Jimmy’s favorite time with Beverly involved driving north with her along the coastal road. He liked the breezes from the Pacific flowing into the car.
At secluded spots, he would sometimes take her down to a moonlit beach for seductions. He would later brag to male friends, mostly acquaintances, about “what a ladykiller I am. I gave my girlfriend a knifing penetration last night with her legs wrapped around my back. I filled her with my thundering ramrod. Our loins crashed together to the sound of ocean waves.”
An actor friend, Steve Alexander, was skeptical. “Did you read that in one of those illegal porn novels? Shall I go on with your description? ‘Your balls swung freely against her creamy thighs, as your cock continued to hammer on relentlessly, vibrating for a small eternity.’ You see, I can make up stuff like that, too!”
“Fuck you, shithead!” Jimmy said before storming off.
On the nights he stayed home, Bast claimed that Jimmy demonstrated a certain artistic flair, creating whimsical mobiles for their sparsely furnished apartment. He also experimented with drawings and clay sculpture, and he asked Bast to pose nude for him. His roommate agreed. Bast later suspected that in sculpting his body, Jimmy spent a long time staring at his penis.
At the time, Bast was dating Beverly Wills. He had become involved with her through his work as an usher at CBS during her gig there in a radio comedy series, Junior Miss.
Bill and Jimmy often double-dated, Jimmy escorting a spunky brunette from Texas, Jeanetta Lewis. He’d met her through her stint as the wardrobe mistress for a production of Macbeth at UCLA. She had developed a crush on Jimmy during the short run of that student production.
Since the two men didn’t have any money for dating, they often spent the evenings at the Bel Air mansion of Beverly’s mother, Joan Davis. “Jimmy seemed to be eating all the time,” Beverly said.
The quartet enjoyed the pool parties, barbecues, and dinners lavishly provided by Davis, who at the time was at the peak of her financial success as an actress.
For entertainment, these “theatrical amigos,” as they called themselves, performed together in scenes from plays.
Jimmy shocked the young women with excerpts from a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, which had been smuggled in from Paris. [Censors had banned it in the United States at the time.] “Jimmy seemed to have selected only the most pornographic passages, and Beverly was shocked,” Bast said.
Meanwhile, Jimmy continued sketching. Spanish matadors were a favorite subject of his pen-and-ink drawings. He was fascinated by what he called their tight “toreador pants.”
“His drawings were rather crude,” Bast said, “but I wish I had saved them. They’d be worth a fortune today. He always drew the bullfighters with enormous endowments hanging halfway down to their knees. He told me that he’d read that Ernest Hemingway advised bullfighters to stuff their crotches if they didn’t have natural endowments.”
He was fascinated by the subject of death, especially sudden death, as when a matador could be struck down in his prime. He’d read Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. “He was intrigued by death in general,” Bast said. “One of his most macabre drawings depicted skeletons dancing in a graveyard.”
“One night, Jimmy displayed his latest artistic creation to Bast, Beverly, and Jeanetta. It was a sculpted clay candleholder that evoked a vagina. According to Bast, “It was ‘living art,’ as Jimmy called it. He lit a candle for us and slowly let the hot wax drip into the faux vagina. The girls were horrified, and I found it revolting.”
A highlight of their double-dating occurred when Davis threw a birthday party for some of the elite of the “Hollywood brats,” the pampered children of movie stars and/or young actors and starlets with solid connections. Jimmy was photographed with a young Debbie Reynolds, whom he would see a lot more of when he began to date actress Pier Angeli, one of Reynolds’ best friends.
The talented starlet had just completed her involvement in Three Little Words (1950), an MGM musical starring Red Skelton and Fred Astaire.
As part of the entertainment for her daughter’s party guests, Davis had hired a national archery champion for a bow-and-arrow exhibition. At one point, Jimmy came up to him and, in a reckless, highly dangerous decision, asked the archer to shoot an apple off his head in a style corresponding to the legend of William Tell. On learning of the request, Davis intervened and put a stop to it, then asked Jimmy to leave the party.
Ernest Hemingway’s ode to the art of bull-fighting reinforced several of Jimmy’s lifelong obsessions.
***
The rent on their apartment was coming due, and neither Bast nor Jimmy had enough money to pay it. Awakening Jimmy one morning, Bast virtually demanded that he to accompany him to CBS Studios, where he could get him a job as an usher, even though it paid only twenty dollars a week. Sometimes, one of the big stars would give an usher a five-dollar bill for running some special errand.
Bast told Jimmy that he’d get to meet some really major entertainers, citing Jo Stafford, the Andrew Sisters, Bing Crosby, Steve Allen, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Dinah Shore, Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen. Stars such as those showed up regularly at CBS for its Lux Radio Theater, replicating for radio the roles they had previously crafted on the screen. CBS also produced big musicals, hiring such singers as Rosemary Clooney or Mario Lanza.
At CBS, Bast introduced Jimmy to his boss, a flamboyant creature named Sylvester Divan III. Behind his back, his ushers referred to him mockingly as “Miss Divine.” He reminded Jimmy of the actor, Franklin Pangborn, a player who built a career on roles calling for a character who was fussy, effete, effeminate, and—by implication—gay.
After appraising Jimmy from head to foot, Divan hired him. Then he accompanied him to a dressing room with racks of blue uniforms with elaborate gold braid. Appraising his body size, he selected a pair of trousers saying, “I’m sure this will fit.” Then, with a raised eyebrow, he continued, “I never failed to guess a man’s size.”
The double entendre was not lost on Jimmy.
“Looks like a monkey suit to me,” Jimmy said.
“Try it on—don’t argue, dearie.”
“Right here, right now?” Jimmy asked.
“And why not?”
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” Jimmy said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Divan told him. “Yours wouldn’t be the first cock I’ve seen.”
“I bet,” Jimmy answered, sarcastically.
“Don’t get smart with me, young man,” Divan said, “if you want this job.”
Fussy, fussy, Franklin Pangborn...a lookalike for Jimmy’s lecherous boss, “Miss Devine.”
Provocatively, like a stripper, Jimmy slipped off his shoes and took off his pants, slowly exposing his penis. Then, within full view of Divan’s leering gaze, he stepped into the uniform. “It sort of fits. Maybe a little tight in the crotch, wouldn’t you say?”
“Cocky fellow, aren’t you?” Divan said.
“And why not?” Jimmy said. “As you’ve seen, I’ve got a cock. So why can’t I be cocky?”
We’ll discuss that later,” Divan said, “Come on, I’ll show you the ropes. You pretty boys always have it made. You can get whatever you want just by dangling those wares you have between your legs.”
***
Two nights later, outfitted in his monkey suit, Jimmy was treated to one of the most memorable nights of his life.
In both photos above, clients line up for radio shows hosted within either the CBS Television Studios (top photo), or at its nearby annex, the Lux Radio Theater.
Jimmy, till he walked out, worked as an usher.
One of the biggest shows at CBS was the Bing Crosby show. Its namesake had invited Judy Garland to come onstage and sing, knowing that she was in a depressed state, having recently been fired by Louis B. Mayer from the musical, Annie Get Your Gun, in which she’d been replaced by Betty Hutton. The story had generated embarrassing and unwelcome headlines in newspap
ers across the country.
Even though, jimmy was technically supposed to be on duty, Bast had procured him an otherwise unoccupied seat on the front row of the balcony, where he’d be partially obscured behind a curtain in case Divan began looking for him.
Bast had been assigned to escort Garland to her dressing room. She was accompanied by her ugly husband, a rather gruff Sid Luft.
This was her first public appearance since she’d been axed by her longtime studio, MGM.
Crosby came out and opened the program in his usual casual style, singing two of his favorite numbers. But it soon became obvious that the audience—a full house with standing room only—was waiting for Garland. As Bast had told Jimmy, “All the world rushes to see a train wreck.”
After Crosby announced her appearance, there was a long, awkward moment. No Garland.
Then suddenly, she appeared. Members of the audience went wild, delivering a standing ovation. She was dressed entirely in black, as if in mourning, which in a kind of way she was. To Jimmy, she resembled a pale, pathetic little creature, looking gaunt and tiny
After her entrance and her recognition of the audience’s applause, she ventured toward Crosby for a “kiss-kiss,” looking as if on the verge of collapse. He extended a steady hand. The loud cheers seemed to revive her, injecting her with a new kind of energy.
“Somehow, Judy seemed to come alive,” Jimmy later told Bast.
As she began to sing, Jimmy was moved by the power of her voice. She belted out “Rock a-bye My Baby to a Dixie Melody,” and in doing so, overpowered the audience with emotion.
The night was hers. Many songs later, at the end of her performance, the audience went a bit insane, standing and cheering wildly as Garland exited from the stage for the continuation of her life’s troubled journey.
“We loved her, and she loved us,” Jimmy later told Bast.
As ironic as it seemed, in just two short weeks, Jimmy would be in a bedroom with Garland and another man—not Sid Luft.
***
With Beverly paying for the gasoline, Jimmy, in his Chevy, liked to race up the coastal highway at ferocious speeds. She was always urging him to drive more slowly and less dangerously, but he told her he needed the speed to feel alive.
Those who knew him called him “the Road Terror of Malibu.”
“When he was behind the wheel, there came a transformation in his face,” she recalled. “He had this demonic look about him. I came to feel he wanted to kill himself and take me along with him. A kind of Romeo and Juliet thing.”
No longer an ingénue, Judy Garland, as she looked around the time Jimmy applauded her wildly during an (unauthorized) break from his job as an usher at CBS.
One night, when he was moving faster than a hundred miles an hour, they heard the wail of a police siren. Jimmy didn’t slow down until she screamed at him.
He gradually brought the car to a standstill as the police closed in on him. “I’ll need all my male charm to get out of this.”
Before a cop appeared at his window, he turned to her. “You’re lucky. This pig copper saved your life. Tonight was the night I planned to take you, me, and this car to a watery grave.”
Chapter Two
HOW, ONE BY ONE, THE EMERGING HUSTLER,
JAMES DEAN,
SHACKED UP WITH THE A-LIST LEGENDS OF HOLLYWOOD
Spencer Tracy, Clifton Webb, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Walt Disney, Judy Garland
“You know, I’ve had my cock sucked by some of the big names of Hollywood”
—James Dean
“I think the main reason for living in this world is discovery and diversity in sexual conquests. Why tie one hand behind your back?”
—James Dean
James Dean was given a ticket for speeding, which required an appearance before a judge and which called for a ten-dollar fine. He ignored the ticket as well as three more warnings. The fine was increased to twenty-five dollars. He received a notice from the courthouse in Van Nuys that unless he paid the fine, his driving license would be revoked. There was even a threat of a possible jail sentence.
He told William Bast, his roommate, that he feared going to jail. “A good looker like me would get his lilywhite ass pounded nightly from every black stud in there.”
His hearing before the judge was set for ten o’clock one morning. Before he was called, he sat and listened to the trial of a Mexican fruit picker charged with being a Peeping Tom looking in windows where the shades or Venetian blinds weren’t drawn. The laborer was sentenced to one year in prison.
After Jimmy’s appearance before the judge, he said, “I faced a judge who must have looked like Torquemada at the Spanish Inquisition. I’d read about him. I knew His Honor would be a tough sell.”
Facing the judge, Jimmy later claimed that he delivered an Academy Award-winning performance. He went into his Little Boy Lost act, even though the judge sternly lectured him on both speeding and ignoring warnings about the ticket.
Jimmy threw himself upon the mercy of the court, claiming that he needed the money for food. He said he would be homeless within the week, and that every day, he’d searched for a job. “I was wrong, and I admit it. It’ll never happen again. I’m desperate.”
The judge decided to go easy on the struggling actor. “He seemed to melt,” Jimmy recalled.
The fine was reduced to five dollars, and the judge warned that he didn’t want to see Jimmy in his courtroom again.
Leaving the courthouse, Jimmy had a smirk on his face. He told Bast, “I put one over on that judge.”
Later, however, when he showed up for work at CBS, his charm didn’t work with Sylvester Divan III. Called into Divan’s office, Jimmy learned there were casting couch requirements even for acquisition of a low-paying job as an usher. Divan revealed that he required his favorite ushers to visit him one night a week at his apartment. The usher who had that duty on Thursday night had been fired, and Divan wanted Jimmy to replace him for appearances at weekly intervals at Divan’s apartment in West Hollywood.
Divan was crudely blunt as was his style (or lack thereof). “I want you to use my succulent lips and mouth like some pussy. If you can keep it in and go for a second round, then you get an extra five a week.”
Jimmy was revolted by the mere presence of his soon-to-be ex-boss. “Your mouth makes me want to throw up,” he said. “You’re nothing but faggot slime.”
Divan’s made-up face looked shocked before flashing anger. “All the other boys do what I want.”
“I’m not one of your other boys, and I’ll never be that.”
“Then get the hell out of this building. You’re fired! And leave the uniform!”
“You’re welcome to this fucking monkey suit!”
After changing back into his street clothes, Jimmy walked past the sneering fussbudget and was back on the street again.
He knew there were other ways to hustle a buck.
Jimmy Dances for Pepsi-Cola
And Meets a Future Lover
At UCLA, Jimmy had made friends with James Bellah, the son of the novelist James Warner Bellah. His new friend was an expert in fencing, wanting to become “the next Errol Flynn.” Jimmy was intrigued about learning the art of swordfighting, and Bellah agreed to give him lessons “in case dueling comes back.”
One afternoon, after a fencing lesson, Bellah told him about a Pepsi-Cola commercial being cast. Its director wanted to hire a group of teenagers for twenty-five dollars a day plus a box lunch. Filming was to take place on December 13, 1950 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
An image captured from James Dean’s first television appearance. It was a commercial for Pepsi. He’s depicted above on the far right, just before the clip moves on to show him interacting happily, catalyzed by Pepsi, hip but wholesome, with the other actors.
Jimmy wanted the job and went with Bellah to meet Ben Alcock, who was directing the commercial for Pepsi. Ironically, and unknown to Jimmy at the time, Alcock was a close friend of Rogers
Brackett.
In wardrobe, Jimmy was given a blazer and white flannel slacks to wear. He was to stand with clean-cut consumers clustered in a group beside a jukebox, collectively singing “Go get a Pepsi for that Pepsi bounce!”
Flashing a smile, Jimmy clapped his hands and snapped his fingers, a signal for the teens to start dancing.
Nick Adams as The Rebel (of a different sort)
He was introduced to Beverly Long, an attractive blonde, who recalled, “All of us were drinking Pepsi. At one point, we were going round and round on this carousel, having a blast. Then an announcer is heard urging teens “to buy Pepsi because it’s the best. Buy Pepsi by the carton!”
Jimmy had lunch with this pretty blonde, telling her that he planned to go to New York to become a serious actor. That was the beginning of a harmless flirtation.
[A far more significant relationship began that day when Jimmy met Nick Adams, a bisexual actor who had also been cast in the commercial. Nick came on rather strong to Jimmy, but he was reluctant to get too deeply involved. That would come later and more intensely.
Nick invited Jimmy out that night, but was turned down. Before leaving the set, Nick urged Jimmy to call him, and made sure that Jimmy had all the details he needed to stay in touch.
In a surprising future development, both Beverly and Nick would eventually be cast with Jimmy in Rebel Without a Cause.]
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