 Starring: James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives, Richard Davalos, Jo Van FleetDirector: Elia Kazan Year Of Release: 1955 Plot: Cal Trask is a bitter young man who believes hes the black sheep of the family his father, Adam, only loves his brother Aron. However after Adam loses nearly all his money when a plan to ship refrigerated lettuce fails, Cal steps in and starts his own business, and is sure hell please his father if he can restore the familys fortune. However Adams love isnt easy to buy, especially as Cals plans involve the mother Adam had told his sons was dead, but who actually runs a nearby brothel. |
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He knew he was sick. I gave him the name of my analyst, and he went… But this glorification of Dean is all wrong. Thats why I believe the documentary could be important. To show that he wasnt a hero; show what he really was a lost boy trying to find himself. Marlon Brando, 1957
In the league table of people who are famous for having died, theres Jesus and then theres James Dean. That might sound sacrilegious, but theres a fanaticism that surrounds Dean that almost borders on religious zeal. The man only starred in three films (at least in major roles), yet his fame is virtually unparalleled. Part of the reason for this death-success is that his short career turned him into the ultimate enigma, to the point that hes not only become everything to every man, but he might as well not have been a real human being at all.
Its allowed people to turn him in whatever they want to, ensuring that he always remains relevant. For example, was he straight or gay? A tortured soul or happy go lucky speed freak? And did he have a death wish to the point that his demise was virtually suicide? All of these have been claimed at various times, to the point where the real Dean has totally disappeared. So why is he still such a magnet for half-truths, speculation and fanatical adulation, 55 years after his death?
Bondage Lover?
When Green Day released the song Boulevard of Broken Dreams, they might not have realised it, but the name wasnt just the title of a famous rip off of Edward Hoppers painting Nighthawks and a 1930s torch song, but also one of the most controversial biographies ever published. In 1994 Paul Alexander released his very own look at the life and times of James Dean. It certainly wasnt the first book on this subject, as people have been writing about Dean ever since his Porsche Spyder crashed on a highway near Cholame, California on September 30th, 1955. What made Alexanders book different was that it was quite insistent that Dean was a closet homosexual.
This was something that had been rumoured and mentioned for years, but Alexander pushed it to the fore, describing in explicit detail exactly what Dean enjoyed men doing to him and why that involved bracing himself in a doorway to take it. The claims launched a storm of denials from many who knew him, although most of these people seemed to be childhood friends and peripheral characters, who probably wouldnt have known even if it was true.
Its not just Paul Alexander either, Kenneth Anger in Hollywood Babylon, his exposé mix of half-truths and embellishments, said that Dean liked, sex assorted with beatings, boots, belts, and bondage spiced with knowing cigarette burns. Aside from the fact that its rather difficult to tell what the hell a knowing cigarette burn is, its also tough to tell where he got this information from, as he doesnt present any evidence. Perhaps Dean was indeed a hit with the fist-f**k set, but theres also the distinct possibility that as you cant sue for libel after youre dead, you can say whatever you like about the East Of Eden star and nobody can do a damn thing about it. It is actually believed that while he did have a wild nightlife, but the whole idea of his bondage obsession is largely based on a single sketch he drew titled The Human Ashtray, which was more likely to be about the fact he was a very heavy smoker.
The Art Of Hanging From Dean’s Legend
The merging of Dean fact and fiction has now got to the point where hes stopped being a person and is instead a kind of cultural demigod, to whom you can attribute anything you like. Actors arent immune from hanging from his coattails either, often coming out with stories which are dubious at best. Shelley Winters claimed in an autobiography that Dean had an affair with TV host and actress Vampira, while Dennis Hopper, who, like Sal Mineo, appeared with Dean in both Rebel Without A Cause and Giant, often told the tale of how he once grabbed Dean, threw him against the hood of a car and demanded to know his acting secrets. Neither story appears to have much basis in truth, but once again they turn James into something larger than life. Hopper was also responsible for the insanely vacuous quote, Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere.
So what is it about James Dean that has allowed him to become such a nexus for peoples projected hopes, aspirations and ideas, irrespective of reality? The reason is that hes essentially a blank sheet. Whether you look at verifiable biographical information or his performances, they are completely ambiguous and full of possibilities, which allows him to be whatever you want him to be. For example, take his three film roles. To put it bluntly, hes needy. In East of Eden and Rebel hes desperately in search of suitable parental figures, while Giant sees him almost bursting into tears every time Elizabeth Taylor walks into the room, because of his unspoken love for her.
Theres actually a pretty good argument to be made that hes not actually that good in East Of Eden, and as the likes of Marlon Brando suggested, that he only really started to find his feet with Giant. However, even though you could spend ages picking apart his slurred, uncommunicative speech (as one 1950s magazine put it), at the end of all three films you cant help but want to give him a hug.
The same is true of his life. Things such as the fact that his mother died when he was nine, and his often talked about secretive nature, suggest that he was someone youd want to help. During the filming of East of Eden, director Elia Kazan observed that it seemed that because of his mothers death and problems with his puritanical father, Dean had become, an extreme grotesque of a boy, a twisted boy I learned that he had been, in fact, twisted by the denial of love.
But can we even take a statement like that at face value? It sounds possible, but its important to remember that Kazan directed him in a movie which is ostensibly about a boy who is twisted and believes hes bad, because hes always searching for his fathers love and never gets it. Undeniably Dean and his father had problems, mainly because after his mother died, his father was distant and packed Jimmy off to his aunt and uncles Indiana farm. But as with so much about Dean, when youre dealing with a figure who didnt even know himself, its easy to attribute to him a lot of things that would be nice if they were true, even if they arent. Elizabeth Taylor probably summed him up best when she said, He was very afraid of being hurt. He was afraid of opening up in case it was turned around and used against him, and ever since, that secrecy has been made to mean whatever people want it to.
Unknown Even To Himself
Even things such as the photographs he got leading photographers to take of him (theres no doubt the boy had a vain streak), which see him walking along deserted streets, sitting alone in his apartment and, infamously, inside a coffin, suggest someone ill at ease with the world and accentuate his vulnerability. They allow people to look at him and see themselves. While that may sound like psychoanalytical bull, that fact is that Dean has become the embodiment of various peoples fears and needs, representing the things about themselves theyre most afraid of. Its why some people have been almost desperate to accentuate his possible bisexuality/homosexuality, others have seen his death as virtual suicide (despite the fact that his reported last words to the passenger in his car were, Hes gotta see us, before being hit by another car) and why hes been referred to by many as the first American teenager. Of course he wasnt, but he was the first male star to really embody the angst and uncertainty of puberty on screen.
 The infamous shot of James Dean posing in a coffin |
Fact is, even he had no idea of who he was, and spent much of his life searching for himself. He was the type of person who would say Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today and then go off racing cars, but also believe that, Only the gentle are ever really strong. Even his acting was an area of intense self-doubt and soul searching. Dean idol-worshipped Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando (neither of whom really rated him as an actor, instead seeing in his performances copies of themselves, especially as they were director Elia Kazans first choices as the brothers in East of Eden) and both are quoted as saying that Dean would keep calling them, even though neither wanted to talk to him. Brando said of it, He had an idée fixe about me. He used to call up. Id listen to him talking to the answering service, asking for me, leaving messages. But I never called him back. It was simply that Dean was so unsure of himself that he wanted his idols to tell him what to do and how he could get better.
Some of his ambiguity also has to be attributed to Warner Brothers. During his short time with the studio, they did what all the studios did with their up and coming stars at the time, they lied about him. While Paul Alexander and others have seen his succession of studio organised and promoted dates with starlets such as Ursula Andress as evidence of his homosexuality, it was actually pretty common practice at the time. Studios would send two people out together and hope to spark a bit of speculation and some column inches it didnt necessarily mean either was hiding something (although sometimes it was very much that), it was purely part of the marketing of actors.
Likewise, much of the information Warner released about him had much more to do with selling him as the next big thing as it did with who he actually was. They even went as far as paying a young woman called Lori Nelson to write a fan magazine, which included an article about The Dean Ive Dated, and proceeded to paint him as an intense, genuine, sincere and thoughtful young man, the person whos always himself, no matter what the circumstances, which is perhaps unsurprisingly not unlike his character in Rebel Without A Cause, for which publicity was just staring at the time. Not only does the suggestion that he was always himself fly in the face of what most people who knew him have suggested, but theres no actual evidence that Dean and Nelson knew each other at all.
Death Can Be Good For Your Career
As East Of Eden was the only film of Deans which was released during his lifetime, Rebel and Giant became opportunities to trade on tragedy. The Rebel Without A Cause – Special Edition DVD includes publicity materials Warner put our around the time of the movies release, themed around the idea of driving carefully. The studio probably couldnt believe their luck that Dean had filmed a public service announcement of the set of Giant, saying that, I used to fly around quite a bit, took a lot of unnecessary chances on the highway…. Now when I drive on the highway, I’m extra cautious.” Likewise, he got a posthumous billing upgrade for Giant, which saw a massive publicity campaign that might have had Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson as its public face, but which was actually all about who wasnt there and why.
As the trailers and posters screamed, this was his final film, so youd better go to the cinema and buy into the tragedy. And people did, in droves. His hideous car crash, which almost decapitated him, almost instantly turned him into the ultimate idol. It took less than a year and a half for Brando to be talking to Truman Capote about his glorification, as quoted at the beginning of this article. In death, thanks to the misinformation of studios, his needy screen persona and a personal life you could read virtually anything into, he inadvertently went from emerging star to a demigod the public didnt even know they needed. Like Marilyn Monroe, there is little thats more powerful than someone who seems to be in need who is never allowed to truly find happiness.
Had he lived, we may have seen Dean grow into a very different person. Instead, his death ensures were left with a figure who is everything to everyone. Hes somebody who people can claim as their own, simply because he seems to represent a side of themselves they rarely show the scared kid whos terrified theyre screwing everything up and just wants someone to give them a hug and tell them everythings going to be alright.
With everything about him being a mix of half-truths, suppositions, hopeful speculation and later reinterpretation, its not too far from the truth to say that James Dean doesnt really exist at all. There just simply isnt enough information to say who he truly was, as he was even an enigma to himself. What we see as Dean is just what we want to see and everything we want to see nothing more and nothing less. Dean is now as much fiction as any of the characters he played, and hes got to the point where no amount of new biographies or new material is ever going to change that. As Humphrey Bogart once said, It’s a good thing Dean died when he did. If he’d lived, he’d never have been able to live up to the publicity.
TIM ISAAC
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