James Dean Read online

  Later that night, Jimmy described Bankhead to his roommate, Avery. “Tallulah is a prima donna bitch with a succulent, scarlet-painted mouth. It was a kind of living thing, with a mind of its own. They gave me a hard-on. All evening long, I wanted to get up from the table and stick my erect cock between them. That would have silenced her.”

  Bankhead and Jimmy were destined to meet months later in Manhattan, although they would never work together.

  Jimmy Meets His Substitute Father/Mentor With Incest on His Mind

  The next morning at seven o’clock, Jimmy showed up at Ted’s Auto Park, adjacent to CBS’s Studios. If parking cars provided a means of meeting power brokers in Hollywood, he’d park cars. “I’m sure I’ll be discovered. With my good looks and talent, I’m bound to be noticed.”

  “Modest, aren’t you?” Avery said.

  “I’ve got nothing to be modest about,” Jimmy said. “If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will,”

  “That makes sense,” Avery said.

  When he reported to work on his third morning, a Saturday, Jimmy was frustrated that no one had really given him a second look so far. But his luck was about to change.

  A shiny new Buick, painted emerald green and ivory, pulled into the parking lot. Out stepped a tall, curly haired man, who appeared in his mid-thirties. He was immaculately dressed in a midnight blue suit and red tie with the most expensive pair of leather shoes Jimmy had ever seen on a man. “Probably, unborn lamb,” Jimmy later recalled.

  Rogers Brackett, in a CBS publicity shot...radar eyes for a pretty face.

  With his canny awareness, Jimmy knew he was being checked out from crotch to face and back to crotch.

  As he later recalled, “I was sorta pissed off. He was checking me out like a slab of meat. I’d come to Hollywood to be a great actor—not just like Brando, but like Montgomery Clift, John Garfield, only better. I resented having to sleep my way up the ladder. Perhaps I could have been fired, but I said something I shouldn’t have.”

  “I hope you’re satisfied that I’m good enough to eat.”

  “Don’t be a smart ass,” said the owner of the Buick. “I was checking you out because I’m always searching for a star of tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jimmy said. “Every parking attendant on the lot has heard that line.”

  “In my case, I mean it,” the man said. “You’ve got something. I don’t know what.”

  “I know what I’ve got,” Jimmy said. “A cock you want to suck.”

  “Maybe that’s so. But I bet you’ve got talent, too. The truly gifted artist is always arrogant, as Joan Crawford said to John Garfield in Humoresque.”

  “What are you? A casting agent? A talent scout?”

  “I’m a producer. I might cast you in one of my shows. That is, if you truly have talent, other than being an arrogant little prick.”

  “Listen, mister, I’m the best god damn actor in Hollywood if given a chance. And my prick’s not so little.”

  “My name’s Rogers Brackett. What’s yours?”

  “James Dean, and don’t you forget it,” he answered. “You can call me Mr. Dean.”

  “I’ll catch you later,” Brackett said. “You think you’re too big for your breeches, but I can cut you down to size.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Jimmy said, walking away, taking the parking ticket to Homburg’s office. “Who is that guy?” he asked his boss.” Anybody important or just a wise guy?”

  “He’s Rogers Brackett. He produces the weekly radio show, Alias Jane Doe. It stars Lurene Tuttle.”

  “So he’s a real producer after all,” Jimmy said.

  “Why do you want to know?” Homburg asked. “Did the fucker come on to you?”

  “Not at all,” Jimmy lied. “He’s definitely straight.”

  “Like hell he his,” Homburg claimed. “He’s a chicken hawk. Sucked off half the young guys on my lot.”

  A few hours later, Brackett returned, signaling Jimmy to retrieve his Buick.

  After giving him a final lookover, Brackett got behind the wheel of his car, where he handed Jimmy a five-dollar bill, the biggest tip he’d ever received. A lot of men gave him only a quarter.

  Attached to the bill was a paper clip with his calling card, listing his phone number and address.

  “I’ll expect you at eight tomorrow night,” Bracket said. “I’ll have Chasen’s cater a dinner for us. That’s the best restaurant in Los Angeles.”

  “What makes you think I’ll show up?” Jimmy asked.

  “I’ve seen that gleam in your eye,” Brackett said. “You know I’m the man who’ll make you a star.”

  “You’ll make me all right.”

  “Our meeting today may be historic, an event like Professor Higgins encountering Eliza Doolittle.”

  “I don’t know who in the fuck they are, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Don’t be late,” Brackett said. “I don’t want to sound too melodramatic, but it may be your date with destiny.”

  “If you say so, guy.”

  ***

  Jimmy had a hunch he could get a job out of Rogers Brackett. He showed up at his apartment on time, in his battered old Chevy that had a full tank of gas. With the money he’d made the following afternoon, he had more than enough to fill up his gas tank, since he’d need it to drive into the Hollywood Hills, above Sunset Strip.

  Before his departure, Jimmy had asked questions about Brackett, learning that he was known “as the Oscar Wilde of Hollywood.” He was a true child of Tinseltown, seemingly known to half the people in the industry.

  He’d been born in Culver City, virtually on the doorstep of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He father was Robert Brackett, an early partner of Louis Selznick. Rogers himself had worked for Louis’ son, David O. Selznick. Jimmy also found out that Brackett was employed by the powerful advertising agent, Foote, Cone, & Belding.

  Parking his car, Jimmy stepped out into the fashionable Sunset Plaza Drive. After he rang the bell, Bracket opened the door wearing a red silk robe.

  His living room was outfitted in a color scheme of chartreuse and royal purple, a daring combination pioneered by Brackett’s close friend, Stanley Mills Haggart, an interior designer.

  After pouring him a drink, Brackett led him out onto his panoramic terrace, with its view over Los Angeles. The city lay before him like a gigantic carpet of lights.

  “I’ve got a dream,” Jimmy said.

  “And what might that be?” Brackett asked. “I want to conquer this fucking town and make it mine.”

  “A noble ambition, my dear,” Brackett said. “Perhaps I’ll help you.” He put his arm around Jimmy’s slim waist. The doorbell rang. “That’s dinner from Chasen’s. I ordered three of Elizabeth Taylor’s favorite dishes. I call her the Princess. Perhaps I’ll introduce her to you someday.”

  “Hell, man, Elizabeth Taylor and I will one day star together in a big budget movie.”

  After dinner, Jimmy thanked his host for treating him “to the best meal I’ve ever had.”

  Over drinks on the terrace, Brackett told him he’d like to take him to two parties that upcoming weekend—one of them a pool party on Saturday at agent Henry Willson’s house.

  “You’ve got to meet him. He’s a power broker who can make a young man’s career: Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, Rock Hudson, John Derek, Robert Wagner.”

  “I’d like to go,” Jimmy said. “But I’ve never heard of this Willson.”

  “You will,” Brackett said.

  “Then on Sunday, I’d like to invite you to this gathering at the home of George Cukor, the director. Surely, you’ve heard of him”

  “Vaguely,” Jimmy said.

  “Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and a lot of other big names, will be there. I’ll introduce you around.”

  “Meeting all these big shots is one thing, getting a job is quite another.”

  “Depending on how the evening goes, I can get you a job on my CBS radio program, Al
ias Jane Doe. I’m in charge of casting for my ad agency. The show stars Lurene Tuttle. She plays a reporter who disguises herself to get the scoop, then publishes her revelations under the byline of Jane Doe. Madison Musser is the love interest.”

  [Brackett delivered on his promise, casting Dean in four episodes. They aired in 1951, on July 28, August 11, September 15 and 22, for which he was paid $56.99 per show.]

  “Unless you’re bullshitting me, it sounds like you’re okay.”

  By eleven o’clock, it was getting late, and Jimmy had to be on the parking lot the next morning at seven o’clock.

  Brackett rose from his seat and took Jimmy’s hand. “How about retiring to my bedroom?”

  “Okay, but what’s the deal?” Jimmy asked. “Do I fuck you, or do you fuck me? Or else a sixty-nine?”

  “A combination of all three,” Brackett said, leading the way.

  Jimmy Meets the Pretty Boys of Henry Willson’s Adonis Factory

  In 1950s Hollywood, when the “Adonis Factory” of Pretty Boys flourished, Henry Willson was a starmaker. In time, he created first names to hawk—Troy, Rock, Cal, Rod, Dial, Clint, or Touch, among others. He represented such clients as Robert Wagner, Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, and Tab Hunter, though he was mainly known for having discovered Rock Hudson.

  Willson’s Saturday afternoon pool parties had become notorious. The mistress of these parties was Truie Delight, a devoted follower of the black evangelist Father Devine. She seemed to ignore all the homosexual couplings going on around her, concentrating instead on the food and drink. She prepared simple barbecues of foot-long hot dogs, hamburgers with all the fixings, and corn on the cob served with creamy butter melting in the hot California sun. There were many jokes about her tasty potato salad. The gays claimed it was creamy because Truie had scooped up and added all the semen collected from the pool house during the previous week’s party and added it as a secret ingredient.

  Truie also made the drinks, serving them to aging movie and TV executives along with a bevy of gorgeous guys, each of them wearing the briefest of bikinis to show off their assets. Willson didn’t allow total nudity, however. That was reserved for the rooms upstairs and for the privacy of the poolhouse.

  Brackett drove Jimmy, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, to Willson’s residence on Stone Canyon Drive. After they were ushered inside, Jimmy felt he was within a sea of male beauty, interspersed with about a dozen older men still dressed in suits.

  The biggest and beefiest attraction that afternoon was Clint Walker, a giant of a man who stood 6’6”. He’d been a security guard and a nightclub bouncer before Willson discovered him and aggressively promoted him to casting directors as a western hero. As his agent described Walker, “His muscles stretched from Hollywood & Vine to Times Square, but his dick is even longer.”

  “I look like a pre-teen compared to him,” Jimmy whispered to Brackett.

  Clint’s competition was muscleman Steve Reeves, a devotee of the “Pecs Before Talent” school. His titles from bodybuilding competitions included “Mr. Pacific,” “Mr. America,” “Mr. World,” and ultimately, “Mr. Universe.” Willson wanted to help him break into movies, and before the end of the decade, Reeves would be featured as the focal point of Hercules movies, sometimes known as “spaghetti sword-and-sandals pictures.” Although presumably straight, he was willing to sell up-close-and-personal access to his muscles to male clients.

  At one of Henry Willson’s parties, Jimmy met heartthrob and muscle man, “I’m big all over,” Clint Walker.

  Finally, Brackett took Jimmy over to introduce him to Willson, who was licking some of Truie’s barbecue sauce off his fingers. To Jimmy, he was grotesquely ugly, with wide hips resting on short legs, and a hawkish nose with a bulbous lower lip often curled into a pout. Like the popular Broadway columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen, Willson had no chin. Frank Sinatra called Kilgallen “the chinless wonder,” and Willson “son of chinless wonder.”

  Steve Reeves appears in his most famous role, Hercules (1957). “I’m straight, but my muscles are for sale.”

  Willson had for a time evoked the epicene appearance of director Vincente Minnelli, once married to Judy Garland. In time, however, as he put on weight, he came to resemble the famous silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock. Jimmy had seen the director on occasion walking up his driveway, as Hitchcock lived next door to Jimmy’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Beverly Wills.

  Jimmy impatiently endured the gay banter between Willson and Brackett, which turned him off.

  “I tell my straight actors, if there are any left in Hollywood, that sucking a cock is not much different from sucking on a woman’s nipple. Sucking cock is a hell of a lot more sanitary than a guy burying his face in a woman’s smelly snatch. I also tell them not to have sex in their dressing room before appearing on camera. It shows up on the screen.”

  Finally, he turned to Jimmy and didn’t disguise his bluntness. “Do you like to fuck or get fucked?”

  Leading Hollywood talent agent Henry Willson with his major client and “discovery,” Rock Hudson.

  “Jimmy does everything wanted and needed,” Brackett interjected.

  Looking Jimmy up and down like a male slave on an auction block, Willson said, “Before the sun sets a few times over the Pacific, I’ll find that out for myself.”

  Jimmy wandered off, but an hour later, Willson cornered him. “Rogers wants me to represent you, make you a star, as I’ve done to so many others. He says you’ve got a lot of talent. But I need to determine that for myself.”

  “And how do you plan to do that, Mr. Willson?”

  “Come over Tuesday night for a private audition. Around eight o’clock. I don’t use a casting couch, contrary to popular belief. I audition an actor in my king-sized bed. Don’t panic. I know I’m no beauty. I won’t even take my clothes off, but you will. Jaybird naked in the center of my bed.”

  “Again, don’t panic. I don’t expect you to do anything to me. I’m the best cocksucker in town. If you wish, I’ll take you only from the neck down.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Jimmy said. “Just thinking about it is giving me a boner.”

  “That’s my boy,” Willson said, patting Jimmy’s cheek. “Now I’ve got to talk to Rock…excuse me.”

  Jimmy had no intention of ever showing up at Willson’s house again.

  About ten female guests were at the party, but they left before six o’clock. Brackett told Jimmy the “gang bangs” occurred after dark.

  En route to the bathroom, Rock Hudson stopped and introduced himself to Jimmy. He was attired in a white bikini that displayed his considerable endowment. “I think every guy here today is after me. You got a crush on me too?”

  Jimmy was offended, but Brackett had warned him to be polite to Hudson. Willson was predicting that he would soon be the biggest male star in Hollywood.

  “From what I’ve seen here today, you’re the hottest thing since God created Adam,” Jimmy said.

  “Let’s get together,” Hudson said. “I’ll have Henry hook us up.”

  “It’s a deal,” Jimmy said. He later told Brackett, “Hudson is one stuck-up asshole.”

  “Yes, but what a delectable rosebud it is,” Brackett replied.

  After meeting Hudson, Jimmy was anxious to leave the party. He motioned to Brackett, who signaled that he needed to finish his discussion with some producer.

  Suddenly, as the evening shadows fell, a charming, handsome, charismatic young man stood before Jimmy. There was something about his presence that was magnetic. He stared with a certain longing into Jimmy’s blue eyes.

  “I thought it would never happen,” the man said. “I’ve met my soul mate. They call me ‘The Black Star,’ even though I’m lilywhite. Who are you?”

  “Polaris.”

  “I knew it. I seek out his North Star every night,” the man said.

  “You’ve found him.”

  “I know you’re here with someone else tonight, and I am too. I promised Rock I’
d go home with him. But I’d rather be going home with you.”

  “Ditto.”

  “By the way, I’m John Carlyle. You can call me Johnny.”

  “Johnny, how about letting James Dean here eat your flesh like a cannibal?”

  “Blood raw or well done?”

  Carlyle reached into the pocket of his slacks and removed a piece of paper, which he stuffed into the right side picket of Jimmy‘s jeans, probing deeper, and lingering a bit longer, than was necessary.

  “How is Willson promoting you?” Jimmy asked.

  “As the next Montgomery Clift. And you?”

  “As the untouchable—except for you.”

  ***

  [When Jimmy didn’t show up the following Tuesday night, Willson developed an antagonism for him that lasted for years after Jimmy’s death in a car crash.

  John Carlyle...”the next Montgomery Clift.”

  In the future, whenever Jimmy’s name was mentioned, Willson weighed in with his opinion. “That Dean bullshit wouldn’t have lasted. He was too arrogant, too narcissistic. If you ask me, he was Hollywood trash.”

  “I advise all my actors not to emulate his acting style. By 1957, he’d be pounding the pavement looking for a job. All doors would be closed to him. By then, he would have been universally despised.]

  Ask Jimmy:

  IN LIEU OF A CASTING COUCH, DIRECTOR GEORGE CUKOR PREFERS A KING SIZED BED

  Arriving at Cukor’s palatial “castle” on Cordell Drive in West Hollywood, Jimmy—with Brackett at the wheel—was impressed. The director lived in a large white house with a high wall enclosing an orange grove. To one side of the house was an Olympic swimming pool.

  Beside the pool, Cukor was hosting a lavish Sunday buffet for some twenty guests, none of whom Jimmy recognized. Brackett had told him that Cukor was friends with such big name stars as Greta Garbo and Cary Grant.