“He cut his own hair,” she said, “calling it ‘The Jim Trim.’ Young actors would spend their last dollar going to the barber, ever ready for a casting call. James preferred to be his own hairdresser. That meant short on the sides, a full head of top hair combed back. Of course, it was mandatory to wear his jacket, a white T-shirt, jeans, and lots of attitude.”
On movie dates, Palmer noted that Jimmy had a unique way of giving a review. Such was the case when they went to see Lone Star, starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. Later, at Jerry’s Tavern, Jimmy gave his review of Gable’s performance. “He’s a real hot shoe. When you ride, you wear a steel shoe that goes over the bottom of your boot. When you round a corner, you put that foot out on the ground. When you can really ride, you’re called a hot shoe. Gable rides like crazy.”
“I was too polite to ask him what in hell he was talking about,” Palmer said.
“By the autumn after our last teleplay, we sort of drifted apart,” Palmer said. “A man entered my life, Dr. Vincent Merendino, and I fell in love with him and got married. We had a daughter. Once or twice, I tried to get in touch with James, but could never contact him. I never saw him again, but had relatively fond memories of our brief summer romance.”
Jimmy vs. John (“I Don’t Want to Be Gay”) Kerr
THEIR CASTING TOGETHER IN “TRUE CRIME: REX NEWMAN”
Once again, those two lovers, John Kerr and James Dean, were cast together in Rex Newman, an episode that aired on September 11, 1953 within NBC’s The Big Story TV series. Once a week, it dramatized true crime adventures that had been solved by dogged newspaper reporters. In this case the real-life drama described in the teleplay had been exposed by The Globe and the News, published in Joplin, Missouri.
Jimmy was more convincing that Kerr in Rex Newman. It was hard to believe that Kerr, with his clean-cut all-American look, was a cold-blooded killer.
In this episode, Jimmy and Kerry were exposed as part of a bungled robbery and murder, with Wendy Drew playing Jimmy’s love interest. It was written by Alvin Boretz and directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with narration by Bob Sloane. Although Jimmy tangled with Rosenberg on at least three occasions, the director ended up with great respect for his talent.
“If Jimmy had lived and continued to mature as an actor, I would have cast in in a future film I directed,” Rosenberg claimed.
A still shot from NBC-TV’s Rex Newman, starring doomed lovers, James Dean and Wendy Drew.
No doubt, he was referring to the 1967 release of Cool Hand Luke, which starred Paul Newman in the tale of an incorrigible Southern bad boy who is arrested for a dumb crime and sent to a brutal prison work camp where he defies authority from his sadistic redneck jailers. “Paul did a great job, and the public for the most part agreed, but Jimmy might have brought even greater depth to it, enough to at least be nominated for an Oscar,” Rosenberg said.
After he’d completed its filming, Jimmy in the months ahead hardly remembered what was going on before the cameras. To him, the drama he and Kerr engaged in was more daunting.
“Perhaps sensing what a rival Kerr would be in the future, Jimmy tried to dominate the boy,” said his friend, Stanley Haggart. “Those two lovers used my rear garden apartment frequently during the summer of 1953. As their affair played out. I sensed that Kerr liked the gay sex, but didn’t want to be inducted into a world of homosexuals. After all, he had recently married. I think he saw himself as a family man with children. At least that is what I surmised when I read his handwriting, of which I’m supposed to be an expert. Actually, I’m not.”
Jimmy later revealed to Haggart what happened during the weekend in September when Kerr’s sexual involvement with Jimmy came to an abrupt end.
Haggart had arranged for them to make use of a small cottage owned by a friend of his, William Hunt, who often used it for gay beach parties. The summer crowds had already departed when Kerr and Jimmy arrived for their weekend on Long Island at Montauk Point.
As Jimmy remembered it, “It rained Friday night, all day Saturday and into Sunday morning.”
Jimmy had hoped that the weekend would provide him with more time to get to know Kerr better. So far, most of their encounters had been brief, with little time to talk after the sex act was completed. The disruption began when Kerr was performing fellatio on Jimmy, as he had done several times before. But that time on Long Island was different, as Jimmy would later relay to Haggart.
Up to that point, Kerr would let Jimmy climax in his mouth, and would then spit out his semen. Jimmy had protested Kerr’s refusal to swallow “my love offering. I want my seed in your belly as a token of your love for me.”
“But I don’t like the sticky god damn stuff in my mouth, much less in my stomach,” Kerr always complained. “I don’t like the taste of it.”
Out in that summer cottage, after he exploded in a climax, Jimmy took charge. He kept his penis in Kerr’s mouth, virtually choking him until he swallowed.
“God damn you!” Kerr said when Jimmy finally withdrew from his mouth. “You forced me to swallow.”
“If you loved me, you’d take it like a man,” Jimmy said.
Kerr disappeared into the bathroom, where Jimmy heard him trying to vomit. He reappeared after a shower, and retreated into the bedroom. Then he emerged fully dressed with his suitcase packed.
“You going somewhere?” Jimmy asked.
“This is our last time together,” Kerr said.
“But the fun’s only begun,” Jimmy protested.
“For me, it’s over,” Kerr answered. “I admit that most actors, including myself, are a little bit homosexual, some a whole lot. I welcomed the experience with you, my ‘induction,’ so to speak. I think it’ll make me a better actor.”
“So what’s your damn problem?” Jimmy asked.
“I’ve decided that the homosexual lifestyle is not for me,” Kerr said. “I want to return to the straight world, where I fit in better.”
“But there’s a side of you that’s gay,” Jimmy said.
[By the time of this encounter, the word “gay,” as a synonym for homosexual had already come into general usage.]
“I admit that, and I enjoyed our sex, especially when you let me fuck you. It’s so different being with a man from being with a woman. But my times with you make me suffer guilt and question my manhood. I don’t like what I’m doing with you. It’s not fair to the woman I married.”
“Okay, babe, if that’s your wish,” Jimmy said. “I won’t force you. But it’s too late to return to the city tonight. I’ll drive you back in the morning. There’s only one bedroom. It’s mine. You can sleep on the sofa.”
Jimmy then put on his jacket. “There’s a bar about three miles from here where I understand the pickings are real good. I’m sure I’ll be returning later tonight with someone. I hope we don’t keep you awake.”
“Do as you please,” Kerr said, heading for the kitchen. “I need a drink.”
Three hours later, as Jimmy had predicted, he returned with a young man. They retreated together to the bedroom, as Kerr lay awake, alone on the sofa, listening to the sounds of their love-making.
Jimmy kept his promise to return with Kerr to the city the next morning. Both men were in a bad mood. The trip back to Manhattan was in silence.
Kerr got out of Jimmy’s car in front of his apartment building and disappeared inside.
There was no goodbye.
***
During the months to come, Kerr became one of Jimmy’s main rivals for choice roles that eluded Jimmy and went to his discarded lover. Originally, Jimmy had tried to get in touch with Mary Chase, author of Harvey, a play that had been adapted into popular movie, released in 1950, starring James Stewart, whose companion was a six-foot invisible rabbit. Her latest play, Bernardine (1952), had a role that Jimmy thought would be ideal for him, even though he had only heard about the play and not actually read its script.
At the time, he was seeing a great deal of the lyricist, Marshall Ba
rer, who had been a visitor to Rogers Brackett’s Manhattan apartment during the period when Jimmy lived there. Barer would later end up on the list of Dean’s “Lovers, Flings, or Just Friends?” in Mart Martin’s book, published in 2000, Did He or Didn’t He?
“I’m going to meet Chase and get her to cast me as the lead in Bernardine,” Jimmy told Barer. “I’m sure I can convince her to change the title from Bernardine to Jimmydine.” Regrettably, he was unable to reach her on the phone, since she’d left for a vacation in Colorado.
By the time Chase returned, the producers had assigned the lead in her play to John Kerr. That would mark that actor’s debut on Broadway, his appearance winning him a Theater World award.
Around the same time, Jimmy had also wanted to appear on Broadway in Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy, a 1953 drama about a sensitive student accused of being gay. But it was decided that Jimmy was too strong for the role, which went to Kerr instead.
Kerr’s stage performance won him a Tony as Best Supporting Stage Actor of the year. [Jimmy had been in the running for that award, too, but failed to receive a nomination for his performance as an Arab boy in The Immoralist.]
When Tea and Sympathy was adapted into a film in 1956, Kerr played the same character he had interpreted in the play, this time opposite Deborah Kerr (no relation). Of course, Jimmy was already dead by then.
Jimmy’s competition with Kerr continued in Hollywood, when Vincente Minnelli wanted him for the 1955 film, The Cobweb. That role, too, went to Kerr.
Some executives thought Kerr might play the lead in Rebel Without a Cause, but Jimmy was the favorite. For a while, Kerr was considered for the role of Jet Rink’s adversary in Giant, but that role went to Dennis Hopper.
Ironically, at the time of his death, Jimmy had agreed to star in a theatrical revival of Emlyn Williams’ play, The Corn Is Green, which had been a successful movie starring Bette Davis in 1945, based on an original Broadway play that had first been presented in 1940. The role went to Kerr instead.
Kerr did appear in the 1958 film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein production of South Pacific. His singing voice was unconvincingly dubbed, and his career waned after that.
In 1970, he passed the California Bar and became a full-time Beverly Hills lawyer, drawing heavily upon his history as a handsome film star to attract business.
Glory in the Flower
DOWN AND DIRTY ON THE CASTING COUCH WITH WILLIAM INGE
Omnibus, sponsored and broadcast through CBS, became the longest running cultural series in the history of commercial television. It ran without advertising breaks and focused on the production of TV entertainment based on material from critically acclaimed writers, among them William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, James Thurber, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot. To that august list could be added William Inge, then one of the hottest playwrights in the county.
William Inge, author of Glory in the Flower.
Kansas-born, Inge was known as “the playwright of the Middle West,” a region from which Jimmy himself had emerged.
He became noted for his portraits of small-town life in the American heartland, with predicaments centered around solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relationships.
Specifically written for television, Glory in the Flower was set in a seedy roadhouse in the Middle West, where rowdy teenagers hung out. Through some connection, Jimmy managed to obtain a copy of the script, with the understanding that television premier was scheduled for October 4, 1953. Most of the cast had already been selected by director Andrew McCullough, and a prestigious one it was, starlighted by Jessica Tandy, who had scored huge recent success as Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway version of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, also starring Marlon Brando.
In Glory to the Flower, she was cast as Jackie, a school teacher in her 40s. During her own school days, she had “thrown herself” at Bus Riley, the best-looking guy in her class. Years later, when Bus (Ed Binns) returns to town, he’s not the man he was. He has turned into a lewd, womanizing troublemaker, and her illusions about him are shattered.
Jessica Tandy...shattered illusions.
Tandy’s real-life husband, the Canadian actor, Hume Cronyn, was cast as a philosophical bartender uttering such lines as, “Maybe we make it too tough for today’s teens. Maybe they’re afraid.”
The role of Bronco Evans was still up for grabs, and Jimmy wanted it. He was seeing Tennessee Williams at the time, and he went to him for advice. Jimmy had already met Inge at a New Years’ Party hosted by David Swift and his wife, the actress, Maggie McNamara. Inge had phoned him twice, but Jimmy hadn’t returned the call until he heard about the new teleplay.
Actually, he admitted to Stanley Haggart, “I’m really pissed that Inge didn’t use his influence to get me a role in his big hit, Picnic.”
Produced that same year, Picnic’s lead role of a drifter had gone to Ralph Meeker who played a stud who sets women’s hearts aflutter. Another role in Picnic that Jimmy might have played was that of Meeker’s small-town friend. That role was awarded instead to Jimmy’s rival, Paul Newman.
Meeting in Tennessee’s New York apartment, the playwright assured Jimmy, “You are Inge’s type. He goes for corn-fed farm boys from the Middle West, especially if they’re as good-looking and well-built as you are. You can get the role if you don’t mind taking off those jeans and dropping those jockey shorts, as you’ve already done on a number of occasions with yours truly, this slightly decadent Southern playwright who waited too late in life to start having sex and is desperately trying to make up for my oversight at this late date.”
Tennessee telephoned Inge on Jimmy’s behalf, and an appointment was set up for the following evening.
Unlike his usual lateness, Jimmy showed up on time for a drink with this former teacher of drama and English. Inge sensed a nervousness in him, and gave him a vodka and tried to bond with him through a discussion of their Midwestern roots.
“The town Kansas where I grew up, Independence, was a lovely old place with shade trees and large Victorian houses along Main Street. It had a river that ran through. There was an old wives’ tale that the Indians had left a curse on the river when they were driven out. Many people were drowned in that river, the revenge of the Indians, or so legend has it.”
The alcohol put Jimmy at ease, and he read some of Bronco’s scenes for Inge, who was very impressed, feeling that the young actor had captured the spirit of a character who liked to jitterbug to the sound of Bill Hayley and the Comets singing “Crazy Man, Crazy” on the jukebox. Bronco was in trouble with the police, who had caught him with pot.
After his reading, Inge told him, “You have the sex appeal of Bronco, and you also captured his wild, rebellious nature. Forgive me, but I’m considering writing in a scene where Bronco appears shirtless. Do you mind removing your shirt so I can see how you’ll look half-naked on stage?”
“Not at all,” Jimmy replied. Tennessee had warned him that Inge would be a bit shy about requesting what he really wanted, and that Jimmy would have to be the aggressor.
“Bill will want to give you a blow-job—nothing else,” Tennessee said.
Jimmy slowly removed his T-shirt in front of Inge’s admiring gaze. But he did more than that. He also unzipped his jeans and took them off, reserving his jockey shorts for a finale. When he finally dropped his underwear onto the carpet, he moved toward Inge, who was on the sofa and “eager to worship at my shrine,” as Jimmy described it to Tennessee later at a dinner party at Stanley Haggart’s apartment.
As Jimmy boasted, “Inge’s mouth was watering. By the time I’d finished with him, or rather, he finished me off, I knew I was Bronco.”
He stayed on and talked to Inge until around midnight. Inge held out the possibility that he might write big screen roles that would have a character that Jimmy could play.
Warren Beatty would emerge in the playwright’s future, and Inge’s crush on Jimmy would eventu
ally be transferred as a virtual obsession onto Beatty, who would star in his 1959 play, A Loss of Roses, as well as in film roles— Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Natalie Wood, and All Fall Down (1962) with Eva Marie Saint—that made Beatty a star.
Warren Beatty, later the object of Bill Inge’s obsessive affection, with Natalie Wood in Inge’s Splendor in the Grass.
Inge later revealed that he wished Jimmy had lived to play the male lead in the film version (1956) of Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe. The key role of the redneck cowboy went to Don Murray instead.
Before Jimmy left the apartment, the playwright had gotten very drunk. He told Jimmy, “People do not approve of the way I live my life, but they sometimes applaud my work. I’ll keep writing for public exposure while keeping my private life very private. But commercial success does not bring happiness. The only thing that can do that is love, which has never come my way.”
The next day, Inge lunched with the director of Glory in the Flower, Andrew McCullough, and almost demanded that he cast Jimmy in the role of Bronco.
“I knew what was up, and that Jimmy had put out,” McCullough claimed. “The old casting couch routine. When I met with Dean, I found he had an awful attitude—very snotty, very arrogant. As he started to read his lines, he put his feet up on a table, pulled out this very dangerous looking knife, and stabbed it into the table. I guess he was trying to send a signal to me not to reject him for the role of Bronco—or else curtains for me.”
On the first day of rehearsals, Jimmy met his fellow actors. The one he pursued most aggressively was Jessica Tandy. He had not seen any of her performances as Blanche DuBois on Broadway, but her interpretation of that role had become something of a legend, even though it was later overshadowed by Vivien Leigh’s Oscar-winning portrayal of that character on the screen. Brando, of course, had starred as Stanley Kowalski in both the original stage version and in its later screen adaptation.
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