James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  Before auditioning for Lee Strasberg, Jimmy learned what he could from his peers about the director and acting teacher. He’d been born in Ukraine during the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  Grand Dragon and Grand Master of Method Acting: Lee Strasberg in 1978.

  Along with director Harold Clurman, he’d cofounded the Group Theater in 1931, America’s first true theatrical collective. When Jimmy met Strasberg, he had just become the director of Actors Studio.

  Although others may lay claim to the title, Strasberg was recognized as the father of Method acting in America. In time, he’d train such illustrious actors as Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Monty Clift, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Julie Harris.

  Strasberg told Jimmy that each new member had to perform a theatrical piece to an audience comprised of his or her fellow students. After reviewing and rejecting many scripts, Jimmy settled on a piece adapted from Matador, a novel by Barnaby Conrad, that had sold three million copies.

  Unlike Jimmy, Conrad had actually faced a bull in a ring, and as a result, he had been badly injured, afflicted with a wound so damaging that he was rejected for admission into the U.S. Navy in 1943.

  Jimmy envied the life Conrad had led, hanging out in Seville, Madrid, and Barcelona with such bullfighters as Manolete, Carlos Arruza, and Juan Belmonte. Matador, Conrad’s second novel, had been a gift to him from his pastor lover back in Fairmount, James DeWeerd.

  The scene inspired by Conrad was actually very dramatic, that of an aging matador who accepts a challenge from a young bullfighter to enter the ring for a final time, knowing that it might well lead to his “death in the afternoon.” Without saying a word of dialogue, Jimmy wanted to act out the bullfighter’s emotion before he comes face to face with death itself.

  For props, he used Sidney Franklin’s blood-soaked cape, a candle, and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

  Halfway through his solo performance, he seemed to realize that the skit wasn’t working. He cut it short and, in an attempt to gracefully conclude his time on stage, with his back to the audience, he performed a set of muleta passes.

  Geraldine Page, also a student at Actors Studio, was in the audience that day. Within months, she would be co-starring on Broadway with Jimmy in The Immoralist.

  “I didn’t hear all of Lee’s attack on the Matador, because I had to leave for an appointment,” Page claimed. “But other members of the studio told me it was not only a devastating critique, but that Jimmy was devastated by it. Lee had done the same thing for me when I performed my own introductory skit at Actors Studio. He asked me, ‘Who are you trying to impersonate, Joan Fontaine?’”

  After a performance, Strasberg always asked an actor, “Just what are you trying to accomplish?”

  At that time, Jimmy lacked the understanding of exactly what he wanted to do as an actor, and he couldn’t come up with an answer. He wanted to become the first post-modern actor, but wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

  Strasberg continued. “In the Matador skit, you were acting, not being. You must learn the difference if you ever want to succeed in the theater. There is a mammoth difference between the actor who thinks that acting is an imitation of life, and the actor who feels that acting is living.” From there, Strasberg went on to caustically rebuke Jimmy’s performance.

  Strasberg was accurate in his attack on Jimmy’s motivation and his characterization, even though he had performed many of the matador’s movements to perfection.

  As Strasberg lashed out at Jimmy’s acting, he sat slumped down in his seat, scowling in a sort of poutish mess. An original member of the studio, David Stewart, phrased it vividly: “Dean sat there like his skin was being ripped off.”

  From the start, Jimmy showed that he lacked an actor’s ability to take criticism.

  David Garfield in A Player’s Place explained it: “Dean’s Matador provoked a long and penetrating critique from Strasberg. Dean listened impassively, but the color drained from his face. When Strasberg had concluded his remarks, the young actor slung his matador’s cape over his shoulder and silently walked out of the room.”

  It would take many weeks and much urging before he returned.

  The next day, he bitterly complained to Bast, “I can’t let Strasberg attack me. He doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do. I don’t understand it myself. I need more experience. I don’t know what’s inside me yet. If I let him dissect me like a rabbit in some laboratory, it might destroy the creativity bubbling up in me. Strasberg doesn’t have the right to tear away at my very soul. He’s trying to sterilize me. If you attack a guy enough, you destroy his guts. What’s an actor without guts?”

  Bast claimed, “Jimmy simply didn’t have the stomach to survive the soulsearing, psychologically destructive criticism Strasberg seemed to take pleasure in dishing out.”

  To his friends, Jimmy was very critical of Strasberg, calling him “a mess of hot air. He also has a personal vindictiveness against me.”

  John Stix, who chaired the studio’s board of directors, claimed, “Jimmy’s self-indulgence was not tolerated by Strasberg. Nor did he allow him to use it as a defense against criticism. He disliked everybody there except for Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley, who allowed him his indulgences. By the time Jimmy arrived, Clift and Brando were already stars.”

  Months later, when Page actually co-starred on stage with Jimmy, she claimed, “He learned a lot more about acting from Monty Clift and Brando than he did from Strasberg.”

  “It wasn’t my criticism that kept Dean away,” Strasberg later claimed. “He was sensitive about letting other people get too close unless they were very special. Marlon Brando and Paul Newman were special. So was Marilyn Monroe and even my daughter, Susan. He seemed to shy away from people, even those who wanted to be his friend. He was afraid they would get to know him and judge him. He didn’t want to be judged, yet every actor has to face the critics.”

  Elia Kazan shared similar memories. “I didn’t see Dean very much at the Actors Studio. He went there only a few times. I remember him sitting out in front, a surly mess. He didn’t want to participate in anything, seemingly there only as a venue for judging his fellow actors.”

  After Jimmy’s death, Strasberg told a reporter, “I sensed a doomed quality in the boy. There was something destructive about him. Frankly, he didn’t learn anything at my studio, because he never wanted to give of himself. Acting is nothing but giving.”

  During one of his rare interviews, Jimmy spoke to Erskine Johnson, the well-known Hollywood columnist. “The most important lesson I took away from the Actors Studio was how an actor should take care of himself. How an actor need to protect himself from the glitz of Hollywood and from the hazards of the stage and this new medium of television.”

  “There are tricks to every trade, as there are in acting, and I learned some of them. Some of these tricks can help you survive bad scripts and bad directors, even bad actors with whom you have to work. However, so far, I haven’t had the need to unleash my bag of tricks.”

  ***

  Tennessee Williams had accurately described the forthcoming invitation from their mutual friends, David Swift and Maggie McNamara. However, it was not for a Christmas Party but for a New Year’s Eve celebration.

  Assuming that Rogers Brackett and Jimmy were still an interconnected couple, the Swifts extended an invitation to both of them. Jimmy was seeing Brackett only infrequently, yet agreed to escort him to the party anyway, knowing that Tennessee would be there. He kept telling friends, including Stanley Haggart and William Bast, “Look at what Tennessee did for Marlon Brando. Imagine what he could do for me, an actor with real talent.”

  Arriving at the door to the Swift apartment, Brackett and Jimmy were greeted by McNamara, who kissed both of them on the cheeks. She gave no indication that she’d ever been intimate with Jimmy in Chicago.

  As he’d later relate to Bast, “The guest list was short but
choice. I was the only one there who had not won any theatrical awards or produced any hit shows.

  “Tennessee was already drunk, and he introduced me to his chief rival, playwright William Inge, who practically creamed in his pants when he shook my hand. I didn’t think I was going to get my paw back. I heard that in the 1940s, these two guys used to be lovers.”

  At the party, McNamara introduced Brackett and Jimmy to Grace Kelly and her lover, Gene Lyons, a television actor from Pittsburgh. To Jimmy, Grace evoked a goddess—blonde, prim, proper, and ladylike—but he sensed a strong undercurrent of sexuality within her. “She put the ‘grace’ in graceful,” he later said. “She was both serene and serenely beautiful. Probably born a rich girl, she acted like one. I dig her…I mean, I really dig her. Up to now, when stacked up against Grace, the girls I’ve screwed were Saturday night whores in comparison to this stunning young beauty.”

  Grace Kelly, in an MGM publicity photo that managed to hint at her upcoming status as Her Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco.

  Like Jimmy, Grace had appeared in commercials and teleplays. Her biggest break had come when she’d been cast opposite Gary Cooper in the Western, High Noon (1952).

  [Gary Cooper, in an irreverent and disrespectful reference to Grace Kelly, once said, “She looks like a cold dish with a man until you get her pants off, and then she explodes.”]

  Both New York and Hollywood were buzzing with rumors that during the making of High Noon, she and Cooper had become lovers, in spite of the difference in their ages. [He was born in 1901, Grace in 1929.]

  The future prospects of Gene Lyons (above), her date the evening Jimmy met her, were not as glamorous.

  In time, of course, Cooper became just one of many big-name stars headed for her bed: Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, William Holden, Ray Milland, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart, as well as designer Oleg Cassini and the Shah of Iran (Mohammed Reza Pahlavi) thrown in for extra seasoning.

  One of her lovers, actor Don Richardson, expressed his disappointment in her when she ran off with Jean-Pierre Aumont, the handsome French actor. “She fucked everybody she came into contact with who was able to advance her career. She screwed agents, producers, directors, bigtime stars, whomever.”

  At the party, in response to Brackett and Jimmy’s applause for her performance in High Noon, she expressed disappointment with her part: “It was Gary’s picture. You look into his face and you know everything he’s thinking. You look into my face and you see nothing but a blank stare. I thought I was going to be a big movie star. I’m not so sure. Frankly, now that I’m back in New York, I think I should take acting lessons.”

  Lyons, her escort, seemed to suffer through the party from his seated position on a sofa, sometimes holding her hand. The red-haired Irishman was tall and good-looking, but it was obvious he’d had too much to drink.

  Grace told them that she was taking him home to Philadelphia to meet her father, Jack Kelly. “I want him to see if Gene is marriage material.”

  “If he has me investigated, he’ll learn that I’m already married,” Lyons said, “but seeking an annulment.”

  “Everybody in the theater claims that Gene looks like Marlon Brando, but I think he’s so much more handsome than Brando,” Kelly said. “Don’t you think so, James?”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Jimmy answered, diplomatically, though perceiving that Gene wasn’t all that handsome, or all that charming, either.

  “The reason I asked you is that you seem to know what the standard of male beauty is, to judge by your looks,” she said. “The question is, do you take advantage of your good looks, using that as a weapon on those who fall under your spell?”

  He couldn’t believe she was flirting with him. He removed his glasses, so she could get a better look at his face.

  Jimmy talked briefly with Lyons when Grace went to powder her nose. He was surprised to learn that he was a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. Quite by coincidence, Jimmy would soon be starring in a teleplay opposite him. In most cases, most of their off-screen talk would center around Grace.

  “I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire,” Tennessee Williams (depicted above) told James Dean.

  At some point, Swift broke away from his other guests and chatted with Brackett and Jimmy. He had achieved great success in July of 1952 when NBC went on the air with his TV sitcom, Mister Peepers, starring Wally Cox as a junior high school science teacher.

  “It’s been a long journey,” Swift claimed. “I dropped out of school when I was seventeen and rode the rails to Hollywood. I began as an office boy for Walt Disney, but by 1938, I was his assistant animator. He told people I was like the son he never had.”

  “I bet,” Jimmy said sarcastically.

  Swift was visibly taken aback by Jimmy’s sarcasm.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” he asked, rather sharply. Both Swift and Brackett stared at Jimmy, waiting for some revelation.

  Feeling trapped, Jimmy extricated himself with: “Sorry—It was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know Disney myself. I think one night I shook his hand at a party at George Cukor’s house. I’m not the type of actor for a Walt Disney movie—unless maybe if a Minnie Mouse role comes up.”

  Maureen Stapleton, one of Tennessee’s favorite actresses, arrived at the party with her husband, Max Allentuck, the general manager to producer Kermit Bloomgarden.

  Jimmy knew of her long association with the Actors Studio and was impressed with her talent, especially her star involvement in Tennessee’s Broadway version of The Rose Tattoo, which would earn her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a play.

  Like others at the party, she was an alcoholic. “Marilyn Monroe gets the ditzy blonde roles, although I suspect the girl has real talent. As for me, when I come out on the stage, people take one look at me and say, ‘Jesus, that broad better know how to act—or else, what in hell is she doing up there?’”

  As an actor, Maureen Stapleton gave Jimmy some advice: “Sometimes the acceptance of a lesser role, or even a rotten part, regardless of how humiliating, is the result of needing a paycheck.”

  During the course of the evening, Tennessee, also drunk, kept making passes at Jimmy, which he planned to intercept within a different setting at some future date.

  Inge also seemed sexually attracted to Jimmy, but shy and introverted, living deep in the closet. He implied to Jimmy that he’d like to get together to discuss starring him in one of his upcoming plays. Jimmy hoped it would be the previously announced Broadway opening of Picnic. [Inge’s much-awarded, much-celebrated Picnic, opened on Broadway in 1953 and ran for almost 500 performances. Its original version featured Ralph Meeker as the male lead, with Paul Newman in a secondary role.]

  Jimmy was understandably impressed with Inge as a playwright. Brackett had taken him to see Come Back, Little Sheba on Broadway, which had won a Tony for its star, Shirley Booth.

  Like most of the other guests, Inge, too, was a heavy drinker.

  Jimmy would later tell Stanley Haggart, “In spite of what I told you, I know that at some point, I’ll have to shack up with both Bill Inge and Tennessee—call it ‘singing for my supper.’ They’re the hottest playwrights in town, and I know they want to get into my drawers. So I’ve changed my mind about sleeping with old queers. Girls are always changing their minds. So why not guys?”

  On New Year’s Day, Jimmy telephoned Bast to report on the party. “Both Tennessee and Bill Inge are hot for me as an actor. Each of them wants to star me in a play. Which ones, I don’t know yet.

  “What do they know of you as an actor?” Bast asked, skeptically.

  “Tennessee saw me in the Philadelphia preview of See the Jaguar.”

  “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?” Bast asked. “Why not face up to the truth? Those two queens just want you to fuck them! They’re using that casting shit as bait.”

  “You’re god damn jealou
s!” Jimmy shouted, enraged, into the phone. “I’ll think I’ll go for a week without speaking to you. After that, we’ll see about our so-called friendship.”

  Then he slammed down the phone.

  ***

  Two weeks after meeting Grace Kelly, she called Jimmy at the Iroquois, having been provided with his phone number by David Swift. “So sorry to bother you, dear, but I have a problem. You were so charming at the New Year’s Eve party given by David and Maggie. I just knew you’d help a damsel in distress. David thought you would.”

  “For you, I would climb the highest mountain, swim to the bottom of the deepest ocean,” he said.

  “That’s a bit dramatic, but I love it,” she said. “Sarah Churchill is throwing this elegant dinner at her penthouse. David told me you were a good friend of hers. Normally, I would invite Gene (Lyons), but he’s a bit incapacitated.”

  Jimmy knew that meant he was too drunk to escort her. Without her having to ask, he immediately chimed in, “I’d love to be your escort.”

  “Oh, that would be delightful,” she said. “The answer to a girl’s dream.”

  After negotiating his way through the details with her, he put down the phone, later telling Bast about the invitation. “I am thrilled. Tennessee and Bill Inge have the hots for me, and now the ice queen herself. High Noon Grace Kelly wants to see what I’m hauling around in my jockey shorts.”

  “It sounds to me like she merely wants you to escort her to Lady Sarah’s bash. What are you going to do? You don’t have a tux.”

  “Leave it to Jimmy,” he said, speaking in the third person. “I’ll turn on the James Dean charm and have that tux by five o’clock this afternoon.”