James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  She had told Jimmy that when she first met Hughes, she found him repulsive, “But he grows on you.”

  ***

  During the fleeting few weeks they shared on-and-off (mostly off) together, Jimmy made an attempt to unlock the key to Hughes’ personality, something that very few others had ever been able to decipher before.

  At the time, many Hollywood insiders knew that despite Hughes’ reputation as a womanizer, he maintained a discreet gay life, too.

  Over the years, he’d been spotted dating such luminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Linda Darnell, Billie Dove, Ginger Rogers, Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, Fay Wray, Gene Tierney, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Susan Hayward, Paulette Goddard, and Kathryn Grayson. Jean Harlow, Olivia de Havilland, and Marilyn Monroe were also among his conquests.

  Among men, he dated from the A-list: Heartthrob Guy Madison, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and Cary Grant, who eventually evolved into his closest friend.

  Hughes liked to spy on the women he was seeing. When Ava Gardner learned that she was being trailed, she became so incensed that she hit him over the head with a heavy ashtray, knocking him unconscious.

  Hughes’ many conquests also included Barbara Hutton, who had been married to Cary Grant, Hughes’ longtime lover.

  When Jimmy found out about that, he said, “Been there, done that.”

  One night at Terry’s house, Jimmy learned to recognize the sound of an “alligator love call.” He heard it after Hughes telephoned Terry and talked to her for about an hour. She ended their call with a strange moaning sound.

  Jimmy asked her “What in hell was that?”

  She told him that she’d been fascinated by alligators and had read a book by an authority on reptiles (Ross Allen) and that “I have the distinction of having the only love call that could equal his. I can stand at the edge of a swamp that otherwise appears empty. I let out my mating call and alligators miraculously appear from nowhere.”

  [As noted by zoologists, during mating season, male alligators—despite their lack of vocal chords—emit sounds by inhaling air and then exhaling it in deep, rhythmical roars. These sounds attract females and warn other males to stay away. As documented on clips available on YouTube.com (keywords: alligator mating calls), the reptiles sometimes gather together in clusters for so-called “alligator dances,” a feature of which is the soft, sometimes synchronized grunting, or “bellowing,” described above.]

  Hughes had heard her emulation of the reptilian love call and he had been intrigued. From then on, he tried to imitate the sound of alligator romance, and his attempt to replicate it had become their way of ending their phone calls.

  Like Hughes, Jimmy, too, was intrigued and began to practice, even though whenever he sounded it off to his friends, they thought he had lost his mind.

  William Bast claimed that it was “all too silly. Do you have dreams of having sex with an alligator? Don’t lose your head over a ‘gator.’”

  Terry would later write a memoir entitled, The Beauty and the Billionaire, published in 1984, in which she detailed her relationship with Hughes. A few pages of it were devoted to Jimmy.

  In it, she claimed that she began a relationship with the aviator in 1948, and that it lasted until 1956. Her most stunning revelation was her assertion that she married Hughes aboard a yacht cruising off the coast of Mexico in 1949. No evidence or documentation associated with that marriage has ever surfaced, but it is said that the Howard Hughes Estate made an undisclosed settlement on her, perhaps $350,000, in 1983, seven years after Hughes’ death.

  In her book, she depicted Hughes as a satyr, a sexually obsessive man who could never be faithful to just one person. She also claimed that he was a powerful lover, the best she had ever known.

  When Jimmy first met Terry, she had ended her marriage to football hero Glenn Davis, who had previously been engaged to Elizabeth Taylor.

  When Hughes had learned of the marriage, he had sent Terry, as a wedding present, a white bag filled with contraceptive diaphragms, for use during her honeymoon. He’d enclosed a note: “If you get pregnant, your nipples will turn brown instead of pretty pink, and you’ll have stretch marks. In that case, I can never take you back.”

  Howard Hughes, the famous (and mentally unbalanced) aviator who flew both ways.

  ***

  As Jimmy and Terry’s agent, Dick Clayton started to devise schemes to promote his new stars. At the time, “studio-arranged dates” were all the rage for stars under contract. Such unlikely pairings would match up a guy, Tab Hunter, for example, on a “date” with Debbie Reynolds, strictly for the production of photographs which would then be featured in fan magazines.

  Columnist Sidney Skolsky was one of the first to write about this type of promotion. “The young Hollywood stars-to-be know that they have to attend every premiere, every party, and nightclub opening. Always on hand are the likes of Tab Hunter, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Terry Moore. That trio would go to the opening of an envelope.”

  Nicholas Ray, Jimmy’s director in Rebel Without a Cause, later said, “Jimmy had contempt for the Hollywood scene. He shied away from social conventions and traditional manners. ‘They represent disguise, like wearing a mask,’ he once told me. ‘I want to present myself as real and naked for all the world to see. No artifice.’”

  He agreed to escort Terry to the September 22, 1954 premiere of Sabrina, starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden. One writer referred to Terry as “the reigning piñata of the Hollywood press.” In a form-fitting sweater, with her breasts very prominent, she attracted the attention of photographers before they were known as paparazzi.

  Whereas she basked in the glow of their flashbulbs, Jimmy, her escort, scowled and looked miserable in a tux.

  The photographers snapping her picture asked, somewhat disdainfully, “Who’s the guy with you?”

  She claimed that they tried to edge Jimmy out of the frame, but that she held onto him tightly so that his image would be included in the media’s coverage of the event. When one of the reporters thrust a microphone at them with a question, she answered for both of them, since Jimmy had nothing to say.

  “In Jimmy’s eyes, Brando was king, and he was out to steal his thunder,” Terry claimed. “He just pretended he didn’t want his picture taken. He liked having his picture taken so much he even photographed himself in the mirror. There were more photos taken of him during the early 1950s than any other star in Hollywood, with the exception of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.”

  At the premiere of Sabrina, Terry Moore, in a form-fitting sweater, basked in the glow of the flashbulbs, but her escort, James Dean, unknown at the time, scowled, looking miserable in a tux.

  When pictures of Terry and Jimmy appeared in the morning press, one surprisingly bitchy caption read—THE MUTANT [a reference to her prominent breasts and plasticity?] MEETS THE HUMANOID.

  Terry later said that her father was embarrassed the next day at his office, where his colleagues demanded, “Who was that creep with Terry at the premiere last night?”

  “Within months, that so-called creep would be a Hollywood superstar with photographers shoving his dates aside to get a picture of him,” she said.

  Jimmy’s public appearances with Terry did not escape the attention of the press. Columnist Sheilah Graham, former lover of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, labeled Terry “the female James Dean.”

  [Ironically, when Jimmy started dating another starlet, Ursula Andress, Graham defined Andress as “the female Marlon Brando.”]

  “Why didn’t she write about me?” Jimmy wanted to know. “I wouldn’t mind being called the male Marilyn Monroe.”

  “It’s because your tits aren’t big enough,” said Terry.

  Word soon reached Hughes that Terry might be serious about Jimmy. Jealously, he ordered two of his spies to trail Jimmy and learn whatever information could be dug up from his
past. Wherever he went, and without his knowledge, Jimmy had someone on his trail.

  Hughes immediately learned that Jimmy was leading a bisexual life, enjoying women but also frequently involved in homosexual liaisons, too. The mogul was told that Jimmy’s conquests had included Marlon Brando and Rock Hudson, and that during his days as a struggling actor, he’d hustled tricks along the edges of Santa Monica Blvd.

  One night, Jimmy was driving back from Glendale with Terry, having attended the opening of Red Garters, a 1954 musical western spoof starring Rosemary Clooney. In a battered, junky-looking Chevrolet on its last legs, Hughes, who could have afforded the world’s most expensive cars, trailed Jimmy’s car for a few blocks until the actor had to stop for a red light. Then, Hughes deliberately rammed into the rear of Jimmy’s car, although not seriously enough to do any major damage or bodily injury.

  Hughes got out as Jimmy and Terry emerged from their car. Hughes shook Jimmy’s hand and thanked him for “looking after Terry when I’m away.”

  He said that his business associate, Johnny Meyer, would show up in the morning and settle any damages to Jimmy’s car—“and any emotional distress.” Then he made a scribbled note of Jimmy’s address and phone number before instructing Terry to get into his own car and telling her that he would return her safely to her home.

  This, according to Meyer, “was Howard’s way of introducing himself to Jimmy. I showed up the next day at Dean’s place with a thousand-dollar bill. Howard also volunteered to buy Jimmy a new car instead of getting his rear bumper repaired. Dean rejected the offer. I told him, ‘Why not? Howard’s paying.’ Apparently, Dean, unlike all the bimbos Howard hung with, had some integrity. How unusual for a young Hollywood actor. He may have nixed the car, but the little hustler didn’t turn down the next temptation when Howard personally called him two days later. It was three o’clock in the morning.”

  Hughes wanted Jimmy to come to a remote neighborhood of industrial Los Angeles, which would be almost deserted at this hour of the morning. He said he’d send his assistant, Meyer, to drive him to the location where Hughes would be waiting for him in his battered old Chevrolet.

  Years after the death of Howard Hughes (and perhaps because of him), life continued for Terry Moore.

  In August of 1984, at the age of 55, this veteran survivor of show-biz solidified her reputation as a fun-loving, good-time gal by posing nude in Playboy.

  According to Meyer, “At first, Jimmy was reluctant, fearing he might be walking into some sort of trap. But his sense of adventure won out. At dawn, Jimmy was on Howard’s plane to Acapulco for a boating trip and a holiday in the sun.”

  “So the kid could be bought after all,” Meyer said. “Once a hustler, always a hustler.”

  As time went by, Jimmy began secretly rendezvousing for trysts with Hughes. As a couple, he and Terry faded from view.

  ***

  [Terry would later work alongside Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Eva Marie Saint, and Anita Loose as a celebrity usher at the world premiere of East of Eden in Manhattan. “Jimmy said he wasn’t going to appear, shunning all that publicity,” Terry said. “However, he got more write-ups by not showing up than he would have gotten if he’d made an appearance. Everybody was talking about a star not showing up at the world premiere of his debut movie.”

  Sunny Shenanigans South of the Border

  JIMMY DANCES NUDE FOR HOWARD HUGHES

  With the understanding that Hughes would be away with Jimmy in Mexico for an undetermined number of days, Meyers was instructed to “babysit” (and spy on) Hughes’ mistresses until Hughes returned. He was also to tell anyone who needed to know that Hughes had been summoned to Washington on urgent business involving TWA.

  When Jimmy had protested that he didn’t have time to pack anything in advance of their trip, Hughes told him not to worry. “They sell clothes in Mexico. They also sell toothbrushes, even toothpaste.”

  What happened in Mexico during the halcyon days of Hughes and Jimmy was later revealed by Hughes’ playboy and bandleader friend, the Swiss-born former “swing-king” of Germany before he fled to Hollywood. Teddy Stauffer, an early promoter of the then-emerging resort of Acapulco, became more or less their host. Within that resort, he had arranged for them to stay at a luxurious villa known as “The New Discovery” which is exactly what Jimmy was for Hughes.

  “I was asleep when Hughes arrived with this boy,” Stauffer said. “At that time, Dean was a nobody. I thought he was just some trick. Howard was always with some trick, the gender not mattering so much to him. Later, I was shocked out of my mind when James Dean became such a big deal in Hollywood.”

  On the morning of their first day in Acapulco, Stauffer came to call on Hughes. “I found Howard fully dressed and talking on the phone by the pool,” he said. “This young Dean boy was buck-ass naked, lounging on the other side of the pool, wearing only a pair of sunglasses.”

  “There were three bedrooms at the villa. Only one of them had been used—the beds in the other guest rooms were still freshly made. So, I knew that the two of them had connected. Dean seemed to have satisfied Howard’s taste in young men, because he was fascinated by the boy.”

  “As for Dean, he seemed rather indifferent. He was unconventional for our aviator friend. As time passed, it became evident to me that Howard obviously liked Dean in bed, but that he wasn’t that impressed when the boy delivered some opinion. Several of his utterances made Howard wince. When it came to ideas, no two men could have been more ill-matched. They were completely different personalities.”

  “There was also a big difference in their ages. I learned that Dean was born in 1931, and I already knew that Howard had come into this world before World War I. Howard was old enough to be Dean’s father. It was also evident to me that Dean had no interest in Howard, other than his fame and money. He was just prostituting himself.”

  That night, Jimmy and Hughes dined with their host. According to Stauffer, “Dean really dug my cook’s Mexican specialties, although Howard claimed that all this spicy food made him fart a lot and get the runs.”

  “One day, Howard took Dean flying above the western coast of Mexico,” Stauffer said. “Another time, he rented a luxury yacht, with its crew, for a few days of sailing, landing in various seedy ports along the way. During his entire stay, when he wasn’t otherwise naked, Dean wore Mexican clothes that Howard had bought him.”

  The kid seemed fascinated by bullfights, and Howard took him to some of the corridas, but I think Howard was just indulging him. I don’t think the boss was that much interested in blood sports, but Jimmy was. He told us that he’d fought bulls in the ring, but both Howard and I thought that he was just bullshitting us.”

  “Frankly, I think Dean was just going along for a luxury vacation paid for by a man sometimes known as the U.S. Emperor.”

  “I’ll always remember the final night when Howard asked me to join them,” Stauffer said. “Dean was trying to polish off a bottle of tequila. At one point, he got really drunk and in front of us, he pulled off all his clothes. I had learned that he had studied dance with Katherine Dunham in New York. He performed this dance in front of us. I thought he was a lousy dancer, but Howard seemed to enjoy his cock bouncing up and down.”

  “Before the evening came to an end, Dean told us, ‘Dream like you’ll live forever, but live like you’ll die tomorrow.”

  “Both Dean and Howard had tragic endings. But that statement about dying, at least in Dean’s case, sure was prophetic.”

  Talking Dirty and Winging Low

  WITH THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS AVIATOR

  After their return to California, Jimmy never knew when Hughes would pop in, but it frequently occurred during the early hours of the morning, when he’d arrive on Jimmy’s doorstep with the alligator love call.

  “He had strange and weird ways,” Jimmy told Stanley Haggart. Recalling his training as a former “leg man” for gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, Haggart pumped him for information he co
uld learn about the private life of Hollywood’s most perplexing airman, industrialist, and film mogul.

  “I’ve begun to realize what an oddball he really is,” Jimmy said. “One day he flew me to the Grand Canyon. I didn’t even have time to get my wallet, expecting him to treat me to dinner, since I hadn’t had anything to eat that day.”

  “After we admired the glories of the canyon, I was starving but had no money. Hughes reached into his pocket and found only a single dollar bill, enough to pay for a ham sandwich, which the two of us shared.” Then, a smirk came over his face. “Of course, we couldn’t afford mustard.”

  “He had strange ideas about food,” Jimmy said. “I never knew what we were going to have for supper. One night, a waiter brought in a huge bucket of freshly made vanilla ice cream and about a quart of chocolate syrup—and that was it.”

  On another occasion, Hughes invited Jimmy to fly with him to Las Vegas where the younger man expected to be treated to ringside tables at all the best shows. “But that’s not what happened,” Jimmy said.

  Airborne, and halfway to Las Vegas, Hughes suddenly announced that he had to return immediately to Los Angeles, and turned the plane around. A member of his staff had not packed three boxes of the brand of cookies he had ordered.

  “You once told me I could buy clothes in Mexico,” Jimmy said to him. “I’m sure you can get some pastry chef there to make any kind of cookie you want.”

  “That won’t do,” Hughes responded. “I have to have this certain type of cookie.”

  Jimmy later learned that Hughes had worked with one of his favorite chefs, perfecting a special kind of cookie with just the right amount of sugar and cinnamon. The butter it contained came from a specific breed of cow grazing in the pasturelands of California.