James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “East of Eden proved what a great actor you are. I can’t wait to see your next pictures.”

  Seated at a table in the café, they attracted almost no attention from the other patrons. Only a handful of other tables were occupied.

  “Where are you crashing?” he asked her.

  “At the Waldorf Towers,” she said. “Isn’t that posh?”

  “I guess so,” he said, “as long as somebody else is picking up the bill. What’s his name?” Rosenberg? Cohen? Katz?”

  “Milton. Milton Greene,” she said. “Jimmy, I didn’t know you were so anti- Semitic.”

  “I’m not really,” he said. “I guess their money is as good as anybody else’s. Hey, I’ve got an idea. It’s getting late. Why don’t you invite me to your pad for an audition? I’m good. Really good.”

  “Audition?” she said, looking at him skeptically. “To tell you the truth, after seeing Eden, I want to star in a picture with you. I guess we might as well start practicing whatever chemistry we can generate together.”

  “You’re on. You won’t regret it. Fifty years from now, you’ll be writing about me in your memoirs.”

  “But I’ve got a better idea than the Waldorf,” she said. “Lee Strasberg, the man you hate, has given me the use of his cottage on Fire Island any time I want it. It’s a bit chilly out there this time of year, but there’s a fireplace and some electric heaters. We’ll have the place to ourselves. Who wants to go to Fire Island at this time of year but crazy nuts like us? I’ve got a car. Why don’t you forget whatever you planned for tonight and run away to our cottage by the sea?”

  “I think that comes under the category of an invitation a guy can’t refuse.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what were you planning to do otherwise?”

  “I was going to go to Tennessee Williams’ apartment. He claims he’s writing a play about a repressed homosexual and his hot-to-trot wife named Maggie the Cat. He thinks the part would be ideal for me. I think my audition will consist of an expert blow-job.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said. “But you’ll delay that for a couple of days?”

  “Yes!” he said. “And I’d much rather be getting blow-jobs from Marilyn Monroe than from Tennessee Williams.”

  “Those are about the most romantic words I’ve ever heard spoken to me.”

  ***

  Marilyn and Jimmy didn’t arrive at the Strasberg cottage on Fire Island until the early evening. They rushed around trying to make the place livable, and he set ablaze the driftwood in the fireplace.

  She rested a small suitcase on the floor of the living room. He had chosen not to bring a change of clothes. Before it got too late, she asked him if he’d walk along the beach with her. After searching in the closet, she found a parka for him.

  The moonlight on the water’s surface made it look like glass. Each of them stood silently, taking in the vast expanse of dark water.

  Although it was cold, they sat down on the beach, huddling together. Neither of them said anything for a long time. She was the first to speak. “When I was a little girl, I would sit for hours just staring out at the sea. I felt that somewhere, someday, a sea captain, a beautiful, loving man, would want me. He’d take me away on a long voyage to a far and distant land.”

  Suddenly, they both became aware of the penetrating chill. She stood up and reached for him. Hand in hand, they walked back to the cottage, which, thanks to the driftwood fire, had become warmer.

  She’d brought champagne with them in the car. It had already been chilled because of the cold weather. They sat on large cushions watching the flames. He had his arm around her. “I hardly know you, but I feel I’ve met my soulmate,” she said.

  “Me too, babe,” he said. “From now on, it’s just you and me.”

  “And all the storms at sea,” she said. “You know there will be many of those.”

  For their dinner, she made ham sandwiches, and was eager to retreat under the blankets with him. She’d later confide, “Now I know why he’s so desirable as a lover and why so many people, men and women, want him.”

  Exhausted, they clung to each other until each of them fell asleep.

  They awoke to the chill of a late morning. He put on his jeans and a jacket, and she wore jeans, too, with a heavy sweater. When she said she wanted to cook his breakfast, he went outside to gather more firewood.

  After breakfast, he looked into her eyes. “Let’s call this our honeymoon cottage. When we get married, maybe we should book this cottage for a whole month, just the two of us.”

  “Jimmy, you’re proposing!” she said. “Proposal accepted, but let’s wait until autumn before we get hitched.”

  “That’s okay with me, but I demand conjugal rights now.”

  The day was just beginning.

  She would later refer to their two nights together on Fire Island as the most idyllic of her life. When she returned to the city, Winters called, eager for news. “I heard you ran away with Jimmy Dean. I want to know everything, a blow-by-blow description. Don’t leave out the slightest detail, regardless of how revolting. Did he make you crush out a cigarette on his overused butt?”

  “Shelley, please,” she said. “He’s not like that, and there was nothing kinky. He was very loving, very romantic. I’ve agreed to marry him one day.”

  “Please come to your senses, gal,” Winters said. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Jimmy is a sicko.”

  “Maybe he was on his best behavior.”

  “What drugs are you taking?” Winters asked.

  Brando called at around lunchtime and was equally discouraging. He, too, wanted a full report of what had happened. When she told him, he said, “Jimmy is my stalker and wants to be my clone. If you’re not careful, when you guys return to Hollywood, you might find him parked in front of your place, smoking cigarette after cigarette until all hours, waiting for you to return home. You won’t be able to get rid of him. He developed a fixation on me. In a way, it’s kind of creepy.”

  “Oh, Marlon, you and Shelley are taking all this too seriously. Our romance will probably disappear like a summer cloud. But then again…Who knows?”

  During the days and months that remained for them, Jimmy and Marilyn would sustain a love affair conducted more or less on the phone. But the time they’d spent together would forever be etched in her memory, even if “forever” wasn’t far away for her….and even less so for him.

  ***

  Early in 1955, Marilyn told Winters, “I’m miserable in Los Angeles, and I’m flying back to New York. I’m not working now, and there’s more going on in New York.”

  She arrived in Manhattan in time to attend the benefit opening of East of Eden. As part of the razzmatazz associated with its release, its producers had arranged for superstars to function as ushers and “usherettes.” When Marilyn learned that Marlene Dietrich and Eva Marie Saint had each volunteered to show ticket holders to their seats, she agreed to serve as an usherette, too.

  The press was already hailing the event as the splashiest movie premiere of the year. As she told Walter Winchell, “A working girl needs to keep her name in the papers when she’s off the screen.”

  Even though the studio and the film’s other cast members were depending on Jimmy to show up, he called Marilyn three days before the event saying, “I know I promised, but I can’t make the scene. I can’t handle it. I’m flying to Los Angeles tonight.”

  “But it’s your movie…and it’s a benefit for a good cause,” she pleaded with him.

  “Fuck good causes,” he shot back. “Don’t you know by now that I’m a rebel without a cause?”

  She begged him to change his mind, but after talking with him some more, she realized that he couldn’t face the public.

  She followed through, however, with her own commitment. Members of the audience that night were shocked to see Marilyn Monroe, one of the best-known stars in Hollywood, checking their
tickets and guiding them to their seats.

  At the end of the screening, Dietrich approached Monroe and kissed her on the lips, “Why not a repeat visit to my apartment tonight, you lovely child? Love is so much better the second time around.”

  ***

  In late spring of 1955, when the weather was warmer, Jimmy returned to New York. Once again, Marilyn invited him for a holiday at Lee Strasberg’s retreat on Fire Island. He eagerly accepted.

  Weatherwise, it remained windy and rainy throughout most of their stay, but they didn’t seem to mind. “The sun is bad for my skin anyway,” she claimed. Since it was during the week, and the weather was foul, the community was at low ebb.

  She would again recall the experience to Winters, claiming, “Both of us tried to be completely honest with each other.”

  At one point, she asked him his real name. “I made up Marilyn Monroe. What about you?”

  “My name is James Byron Dean.”

  “Wasn’t that the name of a poet I’ve never read?”

  “He was one of the romantic poets, I think,” he said.

  “Forgive me, but I think it would have been better if you’d billed yourself as James Byron. That would look better on a marquee. Dean reminds me of some stern schoolmaster with a ruler in his hand.”

  “It’s too late now,” he said. “In some ways, I preferred being anonymous. In New York I used to go to an all-night café and just sit there until dawn, talking to strangers. I learned that there are a lot of people in the world who—like us—regard life as pretty god damn frightening.”

  “Sometimes I’m so frightened I’m afraid to get up and face the day,” she said.

  “With all of our hang-ups, it’s good that both of us drifted into acting. Acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves.”

  Sometimes he kidded her about her image—and his, too. “I’m playing that ‘little boy lost’ for all it’s worth, and I stole it from your ‘little girl lost’ act.”

  “Do you think behind that innocent victim image I’m a cold-hearted, calculating bitch?”

  “I think both of us are bitches, using and manipulating people,” he said. “Sex is our weapon. Now gimme a kiss and let’s change the subject.”

  She was eager to hear stories about how it had been working with director Elia Kazan, her on-again, off-again lover. Responding, Jimmy said, “He flew with me to California to shoot Eden. It was my first time on a plane. I was frightened. He was amused when he saw my luggage: Two grocery bags tied with string.”

  “Elia is always promising to star me in one of his movies, but so far, nothing.”

  “It’s nothing all right…nothing to look forward to, at least. Being directed by him is like getting zapped with electric shock treatments. Thank God for Julie Harris. Without her, I don’t think I could have survived the picture.”

  They each complained about their low salaries. Jimmy had received only $1,000 a week for his work in East of Eden, and Marilyn had been paid only $1,250 a week, a total of $15,000, for her appearance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In vivid contrast, Marilyn’s co-star, Jane Russell, who was not a Fox player, got $150,000.

  Marilyn Monroe and James Dean were in total agreement about one thing: Both of them felt they were working for “slave wages.”

  Marilyn and Jimmy were on a shared voyage of discovery with each other. They both suffered from insomnia. During their first night on Fire Island, they sat up talking until dawn.

  Finally, they went to bed. When they awakened, at around noon, she tried to fix his breakfast. “I didn’t expect you to be a great cook,” he said, “but whether you are or not, I’ve survived in New York on a hot dog a day, if I could afford it.”

  They hadn’t make love their first night there, but they did in the following afternoon, as she’d later relate to Winters, who seemed eager to hear every detail.

  “He works hard to satisfy a woman,” Marilyn said.

  This time, her opinion differed from her first appraisal of him as a lover. “You know he’s bi, of course. He said that when he’s fucking a man, he can maintain an erection until climax. But with women, he sometimes grows limp. He has to disconnect and masturbate himself hard again before entering again. I understand this, and was most sympathetic. Later, I asked him what he thought about when he jerked off. He told me, ‘Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, Pier Angeli, Nick Adams, and Eartha Kitt.’”

  “That’s not very flattering with the Love Goddess of the World lying underneath him,” Winters said.

  “I didn’t get offended,” Marilyn said, “considering all the men I’ve dreamed about while getting plugged by some slob. I even fantasize about Rudolf Valentino.”

  “He was another fag, too,” Winters responded.

  Marilyn revealed that once again, Jimmy and she had discussed “getting hitched.” He told her, “Let’s admit the truth: both of us need babysitters. Maybe if we got married, we could become each other’s babysitters.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” she said. “We’re both too destructive. Without meaning to, we’d end up destroying each other.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “In that case, let’s just be fuck buddies.”

  As Marilyn told Winters, “Jimmy knows that I’m completely accepting of his personality. He even suggested that during our makeout sessions, he’d like to bring in a male friend. He said that ‘While I’m fucking you, he could plug me. It’ll make it more exciting for both of us.’”

  “That sounds like fun,” she told him. “I suspect that one of those guys you’d like to bring in is Marlon Brando?”

  “Well, he’s someone who knows how to have a good time.”

  She told Winters that Jimmy was almost as uninhibited as she was. “He has no false modesty. When he has to piss, he goes, regardless of where he’s at. Half the time we walk around nude with each other. Once, he even helped me peroxide my pussy hairs.”

  “As two living sex symbols, Jimmy and I even discussed our body parts with each other,” she told Winters. “He said he wished his penis was two inches longer and just a bit thicker.”

  “I guess all men wish that,” she’d said to him. “As for me, I’m thinking of surgery to tighten my vagina and to enlarge my breasts. I’m planning to talk to two doctors in Los Angeles who specialize in such surgeries. I want a vagina as tight as an asshole. Men like to fuck assholes because of the tight fit, especially those who aren’t well endowed. Peter Lawford told me that. I also want a forty inch bust like Kathryn Grayson over at MGM.”

  “I find it’s more satisfying for me to fuck famous men that unknown ones,” she said. “Because if they’re nobodies, I find they can’t handle the world’s most seductive woman. Perhaps I intimidate them…But anyway, my fame makes their little weenies recede into their bodies. It’s awful. I’m the greatest castrator in the Western World.”

  Jimmy told her that “If I become a big deal, Strasberg will probably try to exploit me the way he does Brando. Brando told me that he was trained by Stella Adler, and he was furious when Strasberg started taking credit for ‘discovering’ him. I’m sure that if you get more deeply involved in the Actors Studio, Strasberg will try to capitalize off your fame, too.”

  “I can just see the Actors Studio’s entrance hall,” she said. “There will probably be large blow-ups of me, flanked by you boys on both sides of me.”

  Jimmy was onto something that Barbara Leaming described in her biography of Marilyn: “Strasberg planned to take credit for his protégée’s achievements. He wanted to be something more than Marilyn’s instructor. When she was ready—and there was no telling when that might occur—he hoped to direct her as well. In short, he saw Marilyn as a vehicle to the success that had long and stubbornly eluded him. Marilyn would make it possible for Strasberg to direct the great productions of his dreams.”

  Strasberg wanted Marilyn—by now a well-established movie star—to perform before an audience of her peers at the Actors Studio. Her friend, M
aureen Stapleton, had suggested a scene from Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels. But Marilyn didn’t like Coward as a writer, preferring instead a scene from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie. Greta Garbo had already immortalized that play’s female lead onscreen in the movie adaptation of 1930.

  “We ended up doing a scene from Anna Christie,” Stapleton said. “That wispy voice of hers seemed to carry all right, for all her worry about it. Afterward, we went out to a bar on Tenth Avenue, and celebrated having cheated death one more time.”

  To Winters, Marilyn claimed that Jimmy “was a lot of fun, and sometimes we played games designed to reveal our darkest secrets. In one game, we both had to name four very unlikely people we’d slept with. He named Barbara Hutton, Howard Hughes, Tallulah Bankhead, and J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “And who did you name, my dear?” Winters asked.

  “You can guess one of them: Charlie Chaplin. But did you also know about Fidel Castro, Jimmy Hoffa, and Albert Einstein?”

  “Oh, Marilyn, I never know when you’re telling the truth or fantasizing,” Winters said. “But knowing you as well as I do, I have to leave open the possibility that you’re telling the truth. I know Charlie fucked you, because I was also fucking his son, Sydney. But the other three? It’s hard for me to believe.”

  ***

  One day at the Actors Studio, Winters told Jimmy, “Marilyn told me you were a better lover than Brando. A more considerate one. I must say, I agree with her. She claims she likes a man who is kind and takes into account a woman’s needs. She prefers that to brute sex.”

  “I don’t like to be compared to Brando, both as an actor and certainly not as a lover,” Jimmy snapped at her.

  “Your cocks are different, but sometimes, you do look like him,” Winters said.

  Jimmy learned that Brando’s own involvement with Marilyn was “stop and go,” heating up and then cooling off, but never completely disappearing.