Natalie had this X-rated conversation with gossipy Shelley Winters, who had also seduced both Jimmy Dean and John Ireland.
***
Jimmy dreaded the end of shooting of Rebel Without a Cause. After his involvement in its filming ended, he lingered on the set for a conversation with Ray, telling him, “Never has an acting job taken so much out of me. I put everything I had into that film.”
“Jimmy and I were alone,” Ray said. “We wandered about and didn’t want to admit it, but it was all over. Finally, I said to him, “Let’s go. We’ve got nothing more to do here.”
“We kissed each other passionately. Then he climbed onto his motorcycle, and I got behind the wheel of my car. We rode toward Hollywood Boulevard. He spread himself like a flying angel on the cycle, with his feet up on the back mudguard, his arms outstretched. With that reckless maneuver, he sped off with a roar.”
Jimmy never lived to read his reviews.
***
Doran later said that about a week after the film was wrapped, she heard someone calling up to her bedroom window at three o’clock one morning: “Mom! Mom!”
She looked down to see that her porch light was dimly illuminating Jimmy standing in her front yard.
“It’s your son, Jimmy!” he called up to her after she raised the window.
“He was drunk,” she said. She let him in and poured some black coffee into him “as he spoke of his fears and talked about his dreadful loneliness.”
***
The last time Steffi Sidney saw Jimmy was when he came into the Villa Capri, right before his death.
Frank Sinatra had thrown a party there. A few months before, he had mocked Jimmy, but now he’d apparently accepted him as a member of the Hollywood elite. Jimmy staggered in, obviously drunk.
He stopped first at the table of his friend, Sammy Davis, Jr., before heading to the men’s toilet, trailing behind Sinatra.
When he emerged, his fly was open. “You could see his dick, as he wore no underwear,” Davis said. “He complained to me: ‘I stood at the urinal beside Sinatra. And now I’m jealous. His dick is bigger than mine.’”
“Then he made his way over to Sidney’s table, and put his arm around her. His hair had been shaved back from his forehead so he’d resemble a more accurate rendition of the aged character he’d portray at the end of Giant.”
“You know, Steff,” he said. “We’ve never had our picture taken together. Let’s go for it.” He summoned the on-site photographer, who snapped several pictures of them, shooting Jimmy, for the most part, from the waist up.
He placed one arm around her, holding a cigarette in one hand, and rubbing his belly with the other.
[The ironies associated with that photo was that eight-by-ten glossies of Jimmy with Steffi arrived at her house on the morning of September 30, 1955. Jimmy would be dead in the afternoon of that same day.]
***
It was on that September 30, 1955, in New York that Natalie Wood was dining with Sal Mineo, Nick Adams, and Dick Davalos, who had portrayed Jimmy’s tormented older brother in East of Eden. All of them talked about Jimmy, and how he flirted so dangerously with death. To a person, they agreed that he would probably die one day in a car crash.
Before the end of their dinner, news reached them that Jimmy had died in a car crash on a lonely road in California on his way to Salinas.
***
Rebel Without a Cause was released on October 3, 1955. Jimmy had died just a few days before, on September 30. For the most part, Jimmy’s performance elicited rave reviews.
Author Lawrence Frascella wrote: “Ray and Company offers up a romantic, charismatic, sexually charged archetype—a heroic ideal of what being a teenager might mean in Rebel Without a Cause. The film took teenagers as seriously as they took themselves.”
Writing for Esquire, Joy Williamson said: “Rebel’s appeal is obvious. We were watching the intense, doomed performance of a dead youth, a myth, the myth of those who would wish to see themselves dead without dying. Dean was dead, pre-dead, dead upon our discovery of him. His vivid presence projected a fathomless absence. It was thrilling.”
Film historian Jeanine Basinger wrote: “Rebel hits home because the teens in it understood their situation at a level the adults could not even imagine. The film is true emotionally, setting up the world of teenagers as a separate universe. It treated their pain seriously, respecting it, instead of turning it into the subject of a cute little comedy about growing up.”
Arthur Knight in Saturday Review said: “The late James Dean reveals completely the talent seen in his East of Eden performance. Gone are the Brando mannerisms, gone the obvious Kazan touch. He stands as a remarkable talent, and he was cut down, it would seem, by the very passions he exposed so tellingly in this strange and forceful picture.”
William K. Zinsser, in The New York Herald Tribune, said: “The movie is written and acted so ineptly, directed so sluggishly, that all names but one will be omitted. The exception is James Dean, the gifted young actor. His rare talent and appealing personality shine through, even in this turgid melodrama.”
Wanda Hale, of The New York Daily News, interpreted the picture like this: “As an honest, purposeful drama of juvenile hardness and violence, it doesn’t measure up. Nonetheless, Dean gives a fine, sensitive performance of the unhappy teenager, tormented by the knowledge of his emotional instability.”
Variety asserted, “As a farewell performance, James Dean leaves behind, with this film, genuine artistic regret, for here was a talent which might have touched the heights.”
Milton Schulman, in London’s Sunday Express, wrote: “Again, one is impressed by the effects of powerful emotions so harnessed and controlled that if it were not carefully rationed, it would explode.”
Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, delivered his usual attack on Jimmy’s performances, leveling the familiar charge that he imitated Marlon Brando in his characterization of Jim Stark. “This imitation grows monotonous at some point,” he lamented.
Alan Brien, in London’s Evening Standard, wrote, “James Dean, alas, is dead. But his ghost on the screen in what was only his second film will remain among the immortals of cinema.”
Dilys Powell, in London’s Sunday Times, claimed, “There has been no player of his or any other generation to rival James Dean’s interpretation of the desperation of youth.”
The novelist, William Faulkner, weighed in, too: “Rebel Without a Cause will remain a masterpiece, because it is the only American cinema’s Greek tragedy.”
***
When the Academy Awards announced its Oscar nominations, it came as a surprise that Mineo was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and Natalie was nominated as Best Supporting Actress. Both of them lost to Jack Lemmon in Mister Rogers and to Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden.
Jimmy was not nominated, presumably because he’d already been nominated for East of Eden.
James Dean’s Effect on Elvis Presley
AND HOW IT LED TO THE MURDER OF NICK ADAMS
Elvis Presley was fascinated with James Dean and would endlessly watch Rebel Without a Cause. So when he got to Hollywood, he sought out and befriended Nick Adams, who had been Jimmy’s friend.
After only a few weeks, Nick became best friend to Elvis, launching a troubled relationship that witnesses claimed turned sexual. Nick himself loudly proclaimed that he’d had affairs both with Jimmy and later with Elvis.
Their bromance began when Elvis accepted an offer to be Nick’s “date” for a preview of the film The Last Wagon (1956).
Nick was known as a “star-fucker.” His closest friends said he’d go to bed with any star – male or female – who might advance his career. Rock Hudson. Director John Ford. Natalie Wood. James Dean. Elvis Presley. It didn’t matter to Nick as long as the fuckee was a star or even better, a director.
In the words of Albert Goldman, Nick was “forever selling himself: a property which, to hear him tell it, was nothing less than sensational—‘th
e greatest little actor to hit this town in years.’ In fact, he had very little going for him in terms of looks or talent or professional experience. He was just another poor kid from the sticks who had grown up dreaming of the silver screen.”
Nick Adams’ greatest success came when he was cast in a TV series about a Confederate soldier, Johnny Yuma, nicknamed The Rebel. Even though it became wildly popular, it was pulled after two seasons, based on studio politics.
The handsome, blonde-haired actor became the fourth member of the doomed young crew of Rebel Without a Cause who would die young and violently.
In death, he joined the actual stars: James Dean (died September 30, 1955), Sal Mineo (February 12, 1976), and Natalie Wood (November 29, 1981).
Born on July 10, 1931, in the gritty coal-mining town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, actor Nick (whose name at the time of his birth was Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock) was the son of Ukrainian immigrants.
A close bond between Elvis and Nick Adams was established on the first night they met. Nick told Natalie Wood, “Elvis is going to replace Jimmy in my life.”
Right from the beginning, Nick offered his services to Elvis: Friendship, a guide to “Inside Hollywood,” a bosom companion, a homosexual lover. “Whatever it is you want, I’ve got it … and plenty of it,” Nick told Elvis. “If you want to meet movie stars, I know them. Want to fuck Natalie Wood? I can set it up.” And so he did.
When Elvis arrived in Hollywood in 1956 to make Love Me Tender, the mega-star fell in love with his co-star, Debra Paget. She gave him his blue suede shoes and told him to keep on walking.
Elvis asked Nick to show him Hollywood, and Nick readily agreed. When Elvis and Nick met, “the chemistry exploded” between them and an instant friendship developed.
Within a week, as Nick later told another lover, Sal Mineo, Nick and Elvis were sleeping together. Elvis preferred oral sex and mutual masturbation. Penetration, apparently, was never an option between them.
By the time Elvis Presley (right) got to Hollywood, James Dean was dead. The singer had wanted to bond with Jimmy and become his most intimate friend. He even wanted to play him on the screen. In lieu of Jimmy, Elvis “settled” for Nick Adams, based on the assumption that Nick—for a while, at least—had been Jimmy’s best friend.
In those days Elvis could drive his white Cadillac all over Los Angeles with Nick beside him. There was never any fear of molestation from fans. Fan magazines of that era were quick to pick up on this new friendship. However, they misinterpreted its real purpose and accused Nick of riding on Elvis’ coattails to promote his own career. (Previously, the same accusations had been leveled about Nick when he developed his friendship with Jimmy.)
Nick took Elvis to the same places he’d frequented with Jimmy, including the old Villa Capri when it was on McCadden Place. They were seen dining frequently at Googie’s Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Elvis wanted to know what foods Jimmy had liked, and he asked for the same dishes.
When Elvis had to return to Graceland, he left Nick an airplane ticket. To avoid suspicion, Nick flew to Tennessee two days later, telling friends that he was going to New York to seek work on the stage.
Sometimes at Graceland, Elvis would have a lover’s quarrel with Nick, and Nick would be forced to sleep in a room with Vester Presley, Elvis’s uncle.
A tabloid ran a story that Nick and Elvis shared the same bed at Graceland. When that news broke, Elvis—ever sensitive to charges of homosexuality—ordered that a cot be brought into his bedroom. He told friends that Nick slept on the cot and not in the same bed with him, which—according to the hired help—was not true. A maid later told the press that the covers on that cot were never turned down the mornings after Nick slept over with Elvis.
Late at night, Elvis and Nick would be seen together on the streets of Memphis, riding their twin Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Elvis’s girlfriend, June Juanico, claimed that when she dated Elvis all he ever did was talk about Nick Adams.
To legitimatize their relationship, Elvis hired Nick to accompany him on cross-country tours. Nick came out first to warm up the audience by doing his impressions of the famous actors he’d learned to mimic as a kid, notably Cagney and Bogart. Elvis warned Nick not to allow them to get trapped alone together by a photographer. Elvis always insisted that he be photographed with some pretty young girl in the picture, most often a fan. On several occasions that pretty little girl was Natalie herself.
Years after Jimmy’s death, Nick Adams was still a working actor in Hollywood. He’s depicted in the upper photo as he appeared in Hell is for Heroes (1962).
In the hotel suites they co-inhabited during their tours, Elvis also insisted that Nick walk around in a pair of tight-fitting white jockey shorts, arranged so that his pubic hairs would peep out. He confessed to Nick that this was his ultimate turn-on.
“Elvis was into oral sex and enjoyed getting a blow-job more than intercourse,” Dennis Miller, a former friend and companion, confirmed. Nick later claimed that while Elvis was watching a sci-fi flick, Queen of Outer Space [a campy 1958 bomb co-starring Zsa Zsa Gabor] he was “getting head” from Nick.
Nick later revealed some of Elvis’s sexual secrets, claiming that the star was uncircumcised. Nick went on to assert that Elvis had told him that during sexual intercourse with a woman, or even masturbating, his tight foreskin would often tear, causing him to bleed.
Elvis constantly bragged to Nick about his conquests with women. But he claimed that he could not have sex with a woman who had borne a child. “Fucking a woman who’s given birth is like plowing your dick into a tub of fat,” Elvis said. “She’s too loose to provide any enjoyment for a man.”
In the months following Jimmy’s death, Nick learned that Robert Altman was going to film The James Dean Story. Elvis was excited and intrigued, eventually lobbying to portray his hero on film. “This would be my greatest achievement,” Elvis told Nick.
Elvis was bitterly disappointed when he learned that Altman had decided to configure the film as a documentary with still photographs, film clips, and narration by everyone from Natalie Wood to Clark Gable (of all people).
Nonetheless, Elvis persisted, insisting that he wanted to be the narrator, for which he agreed to appear free. Altman wanted Marlon Brando for the job, but he turned down the job, which eventually went to Martin Gabel instead. [The most sardonic moment in the documentary, released in 1957, occurred when the filmmakers inserted a commercial of Jimmy, with Gig Young, wherein he urged viewers to drive safely. As a promotional device, Warner Brothers hired Nick to travel to Marion, Indiana (James Dean’s birthplace) for the premier of the Altman film. On site, Nick visited Jimmy’s aunt and uncle, Marcus and Ortense Winslow.]
***
At Graceland, Elvis became obsessed that “I look like a faggot on film.” Night after night he sat with Nick watching his own movies. He asked Nick to warn him if he were “making any limp-wrist moves like one of those god-damn effeminate swishes.” To his male friends, Elvis, in spite of his own nocturnal adventures, often attacked “swishes” or “faggots,” never wanting to be identified with them in any way.
When Nick pointed out some scenes where Elvis raised his wrist limply, Elvis would go into a rage and denounce Nick. At one time Elvis got so angry that he ordered Nick from Graceland and tore up his return ticket home. But the next day he forgave his friend and welcomed him back.
Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, handled the Elvis/Nick affair calmly. “At least he’s not impregnating another gal and leaving me to abort another brat.”
Col. Parker appreciated Nick’s support of Elvis after the death of his mother, Gladys Presley, on August 14, 1958. “Nicky Admas [sic] came out to be with Elvis last Week wich [sic] was so very kind of him to be there with his friend.”
During his period of mourning, Elvis locked himself in his darkened bedroom with Nick for three days and nights, refusing to eat or to see anyone else. Nick later claimed that Elvis talked for days abou
t Gladys. Nick recorded all that he’d learned in journals which he’d been keeping ever since he arrived in Hollywood.
At one point he revealed Elvis’s darkest secret to both Natalie and to Rock Hudson, suggesting that he feared “Elvis’s relationship with Gladys was incestuous.”
In 2012, Nick Adam’s daughter, Allyson Adams, published a posthumous overview of her father’ relationship with Elvis. Some readers interpreted it as a “whitewash.”
Susan King of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "The Rebel and the King chronicles Adams’ and Presley's adventures...with a youthful exuberance and innocence."
Afraid that news of Elvis’s homosexuality would leak out, the Colonel spread stories about what a stud Elvis was, even linking him to the stripper Tempest Storm, whom previously Elvis had seduced.
Elvis told his stepmother, Dee Presley, that he’d slept with more than 1,000 women before marrying Priscilla. Over the years he claimed to have had sex with everyone from the British sexpot Diana Dors to the American sexpot, Jayne Mansfield, even Cybill Shepherd, Nancy Sinatra, Connie Stevens, Tuesday Weld, Mary Ann Mobley, and Ann-Margret, among countless others.
With all his commissions, ancillary deals, and trinket sales, Col. Parker was actually making more money—an outrageous 50% split—than Elvis himself.
In the words of biographer David Bret, Col. Parker had a “Svengali-like grip over Elvis because he continually threatened to reveal that Elvis had romanced Nick Adams.”
Every time Elvis would get fed up with the colonel’s larceny and try to fire him, Parker would threaten to blackmail him. Only after Elvis’s death did revelations about his bisexuality appear in print, notably in Dee Presley’s memoir, The Intimate Life and Death of Elvis Presley.
James Dean Page 87