James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  “He had a violent streak in him,” Kazan said. “He seemed threatening, as if any minute he could turn into a serial killer. He was a little nuts, maybe a lot nuts. He was actually the Cal he projected in Eden.”

  In one scene with Massey, Kazan was not getting the reaction he wanted from the expression on Massey’s face. He came up with a plan, telling Jimmy to pick up a Bible and to start reading from it, but to throw in a lot of words to shock and offend Massey.

  After Kazan quietly ordered the camera to focus on Massey, Jimmy picked up a Bible from a nearby table. “The Lord is my shepherd,” Jimmy read, improvising. “I shall not suck cock, put anything up your ass, fuck you, shit, or piss on you, fucker,” he said.

  Massey exploded and stormed off the set. Kazan chased after him. “I will not play opposite this freak,” Massey shouted at him. “Talk to my lawyers. I quit.”

  “Jimmy had gotten Ray mad, and I got the shot I wanted,” Kazan said. “I explained to Massey that I had ordered Jimmy to do that. Finally, I persuaded him to come back to work.”

  Some sections of East of Eden were filmed in sequences that strayed from, or ignored, or weren’t included in the original script. Examples included Jimmy’s dance in the bean field, and his fetal-like posturing atop a rail car after his return from an anguished search for his brothel-keeping mother. Both of those were pure improvisations on Jimmy’s part.

  His most celebrated improvisation was when Cal’s father rejects his gift of $5,000 (money earned from that bean crop). Osborn’s script called for Jim to react by running away. Instead, he instinctively turned to Massey, and, in tears, embraced him. This scene, and Massey’s shocked and embarrassed reaction, were retained within the final cut.

  Kazan summed it up: “Dean will appeal to women who will want to mother him, and to faggots who will want to fuck him. I think he comes across as a mixture of autistic child and baby-faced psychotic.”

  After he’d seen the final cut, Kazan said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Jimmy was that good, and that included Brando, whom I directed in Streetcar, and in On the Waterfront, as you well know.”

  At the end of filming, Kazan threw a wrap party. At its peak, after three intense months of shooting, Harris kept looking for Jimmy to say goodbye, but she could not find him. When the party was over, she went to his bungalow to see if he were there.

  Inside, she found him crying: “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You were wonderful in the picture.”

  “It’s over,” he sobbed. “All over.”

  She held him in her arms, forever remembering him as “a lost, lonely little boy.”

  ***

  Before the film’s release, Hollywood was already treating Jimmy like a movie star. Word had gotten out. He told a reporter, “I guess I’m the flavor of the month.”

  “Someday, I’d like to follow in the footsteps of my great idol, Elia Kazan,” Jimmy said. “You know, Kazan was an actor at Warner Brothers a number of years ago. Then he began to direct Broadway productions and went on to direct exceptional motion pictures.”

  Two weeks after filming shut down, Kazan credited Harris—through patience and empathy—for being more helpful than he had been as a director. “Without her, Dean would not have made it to the end.”

  ***

  Ted McCord later said, “With all this public buzz, Warners’ publicity department latched onto Jimmy and began pumping out releases to the press.”

  One press agent told him, “You’re already a movie star. One night you went to bed as a struggling, unknown actor. The next morning you woke up a golden prince. So now, you’ll have to start acting and living like a prince.’”

  “That’s bullshit!” Jimmy responded. “I came out here to act, not to be a prince, not some social fop—and not a gilded dandelion.”

  “Maybe publicity is important,” Jimmy said. “But I just can’t make it, can’t get with it. I’ve been told by a lot of guys that it works. The newspapers give you a big build-up. Something happens, they tear you down. Who needs it? What counts for the artist is performance—not publicity. Guys who don’t know me already…they’ve already typed me as an odd ball.”

  “I probably should have a press agent. But I don’t care what people write about me. I’ll talk to the ones I like. The others can print whatever they please.”

  Columnist Mike Connolly asked Jimmy if he had lost anything during his process of becoming famous.

  “I fought it for a long time. But after a while, I think I started learning what so many actors have already learned—something about that certain communicative power we have that so few people are privileged to have. We find that we can reach not only people with whom we work on the soundstages here in Hollywood, but people all over the world. And then we start thinking, ‘I’m famous, all right, and I guess this is what I wanted, so now how do I face it?’ And then the responsibilities come. And you have to fight against becoming egotistical.”

  William Bast had a front row seat as he watched Jimmy, now only his part-time lover, rise within the constellation of Hollywood. “It was a gradual disintegration, a splintering of an already multi-faceted personality into a fragmented jigsaw puzzle.”

  ***

  In January of 1955, Kazan arranged for the release of previews of East of Eden in Los Angeles. “The instant Jimmy appeared on the screen, hundreds of girls began to scream. They’d been waiting for him, it seemed. The response from the balcony reminded me of Niagara Falls spilling over. Their reaction spread to the audiences at other previews, and generated even more hysteria.”

  Movie reviews of East of Eden were suddenly being broadcast nationwide on the radio. “Jimmy Dean appears with innocence and emotional candor, having a look of evil at times, creating a screen image of fiery intensity.”

  After the preview, Jimmy summed up his public appeal as a movie star: “I guess Warner Brothers has discovered uranium.”

  During an interview with Harold Thompson of The New York Times, Jimmy said that he still had not read the Steinbeck novel. “The way I work, I’d much rather justify myself with the adaptation rather than the original source. I felt I wouldn’t have any trouble—not too much, anyway—with this characterization once we started, because I think I understood Cal. I knew, too, that if I had any problems about the boy’s background, I could straighten it out with Kazan.”

  The world premiere of East of Eden was scheduled for March 9, 1955 at the Astor Theater in Manhattan. It was configured as a benefit for the Actors Studio, eventually netting $34,000, and it was envisioned as a splashy, star-studded affair with Jimmy as the center of attention.

  But he shocked and enraged his agent, Jane Deacy, by refusing to attend. “I can’t handle the scene,” was his excuse.

  He also told his former girlfriend, Christine White, that he had no reason to go. “I know I was good. I don’t need a lot of people embarrassing me by telling me how good I was.”

  At the premiere, Marilyn Monroe agreed to serve as an usher, thereby generating lots of publicity for herself. However, she upset the backers of the benefit by refusing to sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” at the post-screening party. Up until the last minute, she had promised that she would.

  Other ushers at the premiere included Marlene Dietrich and Eva Marie Saint.

  After the screening, key members of the cast, including Julie Harris and Kazan, gathered at Sardi’s to await the reviews.

  Time magazine referred to Jimmy as a product of the “tilted pelvis school of naturalistic acting. The picture is brilliant entertainment and more than that, it announces a new star, James Dean, whose prospects look as bright as any young actor’s since Marlon Brando. He has the presence of a young lion and the same sense of danger about him.”

  The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Dean is that rare thing, a young actor who is a great actor. The troubled eloquence with which he puts over the problems of misunderstood youth may lead to his being accepted by young audiences as a sort of symbol of the
ir generation. He is no carbon copy of Marlon Brando. He is a completely individual screen personality.”

  Daily Variety weighed in on the Brando vs. Dean similarities: “Dean plays the lead character as though he was straight out of the Marlon Brando mold. Just how flexible his talent is will have to be judged on future roles, although he has a basic appeal that manages to get through to the viewers despite carboning another’s acting style.”

  Penelope Gillatt, in The Observer, wrote, “If ever an errant generation threw up an expression of itself, it was James Dean. Like Cain, he has the look of a fugitive and a vagabond on earth.”

  John McCarten of the New Yorker, found that “Jimmy looked like a miniature Gregory Peck,” and the Library Journal hailed his performance as “one of the best of the year in a movie that is also one of the best of the year.”

  Even the fabled French director, François Truffaut, weighed in: “East of Eden is the first film to give us a Baudelarian hero, fascinated by vice and contrast, loving the family and hating the family at one and the same time. James Dean is a freshly plucked ‘fleur du mal.’”

  With a hint of venom, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times raised objections: “[James Dean is] a mass of histrionic gingerbread. He scuffs his feet, he whirls, he pouts, he sputters, he leans against walls, he rolls his eyes, he swallows his words, he ambles slack-kneed—all like Marlon Brando used to do. Never have we seen a performer so clearly following another’s style. Mr. Kazan should be spanked for allowing Dean to do such a sophomoric thing. East of Eden is a great, green iceberg, mammoth and imposing, but very cold.”

  In response to Crowther’s critique, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker observed, “The Times’ critic can always be counted on to miss the point.”

  Kazan said, “One reviewer seemed to catch on that Jimmy was full of piss, if not vinegar. He wrote that Jimmy looked like Baby Snooks reciting while waiting to go to the bathroom.”

  When William Bast saw the film, he said: “There was so much of Jimmy in that movie, so much of the young man I had known for so long and had grown to love as a friend, so much of the lost, tormented, searching, gentle, enthusiastic little boy, so much of the bitter, self-abusive, testing, vengeful monster.”

  Jimmy’s stunning performance foreshadowed his iconic role as Jim Stark in his subsequent film, Rebel Without a Cause. Both Cal Trask and Jim Stark are angst-ridden, misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from a deeply flawed father figures.

  At the 1956 Academy Awards ceremony, less than a year after Jimmy’s death, he received a posthumous nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in East of Eden. This was the first posthumous nomination for a male actor in the Academy’s history.

  [Jeanne Eagels had been the first actress to be nominated posthumously for her role in The Letter (1929). The year it was released, she died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty-nine.)

  Jimmy had competed for the prize with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. His rivals that year included Frank Sinatra for The Man With the Golden Arm; Spencer Tracy for Bad Day at Black Rock; and James Cagney for Love Me or Leave Me. The award went to Ernest Borgnine for his performance in Marty.

  Of the other actors in Eden, only Jo Van Fleet carried an Oscar home as Best Supporting Actress. Kazan was nominated as Best Director, but lost to Delbert Mann for Marty. Paul Osborn also received a nomination for Best Screenplay.

  With the release of East of Eden, James Dean was on the dawn of international fame. In time, newer generations, many from the 21st Century, would focus their celebrity attentions onto only two movie stars from the 1950s, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, virtually obliterating recognition of a forgotten galaxy of others. Both of them would end their young lives tragically and early.

  Bast later speculated about what Jimmy would have said about all this posthumous attention:

  “Hot damn! I’m a fucking legend!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  JAMES DEAN’S AFFAIR WITH

  MARILYN MONROE

  How a Farm Boy from Indiana Seduced the Sex Queen of Hollywood

  TOGETHER, THEY CLIMB THE SHOW-BIZ LADDER, BUT FIND SOMETHING MISSING: A LONG & HAPPY LIFE

  From the Twisted Wreckage of their Ashes, Icons Emerge to Enchant the World

  When the filming of East of Eden was finished, its female lead, Julie Harris, described the bond between Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean: “Jimmy was charismatic and had a sexual attraction that was combined with a certain innocence,” she said. “The same could be said of Marilyn Monroe. I think that combination was part of each of their appeals. They were curiously untouched by their sexuality and retained that certain innocence. It was inevitable that Jimmy and Marilyn would come together, however fleeting. I didn’t mean that as a double entendre.”

  The two future icons noticed each other at the premiere of Marlon Brando’s On the Waterfront (1954). Shelley Winters, Marilyn’s former roommate, escorted Marilyn to the premiere, and Jimmy arrived because of his association with Nicholas Ray, the director who wanted to cast him as the lead in his upcoming film, Rebel Without a Cause.

  At that time, Winters said, “Jimmy was a nobody. I’d taken him to bed, and that was probably his claim to fame. But Marilyn was the newly crowned Queen of Hollywood. What did she need with a little runt like Jimmy Dean?

  “Jimmy could not just come up to a big star like Marilyn and introduce himself, “Winters said. “But he made this insane attempt to attract her attention. I think his antics that night turned her off. After all, she could have anybody in Hollywood she wanted, man or woman. Marilyn batted for both teams. She didn’t need this juvenile delinquent.”

  In her second memoir, Shelley II: The Middle of My Century, she wrote about Jimmy trying to attract Marilyn’s attention after the premiere. As Shelley was driving her car, with Marilyn as a passenger, “Jimmy came roaring down the mountain on his motorcycle and started the deadly game of circling us. I was so angry at the kid. I was ready to run over him in my car. I kept honking at him, and he kept putting his brakes on right in front of me. He was laughing and enjoying the game. When we got to the Château Marmont, I quickly drove to the underground garage. Jimmy followed. Marilyn was rigid with fear, and I was ready to punch his lights out.”

  Winters and Marilyn had been invited to Ray’s post-screening party at the hotel where he maintained a suite. Jimmy, too, was on the guest list.

  As author Randall Riese described that evening: “Marilyn Monroe was everything Jimmy didn’t like in a woman. She was an American blonde, obsessed with her own looks, and she was a movie star personified. In his view, she was decidedly not an actress of depth or conviction. As for James Dean, he was everything she didn’t like in a man. He was a pretty boy and a punk, and she didn’t have use for either. He was younger, and she preferred older. He was, despite his earnest aspirations, hardly an intellectual giant. He was considered to be an imitation of Brando—why did she need an imitation when she could (and did) have the real thing?”

  At the party, according to Winters, neither Marilyn nor Jimmy made any attempt to meet each other. “They were like two boxers, each in their own corner of the boxing ring, sizing each other up,” Winters said. “They treated each other like resentful siblings. This attitude continued throughout the night.”

  ***

  Marilyn’s attitude toward Jimmy changed completely after she attended an advance screening of East of Eden. And eventually, for its premiere in Manhattan on March 9, 1955, she even agreed to volunteer as a celebrity usher at a special benefit premiere for the Actors Studio.

  One day in Manhattan, they met at the Actors Studio. As she was heading inside, she ran into Marlon Brando, her sometimes lover, who was walking along with Jimmy. As she’d later relate to Winters, “My first impulse was to regret that I was not made up as Marilyn Monroe. I looked more like Norma Jeane. I had covered my matted hair with a scarf.”

  Jimmy was wearing his usual outfit of blue jeans, a white T-shirt,
and jacket. Her gaze traveled from his crotch to his scuffed brown penny loafers before she met him eye to eye.

  “Marilyn, meet this asshole who thinks he’s a better actor than I am,” Brando said. “I forget the kid’s name.”

  “Hi, Marilyn,” Jimmy said. “Wanna fuck? I’m James Dean.”

  Coming from anybody else, she might have been insulted. But the way Jimmy extended the invitation with a challenging grin made her giggle.

  “How did you know what I want to do more than anything else on earth?” she asked. Then she looked skeptically at Brando. “I need to get it from somebody. I haven’t been seeing much of this guy’s noble tool, as he affectionately calls it.”

  “Neither have I,” Jimmy said provocatively.

  “Sorry, guys,” Brando said, “I guess I find too many other holes to plug. Speaking of that, I’m late for an appointment. I won’t tell you voyeurs with whom. Marilyn, do you mind if I dump Jimmy boy here on you?” He kissed both of them on the lips and left hurriedly, disappearing into the crowds on the street.

  “‘C’mon, doll,” Jimmy said, taking her arm. “Forget this fucking Actors Studio. I’m taking you over to the Blue Ribbon Café. It’s where all the out-of-work actors hang out.”

  “I’m out of work too,” she said.

  On the way there, he confided in her. “I hate that asshole Lee Strasberg. He humiliated me one afternoon, and I’ve never forgiven him. I don’t know why I don’t boycott the place.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I was performing in front of the class,” he said. “I came onstage in this bullfighter’s black cape with a red lining. I’d adapted a scene from Barnaby Conrad’s novel, Matador. When it was over, there was silence, as the jealous actors waited for the master’s words. Guess what he told me? ‘You failed to create a sense of being in an authentic place. You’re not doing the work. You’re acting, not being.’”