  Jimmy’s destination, impetuously, even maniacally, pursued fifteen minutes before curtain time, had involved a meeting, bizarrely scheduled, with James McCarthy, a friend from his U.C.L.A. days. He told him, “I don’t want to be a good actor. I want to be the best actor there is. I told you I’d take the big town someday. My moment arrives tonight.”

  Based on Jimmy’s brilliant performance, after the descent of the opening night’s final curtain Mann and Rose opted to forgive Jimmy’s horrible behavior. “Jimmy wooed audiences, and Louis [Jourdan] didn’t do badly either,” Page said.

  But although rumor and fact are hard to decipher at this point, Jimmy nonetheless released a shocker, virtually during the curtain’s final descent. Still clad in his caftan, and with the understanding that he never wore underwear beneath his caftan, he curtsied like a girl.

  James Dean performing the “Scissors Dance” onstage in The Immoralist.

  His frequent mentor and supporter, James Sheldon, thought Jimmy was miscast. “The dirty, evil, seductive part he had down pat. But he was just too Indiana farmboy to be really convincing.”

  Later, some members of the audience got a glimpse of just a flash of genitals as he curtsied; others maintained that only his upper thighs were visible. Confronted with this unexpectedly, it gave both Rose and Mann something else to be furious about, but when they realized what a hit Jimmy had been, they managed to control their tempers.

  That very night, Jimmy would infuriate them even more when he officially and legally notified them of his plan to abandon his involvement in their play within fourteen days.

  “It was his final ‘fuck-you’ to me and to everyone else in the play,” Rose said. “I confronted him and we really went at it. I threatened him that if he did that, he’d never work another day on Broadway, and he didn’t. ‘You’re a hit…Why throw it away?’ I asked him.”

  Jimmy glared at Rose with fury. Then he spat on the floor. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  Later, Rose commented, “Where have I heard that line before?”

  After that evening’s final curtain, Rod Steiger, a friend of Page at the time, was one of the first members of that night’s audience to arrive backstage. “Jimmy is playing Bachir like a Manhattan fa
ggot. He’s not an Arab boy, but a hustler working Third Avenue.”

  Other immediate, informal appraisals were less caustic; in fact, most of them were raves.

  Within a few hours, key members of the cast gathered at Sardi’s to await that night’s late-edition newspaper reviews. Nearly all of them, despite its homosexual context, reviewed the play and its performers favorably. Jimmy, however, came out by far as the best.

  William Watkins of The New York World-Telegraph wrote: “It is James Dean as the Arab houseboy who clearly and originally underlines the sleazy impertinence and the amoral opportunities which the husband must combat.”

  Walter Kerr in The New York Herald Tribune noted, “James Dean makes a colorfully insinuating scapegrace.”

  Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times referred to Jimmy’s “insidious charm,” and Richard Watts, Jr., of The New York Post found Jimmy “realistically unpleasant as the slimy one.”

  In the Morning Telegraph George Freedley wrote: “James Dean gives the best masculine performance in the role of the Arab boy, a part which could easily have become extremely offensive with less good acting and direction.”

  Henry Hewes in the Saturday Review made a prophecy: “At the play’s final curtain, one is left with the impression that Michael is a homosexual living ahead of his time, and that at some later date in the history of civilization, it will be possible for the abnormal to live undisguised and unapologetic within our society.”

  ***

  Jimmy’s infuriating decision to abandon The Immoralist was catalyzed by Elia Kazan, who had dangled a pivotal role in his upcoming film East of Eden. The part that Kazan, and perhaps Destiny itself, had envisioned for Jimmy was that of Cal Trask, the rebellious and misunderstood younger brother, around whom the film revolved.

  At the time, East of Eden’s screenplay was being adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel by Paul Osborne, author of Portrait of Jennie, a successful 1948 movie that had co-starred Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones.

  Osborne had attended an out-of-town preview of The Immoralist and subsequently pleaded with Kazan that Jimmy would be perfect as Cal. Kazan, already familiar, through the Actors Studio, with Jimmy’s reputation and potential, went to see The Immoralist too.

  Ultimately, Kazan agreed with Osborne’s assessment. “As I got to know Dean, I came to realize he was a shit, absolutely rotten to the core. He was a real cocker and an asshole. But he was the most perfect actor I knew for the part of Cal. All that Dean had to do was to play himself.”

  On February 23, 1954, Jimmy delivered his final performance on Broadway, never to return. Mann transferred his part to Philip Pine, who had previously worked with Jimmy in See the Jaguar. Pine remained with the play until it closed on May 1 of that same year.

  “After I got the part, my daughter, Macyle, wouldn’t speak to me for many days,” Pine said. “She was a great fan of Jimmy’s, and was mad at me for taking his role, even though I explained that Jimmy had quit and hadn’t been fired.”

  Pine later expressed regret that The Immoralist didn’t make him a movie star. “Jimmy and I had the same aspirations when we knew each other,” he said. “In the end, that fickle goddess, Fame, decided to shine on him and not on me.”

  Before Jimmy flew away to Hollywood for East of Eden, he telephoned John Gilmore. “I’m going to L.A. for a job, but I can’t tell you what it is. I’m sworn to secrecy. But I can tell you this: “I’m going to shake the shit out of Tinseltown.”

  In Hollywood, long after memories of the Broadway opening of The Imoralist had faded, Beulah Roth encountered Rock Hudson and Louis Jourdan at a party. At the time, the two actors were engaged in a short-term affair.

  She and her husband, Sanford Roth, the renowned photographer, had become close friends of Jimmy’s during his short lifetime. “We more or less adopted him in the summer of 1955,” she said.

  “I asked the men what it was like working with Jimmy,” she said. “Rock gave me ‘that look,’ and Jourdan told me with a Gallic chill, ‘Never mention that boy’s name in my presence ever again.’”

  ***

  In the wake of her stage appearance in The Immoralist, Page would go on to enjoy a splendid film career. She was nominated seven times for a Best Actress Oscar before carrying one off for her role as Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful (1985).

  Having survived Jimmy, Daniel Mann went on to direct Burt Lancaster and Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo (1955); Susan Hayward in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955); Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956); and Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8 (1960).

  As for Jimmy, based on his brief appearance in The Immoralist he would be awarded a Tony as best newcomer of the year, and he would also win the Daniel Blum Award as Best Newcomer.

  But as is the rule for actors, his involvement in the play did generate its share of bitchy, snarky comments: An out-of-town critic from Los Angeles, David Bettmann, wrote: “From what I hear of Mr. James Dean, I understand the character of the homosexual Arab boy is too close to his own personality to justify the term ‘acting.’”

  Struggling to get ahead as an actor, James Dean read whatever teleplay came along, if it contained a possible role in it for him. “I was an apprentice, and I took almost any crap.”

  Months before he went to Hollywood to feud with such film directors as Elia Kazan and George Stevens, Jimmy’s rude and sometimes juvenile behavior alienated many directors in TV and on Broadway. This was best exemplified by his endless conflicts with Daniel Mann during rehearsals for The Immoralist.

  Chapter Fifteen

  EAST OF EDEN

  Playing The Son of a Whore, A Star Is Born

  JIMMY IRRITATES ELIA KAZAN AND INFURIATES RAYMOND MASSEY

  His Oscar Nomination Positions Him in Direct Confrontation with

  Hollywood’s Old Guard

  “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the East of Eden.”

  —Genesis 4:16

  “I could tell that Jimmy could be easily castrated, so I had to juggle his balls with great delicacy.”

  —Elia Kazan, Director of East of Eden

  East of Eden has claimed an important niche in the history of cinema. Critic Marceau Devillers wrote: “Before Dean, the adolescent was portrayed as a psychological cypher—inferior, stupid, weak, or ignorant: the ultimate ‘foil’ to the older generation. With the advent of East of Eden, the adolescent became a person in his own right. East of Eden was a turning point in the history of the movies. Dean made the adolescent, with his complexities, his uneasiness, traits worthy of a hero.”

  It also transformed a young James Dean, with only one picture under his belt, into a superstar.

  Screenwriter Paul Osborn had seen Jimmy in The Immoralist, and had been mesmerized by his performance. At the time, he was working on a screenplay, East of Eden, based on the novel by John Steinbeck. His most ambitious saga since Grapes of Wrath, it had been originally published in 1952 to rather lackluster sales.

  East of Eden was the three-generation saga of the Trask and Hamilton families, archetypal settlers in California’s Salinas Valley, following their evolution from the mid-19th century until the outbreak of World War I.

  Because of the monumental size of Steinbook’s original, Osborn could only base his screenplay on its final section, which The New York Times did not consider the best part. The screenplay condensed the saga into the story of one “bad” brother, Cal Trask, conflicting with his “good” brother, Aron. Both would vie for the love of a coquettish Abra, as played in the film by Julie Harris.

  John Steinbeck...wants a quarter of the profits from the film version of the book he wrote.

  The hottest director in Hollywood at the time was Elia Kazan, who had scored a huge success with On the Waterfront. Based on that success, and on the fact that its male lead, Marlon Brando, had won an Oscar for his performance in it, Jack Warner had designated Kazan as both producer and director of East of Eden. It would be shot in C
inemaScope and WarnerColor, with a musical score composed by Jimmy’s intimate friend, Leonard Rosenman.

  Osborn urged Kazan to attend a performance of The Immoralist, knowing that he was already familiar with Jimmy from their days together at the Actors Studio.

  Consequently, Kazan, too, was mesmerized watching Jimmy as the blackmailing homosexual Arab opposite Louis Jourdan and Geraldine Page.

  The next day, he called Jane Deacy, Jimmy’s agent, and asked that the actor come and visit him. She already knew that the role of Cal was up for grabs, and in reference to that, had placed a call to Kazan four days before, which he had not bothered to return.

  “When Dean came in for an interview, he was a heap of twisted legs and denim rags, looking resentful for no particular reason,” Kazan remembered. “I made him wait outside for half an hour, thinking that might drop that belligerent pose. When he walked in, I knew immediately that he was right for the role of Cal. He was guarded, sullen, suspicious, and he seemed to have a great deal of concealed emotion. He looked and spoke like a character in East of Eden, even though I learned later he had not read the novel.”

  “I also knew that making a picture with this guy would be a great challenge for me. I would have to cajole and comfort him. Need I say, pamper the baby and change his diapers. I would have to inspire him, challenge him, and, if the scene called for it, even provoke him to violence. And I’d have to indulge him. From what I’d heard, I might even have to let him suck my cock if it meant getting the picture made. My belief is that a director has to do any and everything to make a good film.”

  “After my interview, if it could be called that—Dean did not believe in communication—he invited me for a hair-raising, definitely hellraising, motorcycle ride through the canyons of Manhattan. That we survived that journey is miraculous. But obviously, I lived to tell about it.”