While filming The Last Resort [the film adaptation of Darwin Porter’s bestselling novel, Butterflies in Heat] in Key West in the 1970s, actress Barbara Baxley said that she had known both Jimmy and Brando during the Fifties.
According to Baxley, “I remember seeing Brando at a party in Greenwich Village. He knew that I was Jimmy’s friend. I think these two guys had only known each other for a few weeks. Aware of our friendship, he came up to me. ‘You’d better get your boy to a psychiatrist right away,’ he told me. ‘He’s an emergency case. One crazed sicko! If you only knew what he wants me to do to him.’”
Already aware of the S&M implications of the Brando/Dean relationship, Baxley cautioned, “You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. You could just walk away.”
“That’s just what I’m going to do with you right now,” Brando said before retreating to the other end of the room.
“Self-destructive or not, Jimmy continued to see Brando even though I begged him not to,” Baxley claimed.
Soon, word reached many of Brando’s associates in Hollywood that he was having an affair with “The Mickey Mouse Marlon Brando,” a description that Jimmy hated among all others. He still carried around a dangerous knife and on occasion, he’d threaten to kill whoever used that Mickey Mouse reference in front of him..
When shooting began in Hollywood of Brando’s involvement in Julius Caesar (1953), Brando was rooming with his agent, Jay Kanter. When the Mexican actress, Movita Castenada, flew in, Kanter rented a house for Brando and his on-again, off-again “South of the Border” mistress in Laurel Canyon. But Brando was rarely at home, continuing with a wide number of affairs.
[Older than Brando, Castenada, or “Mo” as he called her, would become his second wife in 1960. She’d already had numerous affairs, beginning in 1935, when she had appeared with Clark Gable during his filming of Mutiny on the Bounty. She later had an affair with Errol Flynn. She had once been married to Jack Doyle, the Irish heavyweight boxer and singer.
Jimmy met “Mo” only once, when he’d visited Brando on the set of Desirée (1954), that cardboard costume drama which featured Brando as Napoléon. Jimmy talked to her briefly before she excused herself. “I’ve got to go to Marlon’s dressing room. He called me here today so he can ‘feck’ me during the lunch break.”
Movita Castenada: Fiery tempered, and with a gift for seducing A-list movie stars
Before leaving, she said, “You’re a cute kid. Young. I like that. Why don’t you come over some night for one of my fabulous Mexican dinners?” She gave him her phone number, but he never called her.
Instead, he went to lunch with London-born Jean Simmons, who was starring opposite Brando in Desirée. He told the lovely star that Castenada had made a pass at him. “I’m not into mothers this year,” he said. “Marlon can have his gypsy. I heard this Movita bitch was turning tricks when I was four years old.”
Before he left the set that day, he made a pass at Simmons, who rejected his advances. “I’m sure I’m missing out on something good. Perhaps I’ll change my mind. Give me a raincheck.”]
***
As the director of Julius Caesar (1953), Joseph Mankiewicz had assembled an all-star cast. Commenting wryly on the romantic imbroglios associated with his handsome male lead, Mankiewicz said, “Brando had his own star cast coming and going. I’ll name them: Greer Garson, Pier Angeli, Rita Moreno, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe on occasion. Even Stewart Granger. Brando even let John Gielgud blow him.”
Brando confided to Mankiewicz, “I don’t want any of the motley crew I’m dating to pin me down.” The director was astonished to hear such a distinguished group of actors and actresses referred to as a motley crew. “If a person wants an affair with me, he or she will have to learn my ground rules. I don’t want to sound immodest, but I am, after all, Marlon Brando, a fucking movie star. That means I can have any star or starlet in Hollywood I more or less want. I can’t really remember ever getting turned down. In relationships, I do the turning down. I’m the one who walks. No one walks out on me!”
Though stating that, he presented a different point of view to his producer, John Houseman. “Marlon is working his ass off,” Mankiewicz claimed. “And it’s a very talented and much fucked ass.”
During the first week of shooting, Houseman showed up frequently on the set. Although originally, it had been his idea to cast Brando as Marc Antony, he later confided his bitter disappointment with Brando’s acting ability to Mankiewicz. “I think our boy is awed by all this talent, especially Gielgud’s,” Houseman claimed. “He’s a stuttering bumpkin only remotely acquainted with the English language.”
Not wanting to interfere with Mankiewicz’s direction, Gielgud modestly sought and obtained the director’s permission to tutor Brando in Shakespearean speech patterns at night.
When Gielgud departed from the set, Mankiewicz turned to Houseman and said, “That British faggot wants to get into Marlon’s blue jeans. Or at least see what’s under the toga. I think he views these upcoming lessons as his golden opportunity. Gielgud, like that Dean boy, has developed a lovesick crush on Marlon.”
***
In the year that Julius Caesar was released, Stanley Kramer offered Brando the lead in The Wild One (1953).
Brando told anybody who was interested that he’d turned down the film script when it was first offered. “I told Kramer I wasn’t doing any motorcycle movies that year. ‘Get Jimmy Dean,’ I told him. ‘He also rides a bike.’” As the script was continually weakened by mandates from the censors at the Breen office, Brando grew more and more disillusioned with the movie, becoming increasingly inarticulate, finally resorting to mumbling.
Finally, Kramer prevailed in getting Brando to change his mind. The Wild One became the original motorcycle film, a cult movie for young bikers, who imitated Brando’s leather jacket and blue jeans.
As a fellow motorcycle rider, Jimmy followed suit, appearing on the street looking like one of Brando’s bikers, even like Brando himself except for his size.
One fan later claimed that Brando’s “sideburns, overt sexuality, and grooving to the jukebox invented the newly emerging Elvis Presley, whose name at first sounded like that of a Presbyterian deacon.”
***
Although he loudly and frequently proclaimed that he hated parties, Brando was seen at quite a few of them, especially those in Greenwich Village during the making of On the Waterfront (1954). Norman Mailer threw a party and invited Brando, who showed up with Rita Moreno. “If a woman were married, you could almost guarantee it that Marlon would make a pass at her, even with Miss Moreno looking on. My wife was no exception.”
One night at a party in Brooklyn, Brando brought as his “date,” James Dean.
“How Brando could later proclaim he didn’t meet Dean until he was starring in East of Eden for Kazan is beyond me,” said Jimmy Schauffer, an out-of-work actor at that Brooklyn party. “All of us along Broadway knew that Dean and Brando were carrying on. It was the worst-kept secret. From what I observed that night, Brando was definitely in charge of the relationship. If he wanted something, perhaps a drink, he sent Dean to get it. When Brando was ready to go, he got up and without saying a word Dean tagged along like a puppydog after its master. We’d also heard rumors that there was more than a little S&M in that relationship. Guess who the S was?”
***
When Jimmy reached Hollywood, he found Clark Gable was no longer king, having surrendered the throne to Brando.
Soon, the press was linking Jimmy’s persona to the already established image of Brando. Photoplay infuriated Jimmy by running their pictures side by side under the headline THE BOY WHO’D LIKE TO BE BRANDO. The columnist Sidney Skolsky adored Marilyn Monroe, but rarely had anything good to say about Jimmy. “The best way to describe him is to say that he is Marlon Brando seven years ago.”
In a rare interview with Bob Thomas, the AP reporter, Jimmy claimed, “When a new actor emerges, he’s always compared to a more establish
ed star. Once, Brando was compared to Monty Clift. Even John Barrymore was compared to the great Edwin Booth. Hell, let them compare me to W.C. Fields. Perhaps if I dressed in drag, I might be taken for Mae West herself.”
“That boy sure had a wicked sense of humor,” Thomas said. “I printed only part of the quote. Mae didn’t like men dressing in drag to impersonate her.”
In another column, Thomas wrote, “Dean told me that he was convinced that Brando hated him. Brando, however, indicated to me that this was not the case.”
Photographer Ray Schatt in James Dean: A Portrait, wrote: “At times, he seems obsessed with Brando. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, he would begin quoting from A Streetcar Named Desire. One time, during a discussion of Method acting, he took off his shirt and ripped his undershirt to shreds, yelling, STELLA!’ in an imitation of Brando as Stanley Kowalski calling for his wife.”
Author Randall Riese claimed, “Granted, the similarities between Marlon Brando and James Dean were obvious. They both had an affinity for mumbling and motorcycles. They both played the recorder and bongo drums. They both belonged to the unruly school of fashion. They both wore scowls on their faces, boots on their feet, and attitude in their jeans. They were offered the same type of roles. Brando not only turned down Rebel Without a Cause back in 1947, but he also rejected Dean’s role in East of Eden. Finally, and most significantly, they were both discovered by Elia Kazan.”
William Zinser in The New York Herald Tribune in March of 1955 wrote: “James Dean inevitably will be compared to Marlon Brando, for Kazan stamped him with the same hesitant manner of speech, the same blind groping for love and security that he gave Brando in On the Waterfront.”
Christine White, who for a time had had a romantic involvement with Jimmy, later claimed that, “Jimmy was fixated on Marlon for a while. I was going to a party where Jimmy was not invited. He begged me to take him, but I didn’t think the host would go for that. When I got home, Jimmy bled me for the most minute details about what Marlon did, what he said, how he walked, what he drank, and how he behaved.”
Reporters and, in time, biographers, soon picked up on Jimmy’s fascination with Brando. But they never knew, or at least didn’t write about, the sexual link between the two lovers and rivals.
Charles Higham, in Brando, The Unauthorized Biography, wrote, “Jimmy fell in love with Marlon after viewing The Wild One and besieged him with phone calls.”
Higham got it wrong, as he sometimes did. Jimmy was in love with Brando, but long before either of them ever heard of The Wild One. Not only that, Jimmy didn’t have to pester Brando with phone calls: On many occasions, if he wanted to reach out to him, all he had to do was turn his head toward the face resting on the pillow beside him. Of course, Higham, and so many others, were misled by Brando’s own statements about Dean in his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me.
“Dean was never a friend of mine,” Brando wrote. [Perhaps not, Marlon, but he was your lover.] “He had an idée fixe about me. Whatever I did, he did. He was always trying to get close to me. He used to call me up. I’d listen to him talking on the answering service. Asking for me, leaving messages. But I never spoke up. I never called him back.” [Really, Marlon, really…]
Bill Gunn, Jimmy’s African American friend, tried to put comparisons to Brando in perspective: “The funk of Jimmy was important. He bridged the jump we made, clear from the 1950s to the 1970s. Sure, he probably watched Brando and took things from him, but imitating someone is also a way to become yourself through an endorsement of yourself.”
Gunn did admit that Brando and Jimmy were alike in one respect. “Both of them liked to play games. I was often the victim of one of Jimmy’s practical jokes. Brando also liked to pull a ‘fuck-you-stunt,’ such as scratching his ass and pulling buggers from his nose at the same time.”
“As an actor, I had no desire to imitate Brando,” Jimmy claimed to a hometown reporter in Fairmount, Indiana. “I don’t attempt imitation. Nevertheless, it is very difficult not to be impressed with Brando, not to carry the image of a highly successful actor. But that’s as far as it goes. I feel within myself there are expressions just as valid, and I’ll have a few years to develop my own style.”
Of course, his prediction for his future did not happen.
Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio weighed in with his view: “Brando and Dean are two totally different kinds of personalities. What was common at that time was the characters they played. I don’t care what the authors may have intended, they brought onto the stage what we call the anti-hero, the person who cannot express himself, the person who is not a hero in the ordinary sense of the word.”
Film historian John Francis Kreidl noted, “Jimmy arrived in Hollywood when the film industry was desperately struggling to stave off competition from the little black box. Americans were staying at home and watching television instead of going to the movies around twice a week, as they had before.” At Warner Brothers, the search was on for the box office idols of the latter 1950s, and the studio focused on Jimmy as one of their best hopes for stardom. “Brando was getting a little long in the tooth,” said one studio executive, “no longer convincing as a young rebel.”
Robert Tysl, a Hollywood insider, claimed, “The campaign staged by Warners to brand Dean with Brando’s old image was obvious and undeniable.”
At parties, Jimmy became known for his devastating impressions of Brando. Not to be outdone, Brando at gatherings performed his impression of Jimmy. Hedda Hopper was at one party to witness his act. “If Jimmy had walked in and seen Brando’s impression, he would flee from the camera forever and a day.”
When Jimmy heard what Brando was doing, he retaliated. He topped Brando’s act by doing his impression of Brando as Charlie Chaplin.
Hopper’s rival, columnist Louella Parsons, saw Jimmy’s Chaplin act. “I laughed so hilariously, “she said, “I pissed in my bloomers. I hadn’t had such fun since I attended this fancy gathering where Mae West let a fart so big that it smothered Los Angeles in smog for two days and nights.”
As Jimmy moved deeper into Hollywood, he increasingly resented the constant barrage of comparisons to Brando. When introduced to people, he warned them, “Don’t give me that shit that I remind you of Marlon Brando. There’s one god damn difference between us. I love bullfights, and he views them as cruelty to animals. I love a blood sport—the bloodier the better for my tastes.” He still carried that vicious-looking knife he’d purchased in New York.
Warned in advance, gossips took to comparing Jimmy to Brando, but only behind his back.
Director Elia Kazan frankly admitted, “I do not like James Dean. He is obviously sick in the head. I don’t know what is the matter with him. He got crazier as we moved ahead with our shooting schedule for East of Eden. But I’d rather not talk about him. He was not like Brando. Dean was a cripple inside. He was so sick and so twisted. Brando is not sick. He is merely troubled.”
“Brando was clearly Dean’s hero during the filming of our movie,” Kazan said. “Everyone knew that. He dropped his voice to a cathedral hush when he spoke of Brando. I invited Brando to come to our set to meet Dean and to enjoy some hero worship.” Kazan seemed completely ignorant that months earlier, Jimmy and Brando had become lovers, and that Jimmy had long been intimate with what the older actor called “my noble tool.”
During Brando’s visit to the set, neither he nor Jimmy gave any clues that they knew each other as David had known Bathsheba.
Truman Capote insisted that “Marlon confessed everything to me in Tokyo.”
The gossipy author, Truman Capote, had been introduced to Jimmy through their mutual friend, Tennessee Williams. Around the time of Jimmy’s death, he also interviewed Brando extensively in Japan when he was making The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).
He told Tennessee and others, “If there’s one thing I know, it’s dick. Neither Brando nor Dean were in the category of Milton Berle, Forrest Tucker, or John Ireland, not to mention R
ock Hudson. But they performed well with what they had. I promised to write great roles for both of them. Tennessee used that promises as a seduction technique. Why not Little Me?”
“I also knew the deep dark secret they were hiding,” Capote claimed. “Brando and Dean were lovers. Lovers isn’t exactly the right word. From what I saw, there was no love there, only sex.”
“Actually, Jimmy and Brando were sexually attracted to each other, but were also rivals—and at times, they positively seemed to hate each other,” said William Bast. “It was the sort of relationship that Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara had in Gone With the Wind. I watched as they glided through Hollywood pretending they were only casual acquaintances. They fooled a lot of people, mainly movie reporters.”
Gary Carey wrote a biography of Marlon Brando, The Only Contender, in which he claimed, “James Dean was the most flagrant and successful of the Brando imitators. A surprising number of people who otherwise have good taste prefer Dean to Brando.”
***
In 1954, Brando and Jimmy’s relationship became one of the murkiest and most tangled romantic dramas offscreen in Hollywood, evocative of the steamy and contentious romantic roundelays of Arlene Dahl, Lana Turner, Lex Barker, and Fernando Lamas.
“What an embroglio,” Bast said. “The convoluted affairs going on were a tangled whirlpool of churning, conflicting emotions, betrayals, and sexual attraction with both gay and straight sex.”
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