That same month, on Memorial Day, they participated in the Santa Barbara Road Races, Jimmy entering the small car, “Under 1,500 cc Production Event,” moving up to fourth place before he blew a piston on his four-cylinder Porsche.
Now, in anticipation of Jimmy’s last race with Lance, both of them were heading in separate vehicles for Salinas, where Jimmy planned to debut his newest Porsche 550 Spyder. But whereas Lance made it to Salinas, Jimmy never did.
As for Lance, after his safe and relatively uneventful arrival in Salinas, where he heard about Jimmy’s death, he said, “My god, I just had this awful feeling. The next crash has my name on it.”
[Except for its timing, Lance’s premonition of his own death was more or less accurate. But it wasn’t until 1972 that he died in a fiery crash in a small airplane.]
JIMMY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH
Van Johnson
AMERICA’S FAVORITE (GAY) BOY NEXT DOOR
During the final year of Jimmy’s life, he entered into an unlikely friendship with character actor Keenan Wynn, son of the famous vaudeville comedian, Ed Wynn. That bonding would ultimately lead to him to Van Johnson, Wynn’s best friend and lover.
Jimmy’s friendship with Wynn began on Thanksgiving Day, 1954, when a mutual friend brought him to the Wynn home for a festive dinner. Jimmy had just completed East of Eden.
Wynn and his wife, the former Shirley Hudson, greeted Jimmy like a member of the family. Wynn had previously been married to the former stage actress, Eve (“Evie”) Lynn Abbott. Following their divorce in 1947, Wynn turned Evie over to Johnson as part of an arranged, studio-sanctioned marriage to camouflage the popular actor’s homosexuality.
Over dinner, Jimmy learned that Wynn shared his fascination with motorcycles. Within days, the veteran actor was teaching him how to navigate open terrain and hills on a cycle.
Keenan Wynn...a three-way with Van Johnson and James Dean.
Gradually, Wynn became one of Jimmy’s closest friends, and he set out to learn what he could about him. A New Yorker, Wynn had grown up in a theatrical family that had settled in Hollywood in 1934. In time, he’d appear in hundreds of films and on TV. When Jimmy met him, he was a contract player for MGM, and had recently filmed Battle Circus (1953).
Jimmy admired Wynn’s versatility as an actor, as he could play almost any part except romantic leading men. His forte was affable sidekicks, shifty schemers, sad sacks, villains, con men, and simpletons. He’d gotten his start in Hollywood performing stunt work for Joan Crawford in Chained (1934).
“People thought they were watching Crawford perform those dangerous maneuvers, but it really was moi in drag,” he told Jimmy.
Within a week, Jimmy was introduced to Johnson, a tall, freckle-faced, strawberry blonde actor who’d been a major box office attraction in the 1940s.
When MGM’s major male stars, such as Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Robert Montgomery, and James Stewart were shipped off to war, Johnson had shot to stardom as “The Boy Next Door,” often appearing in films with June Allyson as the male half of a screen team billed as “America’s Sweethearts.”
During the wartime absence of Clark Gable and Robert Taylor (both of whom had entered the armed services) Johnson was featured in frothy romantic comedies with MGM’s A-list movie queens, especially Lana Turner and Esther Williams.
Jimmy didn’t like those kinds of pictures, although he’d admired Johnson in the military courtroom drama, The Caine Mutiny (1954), in which he’d played an unsympathetic character opposite Humphrey Bogart.
As a kid, Jimmy had seen Johnson in his first hit, A Guy Named Joe (1943), co-starring Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne.
“Spence had the hots for me,” Johnson confessed to Jimmy. “He even demanded that production on the picture be delayed until I recovered from a horrible car accident.”
“Tracy went for me, too,” Jimmy said.
“I’m not at all surprised,” Johnson said. “I could go for you, too.”
For many months, Jimmy had known that Johnson had wanted to seduce him. When she was dating Jimmy, actress Betsy Palmer, while eavesdropping, had overheard Johnson telling Jimmy during a phone conversation, “I want to cock you.”
“I hope you don’t fall for all that ‘boy next door’ crap from MGM’s publicists,” Johnson said. “If those bobbysoxers in the 40s ever learned that I was a cocksucker, my career would end overnight.”
Van Johnson...the actor known as the male half, alongside June Allyson, of the couple billed during the 1940s as “America’s Sweethearts.”
Johnson’s marriage was fraught with difficulties, and he ended up referring to his wife as, “The Dragon Lady.”
Ed Wynn, Keenan’s father, once said, “I can’t keep things straight—pardon the pun. Evie loves Keenan, Keenan loves Evie, Van loves Keenan, Keenan loves Van.”
Evie eventually divorced Johnson, and she later discussed her marriages, respectively, to Wynn and to Johnson: “MGM had to protect its big star from all those rumors about his sexual preference. Unfortunately, I was selected as ‘It,’ the one Johnson should marry. Louis B. Mayer, who had the morals of a cockroach, said that if I didn’t marry Van, he wouldn’t renew Keenan’s contract.”
There was some urgency for a quick marriage. Screenwriter/playwright Arthur Laurents, in his autobiography, claimed that “Van had been caught one time too many ‘performing’ in a men’s urinal.”
Jimmy would later tell Eartha Kitt, “Van is a perfect illustration of the fantasy world that Hollywood projects. Golden boys are actually cocksuckers, femme fatales are muff-divers, and America’s hero, John Wayne, has a small dick.”
He also discussed his involvement with Wynn and Johnson to William Bast. He claimed that he had sat in the Johnson living room for three hours, before their host finally extended an invitation for Keenan and him to retire with him to the bedroom.
“What happened?” Bast asked.
“To cut to the chase, and I don’t want to give a blow-by-blow description, we did a lot of fondling of genitals and exchanging of spit. Van then sucked me off while Keenan fucked him. Then Keenan serviced Van, as I lay back on the pillow, smoking a cigarette.”
“At around three in the morning, I was half awake, and one of them—I don’t know which—was messing around with my ass. I didn’t bother to find out if it was Van or Keenan. What did it matter at that point?”
[In a touch of Hollywood irony, Betsy Palmer, who by then was fully aware of Van Johnson’s sexual interest in Jimmy, ended up working with him when he was on his last legs in 2003. They appeared together for three performances of A.R. Guerney’s Love Letters at a theater in Wesley Hills, in Rockland County, New York.]
How “Hollywood Royal,” Arthur Loew, Jr.
FELL INTO BED WITH JAMES DEAN
The “usually heterosexual” Arthur Loew, Jr. was a surprise choice as Jimmy’s last male lover. Born in 1925, he was seven years older than Jimmy.
His maternal grandfather, Adolph Zukor, had founded Paramount Pictures, and his paternal grandfather, Marcus Loew, had launched both Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Loew’s theater chain. His father, Arthur Loew, Sr., had once been president of MGM.
Loew Junior was a minor film producer, turning out such B-list pictures as Teresa (1950), with Jimmy’s future girlfriend, Pier Angeli; Penelope (1966) with Natalie Wood, Jimmy’s co-star in Rebel Without a Cause; and later, after Jimmy’s death, The Rack (1956), starring Paul Newman.
During Arthur’s production of Teresa, he began dating one of its stars, Pier Angeli, but within weeks, he’d switched his romantic interest to her twin sister, Marisa Pavan.
One afternoon, Arthur arrived at the Pierangeli household in Brentwood to retrieve Marisa for a date. On lawn chairs in the distance, he spotted Pier and a young man, each of them holding a script.
“Who is that guy?” Arthur asked Marisa.
Arthur Loew, Jr.
“Don’t disturb them,” she answered. “Pier is rehearsing with this actor, James Dean.�
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“Who in hell is James Dean?” he asked.
“He’s this fabulous actor from New York.”
“Never heard of him,” Arthur said.
“You will,” she predicted.
Arthur may not have heard of Jimmy, but Jimmy had never heard of him, either.
Unlike his illustrious and hardworking ancestors, and despite brief work stints as a drama critic and sports reporter, Arthur was a playboy who only dabbled in the occasional production of films. He was better known for a widely publicized romance with Elizabeth Taylor. Later, he dated Joan Collins, but she broke it off, having defined their relationship as “too platonic.”
Arthur had just ended an affair (which had included an engagement) to Jimmy’s closest female friend, Eartha Kitt.
Amazingly, despite their friendship, Eartha had never described the depth of her relationship with Arthur. In fact, she had barely, if ever—at least to Jimmy—mentioned him at all.
Their love affair had ended horribly: The Loew family had ferociously objected to their heir’s association with a woman of color, and relentlessly pressured him to end it, which he did. At the time of Jimmy’s association with Arthur, Eartha was far away, on singing engagements in Manhattan.
That day, in the Pierangeli’s living room, Arthur asked Marisa, “Who is this shit out in the yard? So he can’t be disturbed while rehearsing? Who in hell does he think he is? Laurence Olivier?”
Within two months, Keenan Wynn, one of Arthur’s closest friends, arrived with Jimmy at Arthur’s house on Miller Drive. Jimmy’s apartment at 1741 Sunset Plaza Drive, was nearby.
When Keenan introduced him to Arthur, he remembered the sight of him rehearsing with Pier. Also sitting in the room was Rod Steiger, Jimmy’s actor friend from New York, who had already assured Arthur that Jimmy was one of the best actors performing in teleplays in Manhattan.
“Arthur was prepared to dislike Jimmy,” Steiger said. “But when they started to talk, it was love at first sight. I had already warned Arthur that Jimmy had to be handled with kid gloves or else he might explode into a temper fit.”
“Both Arthur and Jimmy had a wicked sense of humor, and they really got off on each other,” Steiger said. “Keenan and I found ourselves sitting and talking with each other, as those two lovebirds played the mating game. They did everything that night except fuck, and, for all I know, they did that, too, after I left.”
Steiger had departed an hour earlier. As the evening wound down, Wynn turned to Jimmy. “It’s time for us to hit the road, kid, and ride our machines down those winding roads.”
He later told Van Johnson and others, “Jimmy did something wild and impulsive. At the door, after I said good night to Arthur, Jimmy locked him in a tight embrace and gave him a kiss. Not a peck on the cheek. I hadn’t seen a kiss like that since Toomey kissed Wyman.”
[Wynn was recalling Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman in a 1941 movie, You’re in the Army Now. Their kiss was the longest up to that point in cinematic history, lasting three minutes and five seconds, or four percent of the film’s duration.]
“The last words I heard was Arthur telling Jimmy, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven,’” Wynn recalled.
After that, Jimmy practically moved into Arthur’s household. Originally, the maid had prepared the guest room for him, but later discovered that the bed had never been slept in. Only the sheets on Arthur’s bed had been used.
Even before Arthur met Jimmy, he virtually threw open his doors every night at five o’clock for “sundowners,” as part an ongoing house party that attracted tout Hollywood.
On any given night, you might hear Judy Garland accompanied on the piano by Oscar Levant. Perhaps a drunken Errol Flynn would show up, a few hours later trying to bang out a melody on the piano with his erect penis.
Marilyn Monroe dropped by on occasion, as did Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, as well as Kirk Douglas, Eddie Fisher, James Mason, and Danny Kaye. Guests were likely to include Paulette Goddard, Jane Powell, June Allyson, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, and Debbie Reynolds.
Jimmy soon learned that Arthur was having a sometimes affair with Susan Strasberg, the daughter of Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio. It was at Arthur’s house one night that he met Susan, with whom, he too, would launch a brief fling before he made Giant.
Jimmy was impressed with Arthur’s light-hearted, charming style, and his outgoing personality. As he noted one night, “He could even keep Milton Berle in stiches.”
He was surprised to learn that Stewart Stern, who at the time was writing the filmscript for Rebel Without a Cause, was Arthur’s cousin. “Unlike his cousin, Arthur, Stern was bookish and always very serious,” Jimmy said.
Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman were also among Arthur’s friends, as were Farley Granger and Shelley Winters. Beginning in the late 1940s, much of young Hollywood had started to gather at Arthur’s house to watch “Uncle Miltie” (Milton Berle) on The Texaco Star Theater. At the time, Arthur possessed one of the few television sets in Los Angeles.
One night at Arthur’s house, Jimmy met Janet Leigh, who told him “After Elizabeth (Taylor) finished with Arthur, she turned him over to me. That was before Tony Curtis.”
“One night, Arthur introduced me to his friend, Sammy Davis, Jr,” Leigh continued. “Sammy told me I hadn’t lived until I’d had a black dick buried deep inside me.”
“That Sammy!” Jimmy said, not wanting to reveal anything.
Often, after a date with Pier, Jimmy would arrive at Arthur’s house to spend the night. Sometimes, they preferred to dine at home; at other times, they went out for dinner. Since Jimmy wasn’t properly dressed for such clubs as Mocambo’s, where Arthur had more-or-less permanent and direct access to his favorite table, the two men went together to offbeat places, the type with sawdust and beer spilled on the floor.
Two months later, Jimmy ran into Steiger, who asked him, “How are things going between you and Arthur?”
“Great, man, just great.”
“Until he met you, I always thought he was straight,” Steiger said.
“All men are straight until they meet the formidable James Dean.”
One night, Jimmy invited Arthur and his cousin, Stewart Stern, to a preview of East of Eden. Neither man had seen Jimmy perform in anything, not even any of his teleplays.
Jimmy himself had not seen the complete cut until he attended this sneak preview.
In his biography of James Dean, Venable Herndon described what happened after Arthur became aware of his friend’s success and talent as a film star:
“It was an overwhelming experience,” Arthur said. “So beautiful, so fantastic. It must have been like the first night someone went to see John Barrymore perform in Hamlet. It was such an awakening, an eye opener. Here was this guy I’d been palling around with for quite a while, yet I had no idea who he really was.”
After the screening, the three of them [Arthur, Steiger, and Jimmy] went to a bar in the Valley. As Arthur later told Steiger, “Jimmy was still my best buddy, but I no longer related to him just as a bedmate to keep my feet warm at night, but as a star. A Star is Born, starring James Dean instead of Judy.”
“He pulled no star act with me, however,” Arthur said. “He was still the crazy, lovable, yet infuriating guy he always was one night when Walter Pidgeon came by. I was driving him [Pidgeon] to dinner. I exited through the gate at the end of my driveway and headed out onto the street. Suddenly, blinding lights almost caused me to have an accident. I fully expected a head-on collision.”
Later, he learned that both Jimmy and Keenan Wynn had trained their motorcycle lights onto him and were roaring at high speeds directly into the front of his oncoming car. Before they collided, both men swerved their bikes to the left and right, respectively, of Arthur’s vehicle, each of them yelling at the top of their lungs.
“Later, when Jimmy dropped by, I really lit into him,” Arthur said. “Fun is fun, but all of us could have been killed. I blamed the stunt on Keen
an, who should have known better.”
“Jimmy was this terrific personality,” Arthur said. “A real cuckoo. It was very informal at my place, a house party atmosphere. Lots of people unless we wanted to be alone. No stiff cocktail party atmosphere, as is so often seen in Hollywood.”
Jimmy later told Bast about the wildest, most intimate party presumably his host ever gave. Guests included Artie Shaw (the musician, who at one time or another married both Ava Gardner and Lana Turner), Errol Flynn, and Robert Mitchum.
Robert Mitchum...do you want catsup with this raw hamburger?
“Mitchum and I got stoned. Mitchum went into the kitchen and pulled off all his clothes and covered his chest with catsup. ‘I’m a raw hamburger,’” he told us.”
Then, according to Jimmy, who relayed it to Bast, Flynn immediately took advantage and got down on his knees, and begin fellating Mitchum. Shaw provided the musical accompaniment to the act.
While all this was going on, Jimmy went upstairs and emerged in a gown and high heels borrowed from the wardrobe of Arthur’s mother.
“Then I did my best Mae West impersonation,” Jimmy told Bast.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang and rang, followed by a loud pounding on the door. “It’s the police,” a strong, masculine voice yelled out. A fully dressed Arthur answered the door.
As Jimmy recalled, “The world’s best-looking and most macho policeman stood there. He looked like a Viking god. Think Sterling Hayden in a movie from the early ‘40s.”
But instead of a raid, the policeman told Arthur he’d been summoned to investigate a burglary, reportedly still in progress, in the neighborhood.
“Fuck the robbery,” a drunken Arthur told the cop. “You can arrest Mitchum for pot and indecent exposure, Jimmy for speeding, and Flynn for stashing away a thirteen-year-old girl in one of my bedrooms upstairs. As for Artie Shaw here, make it bigamy. He married Ava Gardner before divorcing Lana Turner.”
James Dean Page 78
