James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  At one of these events, Tennessee invited Jimmy to dinner with two of his favorite actresses, Geraldine Page and Maureen Stapleton, both from the Actors Studio.

  Stapleton had already scored an enormous hit on Broadway appearing in The Rose Tattoo opposite Eli Wallach. Likewise, Page had appeared Off-Broadway in a successful revival of Tennessee’s Summer and Smoke.

  Before both actresses arrived at his apartment, Tennessee gave some coaching to each of them: “My secret for dealing with Jimmy involves talking to him as if you’re addressing a wounded animal or a sick child.”

  Stapleton was the first to arrive. During the first moments of their reunion, Tennessee called her “Maw,” and she called him “Paw.”

  “What is this Maw and Paw shit?” Jimmy asked.

  “We named each other that in 1947, based on The Egg and I, the movie where Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride played Ma and Pa Kettle,” Stapleton said.

  “How you guys identify with those hayseeds defies human imagination,” Jimmy said.

  When Page arrived a few minutes later, Tennessee complimented her on “the witchery” she’d brought to her role in Summer and Smoke.

  Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach exploring the entrapments of love and ego in Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo.

  “I’m so glad you approve,” Page said. “I must confess that José Quintero told me that you didn’t want me in the role. You knew, of course, that I can’t guarantee box office. I hope it was my lack of box office clout and not a critique of my acting.”

  “At first, I thought your role demanded more power and technique than you possessed,” Tennessee said. “But how wrong I was.”

  Later, when he went to answer a phone call from Tallulah Bankhead, Page spoke about what Elia Kazan had told her about Tennessee at the Actors Studio.

  “He warned Tenn never to talk to an actor, and to never even consider being a director of one of his own plays. Gadge believed that Tenn’s innate shyness and vagueness about everything would only confuse the actor.”

  Then she made a statement that completely astonished Jimmy. “Don’t let anybody know I think this, but I believe that Tenn doesn’t even read his plays after writing them. He doesn’t know anything about them. You want to shake him and knock him on the head and say, ‘Open up and let me talk to you.’”

  At some point during the evening, the talk turned to two of Jimmy’s rivals, Marlon Brando and Monty Clift, both of whom were well-known to Stapleton and Page.

  “I’ve tried to place Jimmy here in the pantheon of gods that include Monty and Marlon,” Stapleton said. “Of the two rebels, Monty is the aristocrat, Marlon the proletarian.”

  “But how do I fit in?” Jimmy asked.

  “You, my dear, are the surly younger brother of the other two,” Stapleton answered.

  “If you get the right parts, you’ll be the first modern teenager of the 1950s,” Page accurately predicted, her prophecy coming true after his casting in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. “The standards set by Mickey Rooney playing Andy Hardy are old-fashioned and corny,” she said. “America in the 50s is far too sophisticated for that.”

  “I’m considering writing a play based on all our rebel males,” Tennessee said. “Before I met Paul Newman, I thought Marlon Brando was the most beautiful male in the world. Before that, I used to cite Monty Clift, who has a beautiful face but a scrawny, hairy body.”

  “In other words, first I gave the crown to Monty, but then took it off his head and placed it on Marlon’s. Then I passed it to Newman. But now, I must remove it from Newman’s head and reposition it directly onto the glorious brow of one Jimmy Dean.”

  “I have a title for your play,” Jimmy chimed in, impishly: “The Fickle Heart.”

  Geraldine Page as a sexually and emotionally repressed belle, emoting with a hedonist in Tennessee’s Summer and Smoke.

  “Not bad,” Tennessee said. “When I created Stanley Kowalski, I was intrigued with the beefy brutish type. But for Jimmy, I plan to write not about some muscle-bound lug, but about a very different young man, one who is lean, mean, and astonishingly beautiful. I want this new young boy to inspire sexual fantasies in women and in certain men of a distinct sexual preference.”

  “I hope I’ll be worthy of the role,” Jimmy said.

  “All of us know you will,” said Stapleton, who was drunk at this point.

  “I conceived of Stanley Kowalski as a dandy, but not in the traditional sense of the word,” Tennessee said. “He was a dandy in extreme masculine attire, using his magnificent body to intimidate others, both men and women. He could also bewilder with his moody silences. I wanted to portray Stanley with a latent fire burning inside him, but one ready to burst into flames at any minutes. One capable of rape. He demonstrated this every time he stood on the stage, stripped to the waist, with muscles rippling.”

  “Jimmy does not have the quality of the brute,” Tennessee continued. “Nor would I want to create another Stanley Kowalski. Jimmy’s part calls for more of the sexy sensitive.”

  “In my view, Monty, Marlon, and Jimmy are a modern sexual trinity. Rebel males who never integrated into society. They are the new, 1950s versions of Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, and John Garfield. Incidentally, after it was offered to him, Garfield rejected the role of Kowalski, claiming that it was ‘too slight.’”

  “What a fool,” Jimmy said.

  “As an actor, you are so very different from Newman,” Tennessee said. “It takes a long time for him to work up to a character. He starts slowly, after hitting his mark, he becomes marvelous. On the other hand, you come on like dynamite the moment your image makes its entrance.”

  As Stapleton and Page were leaving, a drunken Tennessee kissed them goodbye at the door. “You know something? When I die, The New York Times will include a tantalizing detail in my obit. ‘Tennessee Williams was the playwright who seduced each of the four most famous rebel males of the postwar stage and screen: Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean.”

  ***

  SURVIVING IN SHOW-BIZ

  Handsome Playmates of a Decadent, Major-League Playwright

  Left to right: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, James Dean

  Tennessee was having lunch with the prominent Broadway director, Josh Logan, when James Dean was being discussed: “I realized that many people claim that Jimmy imitates Brando,” Tennessee said. “But actually, I think both of them are imitating the mannerisms of Gadge [Kazan].”

  Her husband, Paul, introduced his literarily brilliant, bohemian, and lesbian wife, Jane Bowles, to Cherifa (Amina Bakalia), a country woman working at the grain market in Tangier. Cherifa became Jane's publicly acknowledged live-in partner.

  Jane, one of the most spectacularly eccentric (and later, unstable) writers in America, expressed something akin to adoration for James Dean.

  In response, Logan said, “I hear that Gadge and Jimmy had a sort of father-son relationship during the making of East of Eden. If I had directed the boy, I would have visited his dressing room every morning and again at four o’clock every afternoon. On each occasion, I’d extract his honey. What sort of relationship do you have with the boy?”

  “Like Gadge, it’s a sort of father-and-son thing,” Tennessee said. “But in this case, it’s incestuous.”

  ***

  One night, to Jimmy, Tennessee poured out his frustration with Merlo.

  “I have a spy in Key West, Danny Stirrup. He calls me every day and lets me know what ‘The Horse’ did the previous night. Frankie lays out all night in the taverns, returning to my house with two or three cars filled with Key West sailors. My house there has become a bordello and honky-tonk. ‘The Horse’ probably fucks with most of the sailor trade. He’s also developed friendships with some local guys and gals, non-military. They’re the dregs of life, each washed up on the shores of Key West after being run out of every town on the Eastern Seaboard. With apologies to Gertrude Stein, I call this motley crew
‘the ‘Afterbirth of the Lost Generation’ crowd.”

  To his credit, Tennessee did at least try to get roles for Jimmy outside the orbit of his own plays.

  In 1953, he introduced him to Jane Bowles, the American expatriate writer and playwright, during one of her visits to New York. Diagnosed in her later years as mentally unstable, she was the wife of composer Paul Bowles. Tennessee had defined her to Jimmy as the finest writer in the English language.

  “Before you meet her, know that she has a unique sensibility,” he said. “She’s a charming woman, with a big, fat Moroccan Fatima lover back in Tangier. Jane is full of affection, so don’t be alarmed if she expresses panic. At first, I thought her act was just theatrical, but now I know it is quite genuine. Jane and I both agree that our guardians will one day pack us off to the asylum.”

  After spending a few hours with them, Bowles and Jimmy became “like kindred spirits,” in Tennessee’s views. She ended the evening by telling him that there was a key role in her upcoming play, In the Summer House, and that she was going to recommend him to its producer Oliver Smith, himself a famous designer and director.

  Subsequently Smith agreed to an audition, and Tennessee accompanied Jimmy to the theater. “Jimmy tried his best, really putting forth an effort, but Oliver told us that he was wrong for the role,” Tennessee said. “Jimmy never could stand rejection very well, and he was bitterly disappointed.”

  On their way out of the theater, Jimmy grabbed Tennessee’s arm and looked defiantly into his face. “Someday, when Oliver Smith isn’t even a footnote in theatrical history, the whole god damn, mother-fucking world will know who James Dean is.”

  “I Don’t Trust These Sons of Bitches”

  —JAMES DEAN, IN REFERENCE TO ELIA KAZAN AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

  In December of 1954, East of Eden was screened before a special audience that included such cultural luminaries as Josh Logan, Tennessee Williams, and Christopher Isherwood and his lover, Don Bachardy. Collectively, these men met later for drinks and dinner. Each was enthusiastic in his belief that a new star had risen in the Hollywood firmament.

  “I was impressed with how he used his whole body, not just his face, to express emotion,” Isherwood said. “At times, he looked like he was writhing in pain, and expressed that with his entire body. I mean, he appeared sort of twisted, rather spastic. In some scenes, he walked like a man crippled, not necessarily by his bones, but by life itself.”

  A few days later, Tennessee met with Elia Kazan, who had directed East of Eden. Kazan told him, “There was a scene where Jimmy had to show great anxiety. He was worried that he might not be able to pull it off. As a means of preparing for it, he told me he’d gone all day without taking a piss. When the cameras were turned on him, he was very uptight, perfect for the moment, even though he was about to piss his pants. He did the scene in just one take and then rushed to the toilet.”

  When Jimmy was with Tennessee, he expressed nothing but praise and support, but behind his back, he sometimes voiced a different set of opinions. During the filming of East of Eden, he wrote to his sometimes girlfriend, Barbara Glenn, with this:

  “Gadge and Tennessee are very nice gentlemen, at least on the surface. But I wouldn’t trust the sons of bitches as far as I could throw them. They can take advantage of an innocent, poor farm boy like me. God knows what unspeakable acts they’ll force me to commit in order to enhance my screen career.”

  ***

  In Key West, Maria St. Just telephoned Darwin Porter and asked him to escort her to the local showing of East of Eden.

  Before the movie had run for only forty-five minutes, she dramatically arose from her seat and loudly demanded: “Take me out of this damn place. I have never seen such a boring performance in my life. Dean is an impossible actor.”

  According to Porter, “Maria was almost psychotically jealous of anyone who got close to Tennessee, especially James Dean. She told unflattering stories about him and swore that he was a poseur, with absolutely no talent. She also detested Frankie Merlo, referring to him as a Sicilian peasant, common, uneducated, and ill bred. And she had a particular venom for Tennessee’s lady friends, especially Anna Magnani. Frankie and Dean weren’t the only objects of her contempt: She frequently threw poison darts at Vivien Leigh, Maureen Stapleton, and Tallulah Bankhead.”

  “Although she professed great love for Tennessee, she could also be scathingly critical of him. She especially disliked what she called the homosexual element in some of his plays.”

  Also according to Porter, “I agreed with Tennessee’s assessment of her: Most women hated her, especially Tallulah, and few men knew what to think of her. Gore Vidal told us that he was afraid of her. ‘She’s such a forceful personality that at times, she just seems to envelop Tennessee,’ Vidal said.”

  “That beak nose of hers was always turned up at people she considered inferior,” Porter said. “She claimed that Dean still stunk of the barnyard and of the hogs he slopped.”

  Maria St. Just came in a small package and stood about 4 foot 9”, but she was formidable, her face crowned by dark chestnut hair. Her eyes were not exactly brown. They were changeable, at time appearing a shade of gray like that of a foggy morning in November.”

  “She claimed that she had been Tennessee’s inspiration for Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Porter said.

  “She was constantly whining about money. She never had enough. She gave Tennessee emotional support, and he in turn had to give her financial aid. Behind her back, he always complained to friends about the money he was having to shell out.”

  Was the Character of Brick,

  THE CLOSETED, DEEPLY TORMENTED ANTI-HERO OF TENNESSEE’S CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF,

  Inspired by James Dean?

  In 1961, at a dinner party in Key West, Tennessee told his guests that he had used some of the character of James Dean in his literary construction of Brick, the closeted homosexual and former football hero in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Present at the party that night were Margaret Foresman, managing editor of The Key West Citizen, author James Kirkwood [one of the creative forces behind the Broadway success of A Chorus Line], and set designers Stanley Haggart and Danny Stirrup.

  “In 1954, Jimmy was terrified and in agony over the possibility that, based on his increasing fame, his homosexual past might be exposed in the tabloids,” Tennessee said. “He seemed deeply conflicted about that, with an anxiety I wove into Brick’s character in my play.”

  “Jimmy kept asking me if I thought he were gay or not. I told him he didn’t need to define things so harshly, and that with a certain finesse, he’d be able to lead a life in both worlds, as so many other movie stars did. ‘Millions of men around the world are bisexual,’ I assured him. But he didn’t seem to want to accept that as a possibility.”

  [Revised countless times, the script of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof established that Maggie the Cat had been jealous of her husband’s inseparable friendship with Skipper, his “bromance” football buddy. Skipper had attempted to make love with Maggie as a means of proving his own heterosexuality and to establish that there were no romantic undercurrents associated with his friendship with Brick. Even before the opening act, it is established that Skipper was unable to consummate the sex act with Maggie, and that in the aftermath, he confessed to Brick his failed attempt at an adventure with his wife, and his undying love for Brick himself. Reacting to the news, Brick had rejected Skipper, who subsequently kills himself, thereby compelling the tormented and very conflicted Brick to descend into alcoholism and to desert Maggie’s bed altogether.]

  Tennessee claimed that at length with Jimmy, he both discussed and analyzed the character of Brick, holding out to Jimmy the promise that he would eventually star in that role on Broadway when the play opened in the spring of 1955.

  He said that the theme of the play had originated as a short story called Three Against Grenada, which was eventually retitled Three Players of a Summer Game and published in The New Yorker. It w
as the story of a young man who disappears behind a comforting veil of alcohol, eventually establishing his psychic residency at the bottom of a shot glass. As Tennessee put it, “Brick is like a man trying to finish a race with a sprained ankle.”

  Scenes from two different, world-famous productions of Tennessee Williams’ blockbusting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  Upper photo: Ben Gazzara and Barbara Bel Geddes on Broadway in 1955, and (lower photo) Paul Newman with Elizabeth Taylor in the heavily censored Hollywood version of 1958.

  Was the sexually frustrated female character of Maggie the Cat inspired by Tennessee’s hellacious friend, Maria St. Just?

  And was the repressed homosexual male inspired by James Dean?

  Tennessee himself always said “yes.”

  “Kazan extensively refashioned my play,” Tennessee said, “and rejected Jimmy for the role, even though he’d directed him so brilliantly in East of Eden. He still viewed Jimmy as an adolescent, and he wanted a more masculine figure to portray Brick, the former football star—hence the rugged Ben Gazzara.”

  “Three years later [in 1958], Brick’s role in the film version went to Paul Newman, of course, and I was furious that the censors removed so many of the homosexual elements in my play. I accused all of them of sabotaging my work. Maybe Jimmy might have been perfect for the part. I don’t know. I’m still blind with fury at the way Cat reached the screen.”

  Anna Magnani (“La Lupa”)

  EXTENDS A BOUDOIR INVITATION TO JIMMY

  Tennessee and Jimmy were last seen in public in 1955 at the Crescendo Nightclub in Los Angeles. Tennessee escorted Anna Magnani, and Jimmy arrived with his latest girlfriend, Lilli Kardell, a nineteen-year-old Swedish actress who was under contract to Universal.