“Do you want to see it?” Lorenzo asked.
“Absolutely not!”
Those were Montgomery Clift’s last known words.
Chapter Thirteen
IT COULDN’T BE LOVE: JAMES DEAN VS.
PAUL NEWMAN
Competing for the Same Roles, Sharing the Same Lovers
PIER ANGELI, SAL MINEO
“So help me God, every time I went to read for a part in New York, that son-of-a-bitch, James Dean, would be there. Every place I went, he went.”
—Paul Newman to William Bast (1952)
“James Dean is dead. You can be the next James Dean!”
—Warners’ executive to Paul Newman (1955)
“I think Dean would have surpassed Marlon Brando and me. He really could have gone for the classics.”
—Paul Newman (1972)
As regards his appeal for casting in films, after the success of Marlon Brando, James Dean saw himself emerging with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen as part of a cluster of similar “types.”
As stated by Jimmy, “We were new kinds of heroes, the existential cow-boy. My favorite philosopher, Elbert Hubbard, wrote, ‘Geniuses always come in groups because groups produce the friction that generates light.’”
In September of 1952, Paul Newman shared many of the same dreams as Jimmy. Each of them had wanted entrance to the Actors Studio, and each was fantasizing about stardom on the stage and screen.
Later that autumn, with his wife, Jacqueline Witte, stashed away on Staten Island with their young son, Scott, Newman was enjoying a brief flirtation with a young actress, Sally Beckham.
Beckham’s good looks made up for her lack of talent as an actress. Alongside Trevor Long, she had worked on a skit for presentation to the membership of Actors Studio, hoping that each of them would be accepted for membership. Three days before the audition, Long came down with the flu.
In desperation, Beckham asked Newman to play a scene with her from Battle of Angels, an early play by Tennessee Williams. He readily agreed, hoping to enter the august precincts of that school, too.
When he got there, Newman turned around to stare into the face of a broodingly handsome young man with an appealing vulnerability. On closer look, he seemed dangerous. Perhaps psychotic.
“Hi, I’m James Dean,” he said. “Loved your performance. But you need to find your fire. If you’d get up there on stage with me, we could play a love scene in front of all these fuckers. You and me, emoting together, would set this whole studio on fire.”
“I usually play love scenes with girls,” Newman said defensively.
“Spice up your life with some variety,” Jimmy said.
“Hey, pal, slow down,” Newman said. “I’m just a country boy from Ohio. Back where I come from, we like to work up to things. First, a few harmless dates. Get to know each other a bit.”
“Life’s too short for that shit.” Then he lit a cigarette and offered one to Newman. “A smoke? Shall I light for you?”
“No, I light my own.”
“Stubborn little fucker, aren’t you?” Jimmy said. “I love a challenge. I want to be the guy who breaks you in.”
“Let’s cool it a bit,” Newman said. “The temperature’s rising.”
“Yeah, and that’s an impressive hard-on rising in your pants. Somebody, and I know who, wants to fuck James Dean.” Possessively, he linked his arm with Newman’s. “Let’s hit the sidewalk and give the queens a treat. The two prettiest boys in New York parading down the avenue. We’ll have them salivating, but we’ll have eyes only for each other. C’mon, Blue Eyes, let’s get the hell out of here.”
***
It wasn’t until 6AM the following morning that Newman finally boarded the Staten Island Ferry for transit from Manhattan back to his apartment. He’d been out all night with Jimmy and hadn’t called home. Whatever reception he got from Jackie is lost to history.
Portrait of Paul Newman with his “almost forgotten” first wife, Jackie Witte, “stashed”—as gossips had it—“way the hell out on Staten Island.”
What isn’t lost are some insights into the tortured relationship that Newman launched with Jimmy during the few years that remained until his death.
Jimmy, perhaps sadistically way, insisted in sharing details about his sexual trysts with his sometimes lover and patron, Rogers Brackett. It is only because Brackett in later life revealed the details of Jimmy’s private life to many of his friends that we know about the Jimmy’s links to Newman.
***
Newman was probably surprised when Jimmy took him to an address on West 38th Street near Fifth Avenue, Brackett’s elegantly furnished retreat in a relatively posh neighborhood. Perhaps Newman imagined that the young actor would be living in a seedy hotel room. “I’m a kept boy,” Jimmy explained. “It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s what I’m doing for now. Hanging out with an older man is a learning experience in case I ever have to play a male whore on screen.”
“I can play many roles, but I’d never accept the part of a male whore,” Newman said with conviction. [Apparently, he’d changed his mind by the time of his casting as hustler chance Wayen in Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams.]
According to Brackett, “It’s safe to assume that Jimmy was like no other lover Newman had known before or would know again. When the Indiana farm boy with the angelic face in the faded jeans met the pretty boy with the intense blue eyes from Shaker Heights, a volcano erupted…at least for a while. Jimmy could never sustain such intensity for longer periods. Many of his relationships continued, but his love-making became more casual after his burning passions subsided.”
“If Jimmy is to be believed,” Brackett continued, “Newman fell madly in love with him, but from what I’ve heard, he’s a level-headed guy who eventually came to his senses, but not before he embarked on that perilous journey as Jimmy’s lover. I certainly sympathize with Newman. Following Jimmy around like a lovesick puppy is a descent into hell. I should know!”
From the very beginning of his relationship with Newman, Jimmy wanted to be in charge. He gave Newman a copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Jimmy claimed he’d read it eighteen times—“and it changed my life.”
Newman reacted differently. During one of his crossings from Manhattan to Staten Island on the ferry, Newman read its first chapter. Finding it silly and ridiculous, he tossed it into the sea.
During late afternoons of the period when their love affair was still torrid, Newman and Jimmy would meet at the Blue Ribbon Cafe, an actors’ hangout in the Broadway district. Newman had usually finished his day’s casting rounds, and Jimmy had often spent part of the day involved with some minor role in a television production.
One afternoon at the Blue Ribbon, Newman found Jimmy sitting in the corner, nursing a coffee and wearing a red baseball cap. On the table rested another red baseball cap. “Put it on,” he ordered.
Newman tried on the cap, finding that it fitted. “From now on,” Jimmy told him, “I want us to walk around in matching red baseball caps. It’ll be a bond between us. Let people think what they will.”
Newman not only wore the baseball cap that day, but was soon seen on the streets of New York walking with Jimmy, wearing his matching cap. Even after Jimmy’s untimely death, Newman was spotted on the West Coast wearing that red baseball cap. And then one day he no longer wore it.
When Brackett returned to New York from one of his many trips to Chicago, Jimmy sadistically pointed out to him the stains of semen he’d exchanged with Newman on Brackett’s bed. Jimmy seemed to take delight in describing in minute detail the sex he’d enjoyed while his sponsor was away. “I fucked him; he fucked me, and I taught him to swallow my spit just like you do,” Jimmy claimed.
Brackett was always hurt and jealous, but at that point in their relationship, he was willing to hang on. “It was the price I paid for keeping Jimmy in my life.”
“I am liberating that boy from Ohio,” Jimmy told Brackett ab
out Newman.
Jimmy and Newman shared endless long walks and deep, intense talks in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village, where they dared to dream impossible dreams. At one point, Jimmy suggested that Newman desert his family.
According to Jimmy’s plan, both of them could set out hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles. “I want to leave without a cent in our pockets,” Jimmy claimed. “We’d be on the cutting edge. Live off the land, or as Tennessee Williams says, ‘depend on the kindness of strangers.’ Remember one thing: A pretty boy never has to go hungry.”
“Are you suggesting we hustle?” Newman asked.
“Why not? Everybody in life, from the President of the United States to some housewife preparing dinner for her husband, is a hustler.”
Apparently, Newman went through periods of enormous guilt about his neglect of his growing family. At some point it was rumored that Jackie found out about his relationship with Jimmy and demanded that he give it up.
Presumably, Newman agreed to her demands and promised to drop Jimmy, but he never did. If anything, he became more secretive than ever.
Their relationship continued even, or especially, after their migrations to Hollywood, even though they arrived there through very different means.
***
“Homosexual panic,” as labeled by Newman’s biographer, Lawrence J. Quirk, set in almost immediately after his first instance of “dirty sex” with Jimmy. But in spite of his misgivings, Newman would return again and again to Jimmy’s side.
***
Brooks Clift, the relatively stable older brother of Monty Clift, met Newman after he’d been seeing Jimmy for two months.
According to Brooks, “When I first met Newman, he was struggling for his own identity, both as a man and as an actor. He had begun picking up some of my brother’s mannerisms, many of which flowed into his acting style. Newman had tried being Brando, and later, he tried being Monty. I later learned he’d also taken up with James Dean. I think he wanted to draw upon their talent. It must have been difficult for him.”
“When he went to Hollywood, Newman was at first pigeonholed as ‘the second Brando,’” Brooks said. “Then, after a few pictures, he was referred to as the new Monty Clift. Then, he began competing with James Dean for parts. And aside from their professional rivalry, there was also this private thing going on between them. I suspect that Monty, Brando, and Dean hauled our squeaky clean Ohio Newman boy down a murky road unlike any he’d ever traveled before.”
Brooks had said to Newman, “You and Jimmy are lining yourself up to become the heirs apparent to Monty and Brando. Good luck.”
“Hell, man, I haven’t completely decided that I even want to be a movie star,” Newman responded.
“Cut the shit!” Brooks told him. “Every loser at the Actors Studio expresses a disdain for Hollywood. But just offer one of the fuckers a movie contract, and I bet you those Method farts will start salivating.”
***
One afternoon, Jimmy invited Newman for a walk through Central Park. “I once had this diamondback rattler as a pet. When he grew too big, I released him behind that bush over there. Let’s go over and see if he’s still there.”
“I don’t cotton to diamondbacks,” Newman said. Nevertheless, he followed Jimmy into the bushes.
There, concealed from passersby behind a screen of shrubbery, Jimmy grabbed Newman and pulled him close. “Kiss me,” he commanded. Newman obliged, although he wasn’t comfortable with this display of homoerotic love in a public park. Jimmy was an exhibitionist, Newman was not.
“I’d prefer this in some other place,” Newman said. “Like in private.”
“But I need it now,” Jimmy protested.
Back on the park’s main trail, Newman bought Jimmy a hot dog for lunch. After eating it, he impulsively turned to Newman, tugging at his arm. “Let’s leave together this afternoon,” he urged. “Drop everything. Leave everybody behind. I want to hitchhike with you back to Indiana.”
“The last time you wanted to hitchhike, it was to Hollywood,” Newman said.
“Fuck, Hollywood!” Jimmy claimed. “I’ll never go there. I’ve changed my mind. I want out of the theater. Not that I was ever really in it. I want you with me. I know this old farm we can buy real cheap in Indiana. We’ll make our living from the land. We’ll be our own men. We won’t have to listen to any more assholes telling us how to act.”
“No way!” Newman said. “I’m not ready for that. I want to face the perils of a life in the theater. Sure, I’ll make mistakes and be ridiculed, but I want to stay in the ring, keep on fighting.”
“It’s your choice,” Jimmy said with despair. “Maybe I should follow your example. Stay here and become such a big success that Lee Strasberg one day will lick the dingleberries off my crack.”
Later that afternoon Jimmy invited Newman to join him for his dance lessons with Eartha Kitt, who was giving twice-a-week lessons to Jimmy, whom she called “Jamie.”
***
Ushering Newman and Jimmy into her studio, Eartha hugged and kissed Jimmy before planting a kiss on Newman’s lips. Then she stood back and, with her cat-like eyes, surveyed the full figures of both men. “The two most beautiful white boys in New York, and Eartha’s got ‘em.” When she spoke, her words had a purring intonation.
Eartha Kitt, as a front-page feature in a 1950s Norwegian-language women’s magazine.
Embracing Jimmy again, she turned to Newman, “This is my soul brother. I’m his soul sister.”
“She’s my voodoo priestess,” Jimmy said. “She even knows when I need to take a piss before I do.”
In preparation for his dance rehearsal with Eartha, as Newman sat on the sofa, Jimmy stripped down to his underwear. As she moved with panther-like grace, Jimmy tried to stay with her, but he was awkward, not following the rhythm of the steps.
After their lesson, Jimmy and Eartha played a pair of conga timbo drums, treating Newman to a concert. He concluded that Jimmy was better as a drummer than he was as a dancer.
“Great concert, guys,” Newman said when they’d finished.
Eartha rose to her feet, reaching for Jimmy’s hand. Then she walked over to Newman and stared down at him. He rose to his feet. “At the end of our bongo music, Jamie and I like to adjourn to the bedroom.”
“I got it,” Newman said. “I’m out of here. Thanks for the entertainment.”
“You don’t get it,” Jimmy said, reaching for his arm to detain him. “Eartha and I aren’t opposed to a little company.”
“You aren’t against a little poontang, are you?” she asked.
“It’d be a new thing for me,” Newman said. “And I’m ready to give it a try.”
“Come along then,” she said, taking his hand.
***
In the late 1970s, when Eartha was in Key West starring as Lola La Mour in a movie, The Last Resort, based on a novel (Butterflies in Heat) by Darwin Porter, she spent several long weekends with him. Porter was particularly interested in the juicy details she’d omitted from her various autobiographies. Although she talked of many things, some of her most tender memories were devoted to Newman and Jimmy.
“I had both of them that afternoon, and I came to the conclusion that white boys are SO delicious,” she recalled. “I spread the word. The creators of Hair stole that line from me and used it as the title to one of their songs. I seduced Newman and Jamie on other occasions, too, but always separately, never again as a three-way. That afternoon in my studio in New York ranks as one of the most celestial experiences of my life. They transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be that wonderful. Not bad for a yalla gal born in the cotton fields of South Carolina.”
***
If both Newman and Joanne Woodward hadn’t been cast in the Broadway production of Picnic (1953), their long-enduring love affair might never have blossomed. Years later, Woodward told an interviewer that, “Paul and I tried to run away from each other for five years.”
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the CBS Playhouse 90 Teleplay, The Eighty Yard Run (1958).
The outspoken Rod Steiger called that remark “pure bullshit! They were like two drivers in hot rods playing chicken as they rushed toward each other for a head-on crash. They came together in a fiery explosion of emotions. Once Joanne had decided that she wanted Newman more than any other man, she set out to get him. That he had a wife stashed away somewhere didn’t really seem to matter. But it mattered to Newman.”
“I knew him well at the time,” Steiger claimed. “The man had a conscience and a strong feeling of responsibility about his kids. Of course, that didn’t stop him from having affairs with everybody else. From James Dean to Eartha Kitt, Newman tumbled head-on into an extremely complicated life. He was the Golden Boy of Broadway. Hell, he was so fucking beautiful. Everybody wanted him, and he was willing to share himself with both men and women, not just Joanne and Jackie, but Dean, too. Newman was so pretty I would have fucked him if he’d asked me to, and I’m about the straightest actor in the business. Marlon confided to me that he’d pounded Newman’s ass on many an occasion. At one point Newman was more in love with James Dean than he was with either Joanne or Jackie.”
“One day the Bitch Goddess of them all, Hollywood Herself, knocked on his dressing room door,” Steiger said. “She’d come to claim Newman—a tasty morsel waiting to be devoured—as one of her victims. Few could resist her allure, not even old Rod Steiger himself.”
Rod Steiger...witness to secret passions.
***
Knocking on Newman’s door was Stephen Brill, an agent from Warner Brothers. He made an offer a cash-strapped actor could hardly refuse: a five-year contract at one thousand dollars a week.
James Dean Page 55