Before she’d finished her fifth vodka, she seemed to wander down memory lane. She told them terrible stories about her abuse at MGM, but also spun some amusing tales.
Portrait of Joan...Always lusting for the new boy in town.
She discussed her brief affair with movie cowboy icon Don (“Red”) Barry. “He was very short except in one department. At first he overwhelmed me with gifts, including a diamond necklace worthy of Marie Antoinette and a white mink coat more suited to Lana Turner. Our romance ended soon. The day after I said goodbye, I got a visit from a jeweler and a furrier who arrived pounding on my door. It seems that Red had never paid for these trinkets, and they wanted them back.”
She asked Jimmy which actor on the screen he most admired. Although Jimmy’s admiration for Marlon Brando might have been the answer most of his latter-day fans might have expected, in this single instance, in a departure from his norm, he said, ‘John Garfield.’”
“I got to know John when we starred together in Humoresque,” Crawford declared. “When I was introduced to him, I extended my hand. Instead of shaking it, he pinched my breast instead. That was the beginning of a brief fling.”
“Do you think that the press treats you fairly?” Carlyle asked.
“Of course they do, my dear,” she said sarcastically. “That’s why they depict me as having this iron will—a gutsy bitch, an aggressive broad, and a man-eating dame. Perhaps the press confuses me with my screen image.”
“To keep up that image, I’m always searching for the right script. A Mildred Pierce script is rare. I almost lost that one. Michael Curtiz, that Hungarian shit, wanted Bette Davis. When she said no, he asked Barbara Stanwyck who also turned him down. In the end, he had to settle for Oscar-winning Joan Crawford.”
Once again she concentrated on Jimmy and Carlyle, asking if either of them had ever been married or been seriously committed to someone. Both of them denied any such previous involvement.
“I don’t recommend marriage,” she said. “I was a failure at it. My last husband was an actor, Phil Terry, all six feet one, a former football player weighing 175 pounds. He was certainly good-looking but he spent most of our marriage fucking Robert Taylor instead of me.”
“That didn’t surprise me,” she said. “Most actors in Hollywood are at least bisexual if not homosexual. When I was dating Jeff Chandler, I found that he was also dating Rock Hudson. I indulged Jeff in his cross-dressing fantasy. Sometimes, he wanted to go out with me dressed in full drag. Of course, we had to go to obscure joints. He’d wear a gown, a big red wig, a diamond necklace, and those so-called Joan Crawford fuck-me high heels. I felt like I was making love to myself.”
“Gays dominate the industry, and I’ve always adored working with them and, on occasion, loving them. Lesbianism isn’t bad either—at least you don’t get pregnant. When I meet a man, I have this uncanny ability to determine his bedmanship, even before auditioning him. I can forgive a gay man for turning me down. A straight man, never! I hold grudges.”
Finally, after three more vodkas, she rose on wobbly feet. “Gentlemen, I have an early call, so let’s adjourn to my bedroom upstairs and get on with the war games, meaning men vs. woman.”
Days later, Jimmy would provide a blow-by-blow description to Rogers Brackett. But when Clifton Webb grilled him, he supplied only the most meager of details. In reference to that night, Webb later told gossipy Cole Porter, “I think that whereas John Carlyle actually screwed Crawford, she gave James Dean a blow-job.”
Jimmy did provide one tantalizing detail directly to Webb. “I won’t be visiting Miss Crawford again. I can’t abide bad breath.”
REPEATING HIS PENCHANT FOR SEDUCING BOYS IN HOLLYWOOD
Alfredo de la Vega
(A CLOSE FRIEND OF NANCY REAGAN)
Entertains James Dean
One night at one of Clifton Webb’s parties, Jimmy was introduced to the actor’s friend, Alfredo De La Vega. He was an elegant Mexican aristocrat, the son of a wealthy family who had fled to points north of the Mexican border during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Eventually, they settled in Los Angeles, where they began to purchase real estate with the gold they’d hauled away with them.
In their new world, they acquired prestige and influence. Soon, they became known for their elegant dinners and parties. On any given night, they entertained the Gary Coopers, the Clark Gables, and/or such famous compatriots as Dolores Del Rio.
They also contributed to political campaigns and developed influence with Republicans, including Ronald Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller.
In time, Alfredo became an escort of First Lady Nancy Reagan during her early years in the White House. He was also seen dining with her and her good friend, Betsy Bloomingdale.
In Alfredo’s younger days, when he first met Jimmy, he had a reputation as a serial seducer of the pretty young men of Hollywood. His list of sexual conquests, some arranged through agent Henry Willson, included Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, George Nader, Rock Hudson, Steve Reeves, John Derek and, later, Troy Donahue.
After his introduction to Jimmy, the real estate mogul invited him two nights hence to his lavish apartment in a building he owned. Alfredo said he would have his limousine pick him up at seven o’clock and deliver him there.
Jimmy later reported the details of the evening to William Bast. “Sitting in that apartment, I thought I’d hit pay dirt. This was the kind of life I deserved instead of some tired old farm in Indiana. His living room was filled with nude statues of young men, including a replica of Michelangelo’s David.”
“Wherever I looked, his wealth was on display—the oriental carpets, the antiques, the crystal, the paintings, the Salvador Dalís and Picassos. Dinner was prepared by a Japanese chef. Kobe beef, the best I’ve ever been served. The finest wines. I drank too much.”
“At the end of this magnificent dinner fed to a starving boy, Alfredo told me it was time we got better acquainted. He claimed he couldn’t really develop a friendship with a young man until he’d tasted his essence.”
“It brings me closer to a beautiful boy such as yourself when I taste everything, and I mean, everything. Every young male beauty has a different taste and smell. There is no part of a man on whom I don’t lavish my adoration. Every inch of him, including those hidden inches that are waiting to burst forth in all their glory.”
“Consider me as dessert,” Jimmy said, as he followed Alfred to his bedroom. There, he was instructed to strip and to climb onto the bed.
“He lived up to his stated desire,” Jimmy told Bast. “There wasn’t a part of me he didn’t taste from my big toes to my earlobes. And oh yes, plenty of ‘essence’ too.”
What had really impressed Jimmy was the array of five custom-made sports cars in rainbow colors parked in Alfred’s garage. The Mexican proudly showed them off to Jimmy and even let him get behind the wheel of one of them for a drive up the coast.
“I figured that if I became his boy, he’d give me the privilege of driving any of those cars any time I wanted,” Jimmy told Bast. “I also suspected he’d give me a big weekly allowance. I was thinking of asking for five hundred dollars every Saturday.”
“Like Joan Crawford predicted, either Carlyle or I might end up as some rich man’s toy. That way, I could pursue an acting gig if I wanted to or else spend my days riding around in those cars.”
Jimmy stayed the night and left after breakfast at ten the following morning. Before leaving, there had been no offer, so he asked Alfredo if he could call him again.
“My dear boy,” he answered. “Every hour away from you will be unbearable until I hear that wonderful, seductive voice of yours.”
At that point, Jimmy thought he was exaggerating. He waited an entire day before phoning him, only to be told by the butler that De La Vega had flown to Acapulco with Merle Oberon with no plans to return.
“By then, it was obvious to me that Alfredo did not plan to adopt me,” Jimmy told Bast.
He later talked about Alfredo to W
ebb, knowing what good friends they were. “I should have warned you,” Webb said. “Once Alfredo has had a young man, he wants to move on to his next seduction. I nicknamed him ‘The Mexican Conquistador.’ He might have invented the slogan, ‘So many men, so little time.’”
[Jimmy died years before the night of September 26, 1987, when Alfredo was shot four times in his upper chest at his West Hollywood apartment at 1285 N. Crescent Heights Boulevard. Only the night before, he’d attended a birthday party for Nancy Reagan.
Homicide found no forced entry, and detectives believed that some hustler might have assassinated him, since he was known for bringing strings of young men to his residence.
His close friend was the strikingly handsome actor John Gavin, who was also of partial Mexican descent. (The rest of his gene pool was Irish.) Gavin told the press, “Alfredo was like an uncle to me, and I’m terribly saddened to hear of his brutal death. He had many friends and he loved life and the social whirl. He was in great demand in Hollywood. He will be mourned by so many.”
ANOTHER THREE-WAY. THIS TIME IT’S
Over the Rainbow...with Judy Garland
John Carlyle lost the opportunity to describe yet another major development in his life with Jimmy when its details were removed from the final version of his memoir, Under the Rainbow. It centered around the time they were invited to one of Clifton Webb’s formal parties. “We were the most shabbily dressed bums there, but coasted by on our good looks and male charm,” Jimmy recalled.
In an article in Ladies’ Home Journal, Judy Garland, the guest of honor, remembered the evening and wrote about her encounter there with Marilyn Monroe, a rising starlet at the time.
“Marilyn followed me from room to room. ‘I don’t want to get too far from you,’ she told me. ‘I’m scared. I told her, ‘We’re all scared. I’m scared, too.’ That beautiful girl was frightened of loneliness, the same thing I’ve been afraid of all my life.”
Fortunately, Frank Sinatra arrived at Webb’s party, and he managed to lure Monroe away from Garland for the night. The highlight of the party was when Garland sang a medley of her favorite songs, including Over the Rainbow. Listening intently to this impromptu concert were about seventy-five guests, two of whom included Jimmy and Carlyle.
The singer was accompanied on piano by Roger Eden, an associate producer for Arthur Freed. During the course of the evening, she sang songs by Cole Porter, Gershwin, and Warren.
During her concert, Webb’s black poodle “adopted me and wouldn’t leave my side,” Jimmy later said. “Watching Judy sing was one of the highlights of my life.”
When it ended, after all the congratulations had been expressed, Garland for a moment was left alone. That’s when Carlyle led Jimmy over to introduce themselves. After some pleasantries, Carlyle announced, “George Cukor has promised me a role in your upcoming A Star Is Born.”
“Oh, we’ll be working together,” Garland exclaimed. “I’m delighted to hear that, darling!”
“Unfortunately for me, my scene is with James Mason, not with you.”
“In that case, we’ll get together for a cuddle off screen,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to that,” Carlyle responded, flirtatiously.
It soon became clear to the two men that Garland had arrived at the party alone, without a husband or lover to escort her.
“Could we take you home, Miss Garland?” Jimmy asked. “A pretty little thing like you should not be out at night wandering the streets alone.”
Later, in Garland’s living room, the intimate trio talked, laughed, and joked until around two o’clock in the morning, consuming a full package of cigarettes. Carlyle put his cigarette and hers into his mouth at the same time, and then lit them both, a scene he’d stolen from Paul Henreid and Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.
By three o’clock the following morning, Carlyle and Jimmy had piled onto her upstairs bed for a sexual romp. Jimmy would later try to relay a blow-by-blow description to Rogers Brackett, although he claimed, “I don’t really remember who did what to whom. Judy gave us some pills, after popping a few herself.”
Jimmy did remember one of Garland’s lines in bed: “I’ve had it with mass adoration. What I need is one-on-one love.”
“In our case,” Jimmy said, “Call it two-on-one love.”
At around eleven o’clock the following morning, the two men were huddled together in bed, sleeping off their drunk of the night before. Unexpectedly, a large glass ashtray hit both them in the head. “It was a rude awakening,” Jimmy said.
Standing nude at the bottom of the bed, an angry, hung-over Garland confronted them with: “Do you fuckers really love me, or are you just pretending because I’m Judy Garland?”
“We love you, Judy,” Jimmy said. Rubbing his forehead, Carlyle chimed in. “I love you, too, Judy, now that you didn’t kill me with that god damn ashtray.”
“You guys had better not be bullshitting me,” she said. “I’ve got to warn you: I have one helluva temper.”
Then, impulsively, Garland ran screaming from the bedroom, heading down the hallway. Perhaps fearing she would harm herself, a nude Carlyle ran down the stairs after her, ending up on the floor of the living room, where she had fallen down on the carpet.
By the time a fully clothed Jimmy made it to the living room, Garland and Carlyle were lying together in a tangled mess, giggling and rolling over together.
At that point, Jimmy decided it was time he got out of that household. He headed toward the front door and walked for miles, pondering the events of the previous night.
Months later, Cukor came through with his promise and cast Carlyle in a role in A Star Is Born. At the age of twenty-three, he was assigned the role of an assistant director in a “movie-within-a-movie.”
Carlyle’s character was supposed to be directing James Mason, Garland’s husband, “Norman Maine” in the movie, but—as dictated by the script—the fading star was drunk and unable to pull off a swashbuckling scene in a pirate adventure inspired by roles associated with Errol Flynn.
Jimmy went alone to see a sneak preview of A Star Is Born in a movie house in Huntington Park. He was one of the few people who ever got to see Carlyles’s brief appearance. In its final release, Carlyle’s scene was cut from the movie, much to his disappointment.
When Jimmy later encountered Carlyle, the somewhat embittered actor told him, “A star was not born, a star was cut.”
Although Carlyle and Jimmy, as lovers, drifted apart, Jimmy was able to arrange a small role for his friend in his upcoming movie, A Rebel Without a Cause.
During its filming, Jimmy stood on the sidelines watching chain-smoking Nicholas Ray direct Carlyle and other young actors in a scene from Rebel. The scene took three nights to shoot, and it was bitter cold on the night of filming.
Carlyle’s girlfriend in the scene was Kathryn Grant, who would soon go on to marry Bing Crosby.
“I remembered placing my trembling hands around a Dixie cup of coffee to keep them warm,” Carlyle said. “I was shaking so bad I couldn’t get a car in gear during one scene. Dennis Hopper crouched down under the gears, out of camera range, and helped me lurch forward.”
“When I later bolted from the driver’s scene, I had one line to deliver. I was not only frozen, but mortified. I flubbed my line with Kathryn. Ray fired me that night. He told me that if some director ever needed an actor to play a wooden Indian, he should cast me.”
Although humiliated, he took his firing in stride. “After all,” he told Jimmy, “I came to Hollywood to become a movie star, not an actor.”
***
Years later, Carlyle would meet Garland again and begin a roller-coaster friendship that included sex. He later called it the highlight of his heterosexual life. She proposed marriage to him, but he held her off, while still maintaining the friendship. She’d married a gay husband before, so it was familiar turf to her.
One night, she told him, “You’re not going to rid of me.”
&nbs
p; But he did.
***
Once again in pursuit of his vagabond lifestyle, Jimmy was awakened by the ringing of his phone. It was Rogers Brackett, the TV director had returned to Los Angeles after completing a project for his ad agency in New York.
“I’ve missed you, Hamlet,” Brackett told him. “In New York I could think of no one else.”
“Glad you’re back,” Jimmy said. “Welcome.”
“I want to see you tonight. It’s very urgent.”
“That means you’ve got a job for me,” Jimmy said.
“That, too, but I’ve also got a personal offer to make to you. I want you to move in with me.”
“You mean, let you have exclusive property right to my dick?” Jimmy asked.
“Something like that…”
Chapter Three
A TV PRODUCER AT CBS “ADOPTS” A KID FROM THE STREET,
JAMES DEAN,
SHOWING HIM OFF AS A TROPHY TO THE HOLLYWOOD ELITE
Jimmy’s Tryst in Jack Benny’s Dressing Room and a Flurry of Subsequent of Affairs
SCHTUPPING WITH HEDY LAMARR AND BARBARA PAYTON
It was a rainy Thursday night when Jimmy packed his meager belongings into his old Chevy and drove to the luxurious apartment of Rogers Brackett on Sunset Plaza Drive. His car almost stalled as he headed along the inclined road that meandered uphill to the Hollywood Hills from the nightclub-studded Sunset Strip. Actually, as he was to learn that night, the apartment was a sublet from William Goetz. [Goetz was a film producer and studio executive and one of the founders of what was eventually renamed 20th Century Fox. Brackett later informed Jimmy that Goetz was married to Edith Mayer, daughter of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer. Jimmy met Goetz casually one afternoon when he came by to check on his property. Since Jimmy didn’t know who he was, he let one of his remarks (“you should be in pictures”) go by unchallenged.]
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