James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  “Clifton Webb is playing star-builder. His protégé is James Dean, who just snapped up one of the leading roles in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Young Dean might be described roughly as having the Marlon Brando style of dungarees and a T-shirt instead of a blue serge suit.”

  In Hollywood, Webb found Hedda Hopper a much more difficult sell. The gossip maven had already met Jimmy. A public relations man from Warners had arranged for them to meet in the commissary for an interview, claiming that Jimmy was a genius on film.

  “To believe the press agents, every boy in a dirty shirttail and blue jeans is a genius, emerging from Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in New York,” Hopper claimed. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the gangling lad is like a dream brought on by eating Port Salut cheese too late at night. If you wait long enough, it goes away.”

  Jimmy showed up for the interview looking like a dirty garage mechanic. He ordered three cheeseburgers medium rare and only muttered something instead of answering Hopper’s questions.

  The walls of the commissary, where Hedda had rendezvoused with Jimmy, were decorated with publicity pictures of Warner Brothers’ stars. He looked up into the smiling face of Ronald Reagan.

  Rising suddenly from his chair, he spat upon the picture, then removed a handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe away the spittle.

  Then he sat down again and began to devour his second cheeseburger. Hopper rose from the table and walked out of the commissary, composing what she was going to write in the next day’s column about this uncouth actor who had insulted her.

  Hedda Hopper...forgiving Jimmy’s previous sins.

  When East of Eden was filmed, her friend, Clifton Webb, called her, praising Jimmy’s performance, and urging her to see the film.

  “I’ve already met Mr. Dean,” she responded, “and wild horses couldn’t drag me to a picture he made.”

  Webb finally convinced her to call director Elia Kazan with a request to set up a private screening for her. Reluctantly, she attended the screening, and later reported that she was spellbound.

  “I couldn’t remember ever having seen a young man with such power, so many facets of expression, so much sheer invention as an actor,” she wrote. “I phoned Jack Warner and asked him if I could interview Dean at my home.”

  Two days later, Jimmy arrived at her door, wearing a charcoal suit, a black shirt and tie, along with heavy riding boots. This time, he was polite and cordial to the columnist, winning her over with his manly charm.

  From then on, and throughout the remainder of his short career, Hedda Hopper became one of his most avid supporters. In print, she pronounced him one of the brightest stars in Hollywood. All his past sins were forgiven.

  “Jimmy later told William Bast,” I don’t care for Hopper at all. She’s not my kind of dame. But I decided it’s better for her to write good shit about me in her column than attack me.”

  Webb continued to support and praise Jimmy’s acting. Writing in New York Magazine, actor William Redfield said, “The rumors were rife that James Dean was Clifton Webb’s protégé. That always struck me as odd, because Jimmy, in his manner, did not appear to be a homosexual. But of course, that often happens. And I don’t think he was exclusively gay. What exactly went on between Webb and Dean I don’t know, although I imagine it took a sexual form.”

  “They Say I’m a Practicing Homosexual,

  BUT I SAY I’M PERFECT.”

  —Cole Porter

  On their first real date together—that is, one without a voyeur or a “john” hiring them—John Carlyle took Jimmy to a car dealership to show off his new purchase, an Oldsmobile in midnight blue. He’d bought it on an easy installment plan. Within the dealership, he went on to suggest that Jimmy should consider replacing his beat-up old Chevy, which had developed some loud muffler problems.

  Although Jimmy pretended to be impressed with the Olds, it’s almost certain that if and when he opted for a replacement, it would be something faster and sportier.

  Once the papers were signed, Carlyle was free to drive away. That’s when he told Jimmy that he could not drive and wanted to be taught.

  Impulsively, he invited Jimmy to Lake Arrowhead, where a cabin had been made available to them. Once there, they’d have time for driving lessons, and for other activities too.

  Jimmy rose to the challenge of orchestrating some driving lessons, but warned Carlyle, “You’ll never be a race car driver. Your favorite part of a car is the god damn brake.”

  [Later, back in Los Angeles, Clifton Webb asked Jimmy how the driving lessons were progressing. Carlyle, with Jimmy as his instructor, was practicing on the secluded offshoot streets of Brentwood and Bel-Air.

  Facetiously, Jimmy told Webb that Carlyle had run over only two children. “Fortunately, they were very little and didn’t damage the tires.”]

  After Jimmy and Carlyle’s arrival at Lake Arrowhead, they bought some provisions for the cabin’s cramped kitchen. Then they went for a swim and settled into their cabin for “Love in the Afternoon.”

  Carlyle would later write a memoir, from which the editors, right before publication, cut fifty pages based on the advice of the publisher’s lawyers. In the expurgated section of that memoir, he claimed that he and Jimmy were most compatible in bed. “Both of us gave as much as we got. We were neither a top or a bottom, but versatile in all acts. Actually sixty-nine was our favorite figure in arithmetic. Both of us were ready for anything in the hay, except it left us so drained, we didn’t have much energy left for lake sports.”

  For dinner on their first night, Carlyle had accepted an invitation to the elegant vacation home of the heir, J. Watson Webb, Jr. [No relation to Clifton Webb], whose stone-and-timber home overlooked the north shore of the lake. His art-collecting family had left him a fortune, but, as he admitted, “Just for fun, darlings, I once worked as a film editor at Fox.”

  He told Jimmy and Carlyle that he was involved in pre-production of a new film at Fox entitled Don’t Bother to Knock, starring Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark, and Anne Bancroft.

  As a Hollywood gossipmonger, he rivaled both Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, spewing out revelations that neither of these peddlers in print could publish.

  J. Watson Webb...privy to gossip too dangerous to print.

  “Did you know that Fred Astaire once seduced a nine-year-old boy?” he asked his guests. “That Cary Grant was arrested in the men’s room of a department store going down on a young man who worked in the men’s clothing department?”

  He also provided information that Jimmy didn’t really want to hear. “Did you know that Tyrone Power and Monty Woolley actually eat shit sandwiches?”

  “The other month, the world’s favorite matador, Luís Miguel Dominguin, came for a visit,” Webb said. “My guests wanted to see the scars on his body caused by bulls in the ring. Luís was very accommodating. He pulled off his clothes and let my guests examine his scars. All those hands on that magnificent body of his produced an erection. The inevitable happened.”

  “Watson was a very dear friend, but he could be mischievous,” Carlyle said. “He fed Jimmy and me this delectable beef dinner. Only after it was over, he told us it was horsemeat. Jimmy went outside to vomit.”

  ***

  Back in the Los Angeles area, a very different party invitation arrived. Clifton Webb called with an invitation to a Sunday afternoon pool party at the pink palazzo home of composer Cole Porter. Clifton and Porter had been friends since they’d worked together on the ill-fated Broadway show, See America First in 1916.

  At the last minute, Webb fell ill, but called Porter, who claimed he’d be delighted to “entertain your two young friends, especially if they are as handsome as you say, without you.”

  Carlyle felt secure enough behind the wheel to drive to Brentwood, although Jimmy noticed that the right fender of his Olds had been dented. Blaming Jimmy, Carlyle claimed. “You didn’t teach me to park right.”

  In the foyer of the “pussy pink” (
Carlyle’s term) manse, Porter’s black butler/manservant showed them inside. In addition to working for Porter, he maintained other pursuits which included occasional gigs as a jazz musician in Hollywood. Carlyle had informed Jimmy that Porter “has a fondness for black meat. On occasion in New York, he visits this male bordello in Harlem.”

  Emerging from the powder room in the mansion’s ground-floor hallway was none other than Joan Crawford, whom Carlyle had already met at a previous party. She was as formidable off screen as on. After kissing her on both cheeks, Carlyle introduced her to Jimmy.

  “I’m in awe, Miss Crawford,” he said. “You gave such a great performance in Mildred Pierce, although I had a hard time believing you were ever a waitress.”

  Cole Porter...“It Was Just One of Those Things.”

  “What Jimmy meant is that an elegant lady like you belongs only in satin gowns and ermine,” Carlyle said.

  “I have an earthy side, too,” Crawford said. “Why don’t you two good-looking guys drop over tomorrow night at eight? We’ll go swimming in my pool. Don’t bring your bathing trunks. You won’t need them.”

  When she saw hesitation on Jimmy’s face, she said, “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter to me. Only the other night, I had a wonderful time with Rock Hudson. We ‘went to heaven’ in my poolhouse. I told him, ‘just imagine I’m Clark Gable. After that, we managed very well.”

  [Crawford had silly euphemisms she used—usually to describe sex acts or body parts—throughout the course of her life. They included references to intercourse as “going to heaven,” and to her breasts as “ninny pies.”]

  She reached into her purse and handed her card Carlyle. On its back, she had handwritten her private phone number. “Got to go, kids. Tonight, the real thing, Clark Gable, is coming over.”

  After she’d gone, Jimmy told Carlyle, “Stars out here don’t waste much time getting to the point, do they?”

  “They’re too busy and, with such heavy demands on their time, they don’t bother with a lot of small talk.”

  At the pool, a fully dressed but immobilized Cole Porter looked like some rich potentate overlooking his array of good-looking muscle men.

  Later, in his memoirs, Carlyle wrote, “He was propped up on a raised dias by the pool. Each muscleman guest appeared more striking than the one beside him. After two rounds of daiquiris, Mr. Porter’s butler lowered the dias to carry his crippled master to an outdoor table, where an elegant lunch was served to the slightly woozy collection of Adonises.”

  After the long lunch, Porter’s butler carried the composer into his elegantly furnished and thick-carpeted living room. The other guests filed in, the bathers with large bath towels wrapped around their otherwise nude bodies. The hired entertainment of the afternoon was about to begin.

  Word had spread that “Mr. Universe” (Steve Reeves) had been hired—through his agent, Henry Willson—to stage an exhibition. At the time, Willson, was trying to get Reeves a movie role in some epic, Hercules-inspired movie. In the meantime, the title holder was hustling rich gay men for sex or else staging private shows.

  A publicity photo of Steve Reeves...Available for sexual exhibitions.

  Jimmy had already met Reeves at Willson’s party, the event to which he’d been escorted by Rogers Brackett early in their relationship.

  Reeves appeared before the appreciative audience wearing a robe. He soon removed it to reveal a posing strap that was almost transparent. For about half an hour, he demonstrated various muscleman poses and some of the exercise techniques that kept his body in a rigorously maintained state of perfection.

  Then, Porter called out for him to remove his posing strap. Seemingly expecting that to happen, and accompanied by loud clapping, the muscleman took it off, then walked around the room, allowing his fans to feel his body, especially what was dangling between his legs. Jimmy would later define it as a “shameless exhibition,” but Carlyle reminded him, “Steve has got something to show off.”

  After he made the rounds of the room, Reeves displayed a full erection, thanks at least to some extent to all those hands manipulating his body. Then, from a position in the middle of the room, he masturbated for his audience. When he was finished, the most aggressive of his fans moved in “to clean up with their tongues” (Carlyle’s words).

  Carlyle later wrote: “to avoid the competition I was certain to lose over who would stay over for dinner, I chose not to linger.”

  Jimmy felt the same way. “I’m not in the same league as these musclemen. No one is going to crown me Mr. Universe.”

  On his way out the door, Carlyle assured Jimmy, “But you have other charms.”

  “I hope you’re eager to enjoy them later tonight,” Jimmy said. “All of that has made me horny.”

  In 2006, Carlyle would publish a memoir, Under the Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson, & My Life in Old Hollywood, with a foreword by Robert Osborne of Turner Movie Classics.

  Although its publisher [Da Capo press published it in 2007] promoted it as a book detailing his many love affairs, including those with Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, and Jimmy, the sections on his involvement with Brando and Jimmy were removed as part of a last-minute decision.

  However, many people at the publishing house read his description of making love to Jimmy.

  Carlyle’s agent, Henry Willson, had seen the first draft of his client’s tell-all memoir and had had a copy made. He later leaked some of the passages of the sections that were later cut to the underground exposé press and to gay friends. One passage that was expurgated included his description of making love to Jimmy:

  “He could lie for hours in my arms as I kissed him, bit gently into his neck, and sort of nibbled on all parts of him. He liked that a lot. He had a very smooth, un- muscled body and liked to be devoured. His curved buttocks were his chief asset, and he had silken pubic hair that he like me to pull on with my teeth. As I explored his body, his flesh prickled with tender excitement.”

  “After I did all that, he would suddenly yell out, ‘Take me! Make me yours! When it was over, he just wanted to lie in my arms and fall asleep.”

  “My fear was that he was falling in love with me, and I didn’t want that. At the time, I was one of the pretty boys of Hollywood. My phone was ringing off the wall.”

  “Jimmy wanted us to be together and live like a couple. I wasn’t ready for that. Guess what? I was dating him, but was also slipping around and fucking Rock Hudson and Marlon Brando.”

  “And did I tell you that Jimmy and I seduced Judy Garland one night, all three of us in the same bed? Judy in time became my sometimes lover and greatest companion, the star of my memoirs. It all began with a party one night at the home of Clifton Webb.”

  AFTER HER AFFAIRS WITH BARBARA STANWYCK AND CLARK GABLE,

  Joan Crawford Maneuvers Jimmy Into a Three-Way

  In the 1950s, Joan Crawford, facing a long drawn-out career decline as she aged, began to date younger men. She had three dates with Rock Hudson and also had a brief fling with Hudson’s lover, the handsome, well-built actor, George Nader. At the time, Nader and Hudson were having a fling of their own, which later evolved into a lifelong friendship. Crawford always told her confidantes, “Rock’s big attraction is the fat baby’s arm between his legs.”

  On the night that followed the party at Clifton Webb’s house, Crawford welcomed Carlyle and Jimmy into her immaculate home in Brentwood, where all the white living room upholsteries were covered in plastic. That afternoon, it had rained slightly, and she asked the young men to remove their shoes in case they were tracking in mud. As she directed them toward her patio, Jimmy whispered to Carlyle. “I think Crawford has a foot fetish.”

  The sky that night was clear and lit with a full moon that illuminated the swimming pool. Spotlights encircled her terrace. Although her invitation had not specifically included dinner, there were platters of cold food resting on her bar. Both men ate heartily, especially Jimmy.

  Although
at times she took a great interest in other people and sometimes helped them financially, she appeared self-enchanted on the night she entertained Carlyle and Jimmy.

  She did take the time, however, to learn what she had suspected: That both of them wanted to be movie stars. Jimmy asserted that more important than status as a star was his burning desire to be an actor, even if it meant abandoning Hollywood for New York.

  “Acting on the stage would terrify me,” she said. “I’m strictly a movie queen. Even in the dim light, her steely eyes focused on each of them, as if sizing them up. “You’re both good lookers and in Hollywood, that sure helps—I should know. Of course, I’ve seen many a gorgeous man or woman come and go—mostly go. They arrive daily at the train station, with their broad shoulders and Greek god profiles. But they need more than that to get ahead. They’ve got to have a keen intelligence beneath their shock of unruly hair.”

  She looked both of them up and down once again. “I have this instinct: I can tell just by meeting a wannabe actor if he has what it takes to make it.”

  “And what’s your verdict of us?” Jimmy asked. “Do we have it or not?”

  “Forgive my bluntness, but one of you does, the other doesn’t. I’ll not tell you which is which. Only one of you will rise to the top. The other will end up pumping gas in San José or else serving beer to the musclemen of Venice Beach. There’s also the chance that one of you might end up a rich man’s toy.”

  “Do you believe that the casting couch works for a young man like it does for a beautiful girl?” Carlyle asked.

  “The casting couch might lead to a role in the beginning, but it won’t make you a star. I was accused of lying on the casting couch back in the 20s. To that I always said: ‘The casting couch is better than the cold, hard floor.’”

  “Facing up to your disappointments can also make you a star,” she claimed. “I’ll tell you the secret of my success on the screen. I’ve used my personal disappointments—and they’ve been horrendous—to bring life to the characters I play in the movies.”