Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years

by Brock Yates

  After an evening of celebration with Bracker, starlet Lilli Kardell, and new friend Lance Reventlow, the megarich son of Woolworth heiress Barabra Hutton and a fledgling race driver himself, Dean made ready for Sunday's twenty-seven lap "feature" race for sports cars under 1,500 cc. Again Dean was in his element, running an easy third behind a pair of lightweight MG specials driven by veterans Ken Miles and Cy Yedor. When the race was finished, it was announced by Cal Club officials that Englishman Miles's "Flying Shingle" machine had violated some obscure technical rule and had been disqualified. Dean was thus elevated to second place in the final standings. He and his retinue returned to Los Angeles that evening with first- and second-place trophies for his weekend's labors and a rising confidence that he had legitimate talent as a race driver.

  Working closely with Bill Hickman, the expert stunt driver he had met on the Rebel set, Dean enthusiastically reran his Mulholland route to develop smoothness and rhythm. Two weeks later, he and Bracker drove the Porsche to Bakersfield's Minter Field airport, a defunct World War II B-24 bomber base. Saturday's six-lap qualifying race was run in a pouring rain that lashed the normally arid city. Driving with considerable alacrity on the slick pavement against larger and more powerful cars, Dean finished third overall and won his class for 1,500 cc sports cars. This qualified him for Sunday's main event. His chief rival in the thirty-lap was veteran Springer Jones, also driving a Porsche Speedster. Jones's experience paid off, and he was able to beat Dean to the finish line by half a car length.

  Nevertheless, his performance won him grudging respect among the Cal Club crowd. Over the years, numerous movie types had tried racing and failed. But James Dean was different. He came to the races to compete, not to pose in the pits. He remained reclusive, seeking no attention or special treatment. This gained him admiration from the skeptics in the sport. He would later tell a friend, "The only time I really feel alive is when I'm racing." Based on his easy adaptation to the environment of speed, noise, heat, and danger, there was no reason to doubt him.

  As shooting for Rebel without a Cause began in late March, it was almost invitable that a torrid affair would develop between Dean and co-star Natalie Wood. While studio publicists touted an off screen romance, it was actually more of a brief, intense shipboard romance between the pair that culminated, according to Dean, in the Porsche on Mulholland Drive. The following morning he slouched into the Warner Brothers commissary for breakfast with Bracker and playwright Joe Hymans. Lounging in a chair and lighting a cigarette, Dean said softly, "Well, you guys, it can be done."

  "What are you talking about?" asked Bracker.

  "They said a Porsche is too cramped to get it on with a girl," said Dean. "That's bullshit. If you don't believe me, ask Natalie."

  There was a faint smugness in his voice, since it was well known that both the director of Rebel, Nicholas Ray, and co-star Dennis Hopper were in pursuit of the comely Miss Wood.

  Principal photography for Rebel without a Cause ended in Los Angeles on May 25, permitting Dean to rush north with the Porsche to Santa Barbara where a Memorial Day weekend of Cal Club races was scheduled for the 2.2-mile airport course on the edge of the city. Dean planned to run on Saturday in a six-lap qualifying race and in the one-hour final on Sunday for cars 1,500 cc and smaller. He was involved in a blind drawing for starting position and pulled the number 18 out of the hat, placing him deep in the field. By the second lap, he had gained fourth place. Then a car spun in front of him, forcing him off the course and into a pile of haybales lining the circuit. Driving with his usual fury, he had regained fourth place when the Porsche's engine gave way under the pounding. With one of its four pistons badly fried, the Porsche was sidelined for the weekend and ultimately towed back to Johnny Von Neumann's Competition Motors on Vine Street in Hollywood for repairs. The car would be placed in the hands of the shop's finest mechanic, a German transplant named Rolf Wutherich who had prepared race cars for the Porsche factory to be run in some of Europe's most challenging races.

  Dean then packed up his gear and headed to the desolation of west Texas, where, in the tiny village of Marfa, director George Stevens and crew had constructed an elaborate set for Giant. Fearing the worst for the now cocky young race driver, Stevens had written into Dean's contract that he was forbidden to compete in any sort of motor sports event until shooting for the immense production ended in mid-September.

  In the meantime, Bracker had been bitten with the racing bug. He had purchased his own Porsche Speedster and was embarking on a career that would bring him several Cal Club championships in the ensuing years. Monty Roberts joined Dean on the Marfa set, and many hours were consumed in conversation about the actor's desire to purchase a horse ranch in the Salinas area. Roberts and his wife, Pat, were assigned the task of locating property to fulfill Dean's increasing rapture with Western cowboy life. On the Giant set, he spent many hours in the steamy Texas sunshine demonstrating the rope tricks he had learned from Roberts.

  The Los Angeles summer was cooler and cloudier than usual, which some weather experts blamed on the increasing smog that was blocking out sunlight. Below the dingy, foul-smelling cloud layer, the strange, outrageous world of rock and roll was driving conventional big bands out of business, while the movie studios clung to widescreen Cinemascope as their only hope to repel the exploding interest in television. The two new threats were linked when a pouty, sideburned, hip-swiveling kid from Memphis appeared on Ed Sullivan's top-rated CBS variety show. Before the year was out, Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog," and "Don't Be Cruel" would elevate him to superstar status rivaling that of the aging Frank Sinatra.

  "Elvis the Pelvis" soon displaced Bill Haley-whose "Rock around the Clock" was the first rock and roll hit-as the latest outrage to middle America. Already, millions of teenage boys were emulating the fashion of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, with leather jackets, Levi's, motorcycle boots, and T-shirts, and the dreaded, slicked-back "duck's-ass" haircut. While "decent" young men still favored brush cuts, button-down shirts, khakis, and white bucks, the trend was clear-a new and shocking cultural shift was under way in the nation.

  The Los Angeles Herald Examiner had openly hated automobile racing ever since the 1930s, when its boss, William Randolph Hearst, had created shocking headlines whenever a driver died or was injured. The Examiner remained true to form when it trumpeted the death of Jerry Hoyt on July 10. The Indiana native, who had won the pole position at the 1955 Indianapolis 500, had embarked on a barnstorming tour of the Midwest with a friend and Indy winner Bob Sweikert in a matched pair of black Offy-powered sprint cars. Running in a ten-lap heat race on the half-mile Oklahoma State Fairgrounds dirt track, Hoyt's car hooked a light pole exiting a corner and flipped. The young driver, unprotected by a roll bar or cage, received massive head injuries that took his life the following day. More cries rose up from the Hearst editors-and a few legislatorsthat the sport ought to be banned.

  Detroit ignored the cry. Ford's new Thunderbird, billed as a "personal car" with more luxuries than the Chevrolet Corvette, featured an optional 198 horsepower V-8. Chevrolet countered with a V-8-powered Corvette, rated at 195 horsepower, but the luxury and power accessories of the T-bird overwhelmed the noisy, hard-riding two-seater from General Motors. While both were reviled by the sports car crowd as overweight, poor-handling "Detroit iron," the Thunderbird was an instant hit with the public. When the sales figures for 1955 were finally tabulated, 16,155 Thunderbirds had been sold, while a mere 675 Corvettes rolled off Chevrolet dealers' lots.

  As horsepower ratings rose toward 200 for even the most mundane sedans, the national media began to fret about the increasing rates of death and injury on the nation's highways. The year would end with 36,600 Americans dying in automobile crashes, over 3,000 more than in 1954. Part of this was due to 43.6 million more miles driven (561,963,000 vs. 605,646,000) thanks both to the rising prosperity of the nation and cheap, stable gasoline prices.

  The death rate rose slightly, to 6.06 fatalities per 10
0 million miles driven-far below the record high of 45.33 per 100 million set in 1909, but way above the less than 1 per 100 million to be obtained in the early twenty-first century, thanks to advances in automotive technology, improved roads, and severe crackdowns on drunk driving.

  In 1955, when seat belts were essentially unknown in passenger cars, airbags unthought of, tires, suspensions, and brakes essentially unchanged for twenty years, and Interstate highways in their infancy, the fact that the exploding performance of high-powered cars did not produce even more carnage is a testament to the innate good sense of the American driving public.

  Concerns over the drumbeat of criticism from the national press about racing deaths and highway safety prompted AAA president Andrew J. Sordoni to announce on August 2 that the American Automobile Association would cease all involvement with motor sports by the end of the year. Its sanctioning of major American races had dated to 1902, and the news sent a ripple of panic through the Indianapolis establishment. There were, however, smiles of satisfaction at the Daytona Beach headquarters of Bill France's struggling NASCAR. A gap would have to be filled, and initially it was believed that France might step in to fill it. But Tony Hulman, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was not about to put his legendary event into the hands of a former Florida gas station operator and his gang of bootleggers. He hastily pulled together a meeting of Midwest business associates, wealthy race team owners, and promoters and formed the United States Auto Club, a nonprofit body that would assume sanctioning of the 500 and other races on the former AAA championship trail.

  After having lunch at the Brown Derby in mid-August with friends in the movie business, I drove the MG back to Studio City, where I found a business card stuck in my door. It was my own. On the back, written in a decidedly feminine hand, was the message, "Tried to call. Back in town. Love to hear from you. Diana."

  A Hispanic maid answered my phone call to Diana's Beverly Hills home, an elegant Georgian manse on North Beverly Drive in the socalled flats of the posh city. "Miss Logan not home. I take your number," she said, struggling with her new language.

  Her call came an hour later.

  "Sorry I missed you in Modena," she said brightly.

  "It seemed like you were pretty tied up and I had to leave anyway."

  She ignored the comment and said, "I just got back. Called twice but no answer. So I came by and left your card. You're a hard one to track down."

  "That makes two of us."

  She laughed easily and said, "I've got an idea. Remember when I told you about James Dean and you and Peter scoffed?"

  "So you called up to gloat?"

  "My dad was right. He's gonna be a monster. The studio is having a private screening of Rebel Without a Cause this evening. Want to go?"

  "Let me check my schedule. There's a dinner with Zanuck at Chasen's about my new screenplay. A date with Marilyn Monroe. And a discussion about my secret inheritance from John Paul Getty. But to hell with 'em. I'll cancel. Where and when?"

  "I'm flattered. I hope Marilyn won't be jealous. The Coach & Horses for a drink at six. On Sunset, three or four blocks west of LaBrea. Veddy English in a Hollywood kind of way. But fun."

  I hunted up a freshly laundered button-down shirt and a decent pair of gray flannel slacks, and polished up my Bass Weejuns in an attempt to make a presentable appearance for the lovely Miss Logan and the movie crowd that was bound to show up for this screening.

  The Coach & Horses was a mass of red leather, dark wooden beams, and wrought-iron fixtures, as Diana had inferred. Out front were parked a few sports cars-a Cadillac-Allard, a new Alfa Romeo Giuiletta coupe and a shimmering silver Mercedes-Benz gullwing. The valets had been instructed to park the trio curbside to amplify the restaurant's reputation as a hangout for the sports car crowd.

  My MG was unceremoniously hustled to the back lot as I made my way to the bar. The chatter involved gossip about millionaire John Edgar dominating California sports car racing with his sub rosa team of professionals, headed by a transplanted Texas chicken farmer named Carroll Shelby. Diana arrived. I played it cool.

  "Long time no see," I said.

  "Busy, busy," she said, laughing.

  "So what's the plan?" I asked, as I ordered her a tall vodka tonic.

  "We'll drive over to Warner's in the valley and then there's a party at Nick Ray's."

  "Nick Ray's? Sorry, but the name ...

  "The Rebel director. Hot property in this town. At least this week."

  "A short shelf life in this business," I said.

  "Tell me about it."

  "Still got the Ferrari?" I asked.

  "Sure. It came in a week ago on Flying Tigers."

  "You had it flown over from Italy?"

  "Doesn't everybody?"

  "No. I actually had my last Ferrari brought over on my private yacht. Airlines are too crassly commercial for me," I said.

  "A little sarcasm there?" she asked.

  "Naw, we Communists all think like that."

  Her face darkened. "Are you on the blacklist?"

  I laughed hard. "Me and Dalton Trumbo. Actually, not quite. Us upstate New Yorkers are all trained from childhood to be rock-ribbed Republicans."

  The banter drifted on through two more drinks before I followed the blunt tail of her Ferrari over the Cahuenga Pass into the San Fernando Valley. A zigzag of streets into Burbank and through the Warner Brothers gates off Olive. Diana waved my MG through and we parked in the executive lot on the edge of a row of white stucco Bauhaus buildings. I had expected to rub elbows with a mass of Hollywood celebrities, but instead found myself easing into a leather chair in a small private theater filled with a collection of ordinary businesspeople-theater chain owners, middling Warner's executives, salespeople, and selected nobodies like myself. It would be one of dozens of private screenings of a rough cut of Rebel. The only celebrity of any kind was the director, Nicholas Ray, a forty-four year-old with curly hair and the edgy good looks of a movie tough guy. Ray spoke briefly, explaining that the final version of the picture was weeks away and that some scenes would either be cut or color-edited, while voice matching, sound effects, background music, and other details had to be attended to before the planned release in October.

  Ray had gained good reviews the year before with the Sterling Hayden Western, Johnny Guitar. He had co-written Rebel, which ended up a personal favority of his, with playwright Irving Schulman, seeking to expand on the theme of angry young men that formed the core of Stanley Kramer's The Wild One.

  I watched Dean's pouting presence overwhelm the picture. His race against a rival in the "chickie run" provided the centerpiece of the action, along with a final knife fight staged on the steps of the Los Angeles Planetarium. Those scenes provided the action sequences needed for the great mass of unwashed male moviegoers while Dean's romance with Natalie Wood was sure to please the female audience. The story line involved restless, disaffected teenagers rebelling against the conventions of middle-class life-"the bad boy from a good family," as the Warner's publicists promoted it. Rebel was avant-garde in the context of the mid-1950s. Surely other young actors might have handled the Dean role, but it was his incendiary, introverted rage that carried the picture. As the lights came up, a round of cheers and applause filled the room. "Didn't I tell you?" said Diana as she tugged my arm. "He's gonna break a million hearts," I said, little knowing how right I would turn out to be.

  Nick Ray's elegant, sprawling, ranch-style house, complete with the obligatory swimming pool and tennis court, was on Abington, halfway up the mountain in the better section of Beverly Hills. He had made it in the business with such hits as the 1949 Humphrey Bogart drama Knock on Any Door, and was one of Warner's prized contract directors. As it turned out, Rebel would be his high-water mark in the industry, followed by a slow descent into B-picture limbo with his sexpot actress wife, Gloria Graham.

  We took Laurel Canyon over the mountain, with the MG straining mightily in every gear to keep up with Dian
a's Mexico coupe. Valet parking awaited at Ray's curbside, and I handed off the keys to a Mexican attendant who acted as if he was climbing into a farm tractor. In the heady world of California cars, MG roadsters ranked somewhere between Studebaker sedans and Yellow Cabs. As we walked up the driveway, the guttural rumble of an unmuffled Porsche exhaust rose in the distance. A white Speedster, its top down, screeched to a halt. On its door, the black number 33 was neatly pasted in place, marking it as a car that had been raced.

  "How about that," said Diana. "The star has arrived."

  The tousled brown hair, the sharp chin, and the heavy brows were instantly recognizable. A cigarette dangling from his lips, James Dean slid out of the seat and slouched into the house. He was shorter than I had expected, no more than five feet six, and carried himself with a shuffling, head-down walk as if seeking anonymity.

  "Can you believe it? There he is," said Diana, breathing hard.

  "I thought you said he was in Texas shooting Giant."

  "He was, but they fly back and forth. Must be a break in his shooting. I hear he's leased a house in Sherman Oaks. So now he's part of the Hollywood scene."

  "He looks more like one of the parking attendants."

  "Jealous?"

  "If that's the new sex symbol, I'm Rudolph Valentino."

  "You saw him on screen. Totally different. You'll see when we meet him," she said, grabbing my arm and heading for the door.

  We plunged into a sea of beautiful people. Perfectly coiffed blond heads bobbed above tanned faces and flawless bodies. Black waiters in tuxedos drifted among the flotsam of perfect human forms with trays of drinks, while in a corner of the large, pastel-colored living room a balding man played show tunes on a grand piano roughly the size of Catalina Island. Diana identified him as Leonard Rosenman, the composer for East of Eden. Jim Backus, the character actor who would later gain fame as the screen voice for the myopic cartoon character Mr. Magoo, eased among the mob with a pudgy, soft-faced woman on his arm that had to be his wife. The rest remained anonymous-production people, wannabe actors and actresses, studio moguls and the inevitable pilot fish who floated in such waters around the world.