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James Dean & 1950s Hollywood, part 2.
First of all I want to tell, that we - haiducii and myself - have decided to take a spring break from this thread. We'll get back at our loyal followers to talk about how long or short the spring break will be. But now - let's go back to revisit James Dean!
Biographies, bio-do
entaries and biopics.
I want to compare the ways Deans sexuality and personality are portrayed in different categories of biographical material, first the printed biographies and the the film doentaries, TV biographies and biopics. The reason why I do this categorization is that in my opinion there are important differences biographies in print and the film docu/TV biographies/biopics: It's mainly in print you can expect Dean's sexuality outside normative heterosexuality to be portrayed and discussed in any detail.
Print biographies.
There seems to me to be two camps among biographers concerning James Dean's sexuality. In the first camp we find Bill Bast who not only wrote the first JD biography of all in 1956 but also precisely 50 years later published a second bio, Surviving James Dean (2006), where he talks in detail about their close friendship and how they landed in each others beds.
I've tried my best to get a copy of the 2006 biography but to no avail, and I've also had haiducii scouting for it on the net, but: nada. The library of the Swedish Film Institute has 2 copies of the 1956 bio, but none of the 2006. The best I could fix for anyone interested is a link to the Amazon-page where you can read the introduction and the first chapter. It's not what I wanted to give to y'all, but it's the best I could do:Anon URL
Bast also talks about Dean's other gay relationships and doents the knowledge Dean had about gay bars and customs. Other writers agreeing with Bast's opinion that Dean was gay or bisexual are Robert Aldrich and Gary Wotherspoon, Billy J. Harbin, Paul Alexander, Val Holley, John Gilmore and Donald Spoto.
In the second camp we find journalists Joe and Jay Hyams in their biography James Dean: Little Boy Lost (1992) and their opinion that Dean's same-sex activities didn't express any deeper traits in his personality, and that it was sex-for-trade only, a method for advancing his career.
It should be noted that Joe Hyams wrote the introduction to photographer Dennis Stock's two books about JD in 2005 and 2015. Of maybe greater importance is that Stock's books are closely related to Anton Corbijn's recent biopic Life ; more about this in a later chapter!
General personality.
I also wanted to talk a bit about JD's general personality: Was he an easygoing guy or a difficult bastard, maybe a downright nasty unpleasant sucker? In that case: what could be the cause?
Scotty Bowers - who was the great Mr Fix-a-Sexual-Trick of Hollywood from the late 1940s to the early 1970s - portrays Dean in the following way in his memoirs Full Service (2012):
"I had already learned that Dean was a difficult young man, not at all pleasant to be around. [...] People were mesmerized by him. However, beneath the facade he was a prissy little queer, moody and unpredictable. Although he had a few romantic flings with women he was essentially gay."
But in Robert Hofler's biography of the influential Hollywood agent Henry Willson - The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson (2005) - we meet JD as a macho homophobe:
"While James Dean, for one, was especially fond of directing his macho disgust at homosexuals, he none the less managed to seek out several of them to be, if not major powerbrokers, his effective career doormen. Radio producer Rogers Brackett not only housed and fed Dean, he provided the right connections for the actors first radio series, CBS's Alias Jane Doe in 1951."
In the introduction to his 2006 biography Surviving James Dean William Bast says:
"Having been witness to the way he lived and functioned over the last five years, I was able to observe how mercilessly he played with people's heads and hearts, mine included."
So at least three things seems certain: a) that JD had romantic flings with girls, b) that he had sex with other men more or less often, c) that he could be a pretty difficult guy to be around.
But was the same-sex activities "only for trade"? The most interesting question is why no one - as far as I know - asks the same question about Dean's alledged girl crazyness: why couldn't Pier Angeli also be considered "only for trade"? We know it's a certified fact that Rock Hudson's marriage to Henry Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates was nothing but a career move constructed by the wizard of sexual make-believe in 1950s Hollywood.
Who the fuck was Henry Willson? He was an agent and became one of the central powerbrokers in 1950s Hollywood. You could say that at that time there were two categories of male actors in Tinseltown: to the left side of the movie screen slouched the tormented neurotics like Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift.
To the right side of the screen we had a big bunch of male beauties collectively baptized "Henry's Boys": the actors who had Henry Willson as their agent. To name just a few we had Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison - and not a single one bore the name their parents had given them, and a great many of Henry's Boys were super homo. Henry Willson himself was an arch-faggot baptizing his boys to make them sound like superhetero all-american pussy-pounders.
So Roy Scherer jr became "Rock Hudson", Francis Timothy McCown was "Rory Calhoun", Merle Johnson jr became "Troy Donahue" and Arthur Gelien was "Tab Hunter". The supreme art of Henry Willson was to let homophobic 1950s America phantazise that their movie favourites were all the biggest straight married sex athletes. As certified as the motherhood of Catherine Hepburn...
Bio-doentaries and biopics.
As far as I know the first bio-doentary was James Dean Story released in 1957 and made by a young Robert Altman and co-directed by George W. George. Maybe not one of Altman's best movies but the first JD docu!
If you've looked into the books and movies about JD as I've done the last weeks, you'll find some commercially motivated patterns: Most books and movies are published and sometimes re-published in close connection to the anniversaries of Deans death and the premieres of the three big movies in 1955-56, so we get the first major flood in 1974-75-76, and the next JD Tsunami in 2005-2006. That's really not a big mystery, but the biography of JD is an industry.
The next YT clip is the 1976 biopic James Dean with Stephen McHattie as JD. Robert Butler directed and it was written by William Bast, played by Michael Brandon in the film. The movie starts when Bill and JD met in LA in 1951 and ends after the lethal crash in autumn 1955. In 1976 it was still impossible for Bast to directly mention that there was a sexual side to their friendship, but there's a convoluted conversation between JD and Bill about 50+ minutes in to the movie where JD asks Bill if he has made out with another guy.
The 2001 James Dean made-for-TV biopic is directed by Mark Rydell and has a young James Franco as JD. The only allusion to non-normative sexuality in this film is a vague mentioning of JD's early mentor Rogers Brackett as a gay man. Otherwise this is a movie where Pier Angeli is everything and JD's father Winton Dean is the Big Bad Wolf.
I'm sure some of you know that Matthew Mishory's Joshua Tree, 1951 from 2012 is my personal favourite among all the JD biopics, so once again here's a directlink:http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=531709
The last biopic in this post is Anton Corbijn's Life (2015) with Dean DeHaan as JD and Robert Pattinson as Dennis Stock. This is a film without an incling of bisexuality in the way JD is portrayed. I had lots of help from haiducii to get this movie posted on GH, thanks pal! :
http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=532322
Well my friends, every post has to end but I want to give this post the best possible ending in my opinion, knowing full well that myself and haiducii aren't the only film nerds in this thread. Just a few years after JD's death in 1955 the studio system collapsed, and the 1960s became a very difficult period for the US film industry, but in the late 1970s Hollywood was flourishing again!
How did the change from studio system collaps in early 1960s to the new golden age in the mid-to-late 1970s happen? This story has never been as skillfully told as in this 2003 doentary based on Peter Biskind's 1999 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
So - Happy Spring Break :cheers:
First of all I want to tell, that we - haiducii and myself - have decided to take a spring break from this thread. We'll get back at our loyal followers to talk about how long or short the spring break will be. But now - let's go back to revisit James Dean!
Biographies, bio-do
entaries and biopics. I want to compare the ways Deans sexuality and personality are portrayed in different categories of biographical material, first the printed biographies and the the film do
entaries, TV biographies and biopics. The reason why I do this categorization is that in my opinion there are important differences biographies in print and the film docu/TV biographies/biopics: It's mainly in print you can expect Dean's sexuality outside normative heterosexuality to be portrayed and discussed in any detail.Print biographies.
There seems to me to be two camps among biographers concerning James Dean's sexuality. In the first camp we find Bill Bast who not only wrote the first JD biography of all in 1956 but also precisely 50 years later published a second bio, Surviving James Dean (2006), where he talks in detail about their close friendship and how they landed in each others beds.
I've tried my best to get a copy of the 2006 biography but to no avail, and I've also had haiducii scouting for it on the net, but: nada. The library of the Swedish Film Institute has 2 copies of the 1956 bio, but none of the 2006. The best I could fix for anyone interested is a link to the Amazon-page where you can read the introduction and the first chapter. It's not what I wanted to give to y'all, but it's the best I could do:Anon URL
Bast also talks about Dean's other gay relationships and do
ents the knowledge Dean had about gay bars and customs. Other writers agreeing with Bast's opinion that Dean was gay or bisexual are Robert Aldrich and Gary Wotherspoon, Billy J. Harbin, Paul Alexander, Val Holley, John Gilmore and Donald Spoto.In the second camp we find journalists Joe and Jay Hyams in their biography James Dean: Little Boy Lost (1992) and their opinion that Dean's same-sex activities didn't express any deeper traits in his personality, and that it was sex-for-trade only, a method for advancing his career.
It should be noted that Joe Hyams wrote the introduction to photographer Dennis Stock's two books about JD in 2005 and 2015. Of maybe greater importance is that Stock's books are closely related to Anton Corbijn's recent biopic Life ; more about this in a later chapter!
General personality.
I also wanted to talk a bit about JD's general personality: Was he an easygoing guy or a difficult bastard, maybe a downright nasty unpleasant sucker? In that case: what could be the cause?
Scotty Bowers - who was the great Mr Fix-a-Sexual-Trick of Hollywood from the late 1940s to the early 1970s - portrays Dean in the following way in his memoirs Full Service (2012):
"I had already learned that Dean was a difficult young man, not at all pleasant to be around. [...] People were mesmerized by him. However, beneath the facade he was a prissy little queer, moody and unpredictable. Although he had a few romantic flings with women he was essentially gay."
But in Robert Hofler's biography of the influential Hollywood agent Henry Willson - The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson (2005) - we meet JD as a macho homophobe:
"While James Dean, for one, was especially fond of directing his macho disgust at homosexuals, he none the less managed to seek out several of them to be, if not major powerbrokers, his effective career doormen. Radio producer Rogers Brackett not only housed and fed Dean, he provided the right connections for the actors first radio series, CBS's Alias Jane Doe in 1951."
In the introduction to his 2006 biography Surviving James Dean William Bast says:
"Having been witness to the way he lived and functioned over the last five years, I was able to observe how mercilessly he played with people's heads and hearts, mine included."
So at least three things seems certain: a) that JD had romantic flings with girls, b) that he had sex with other men more or less often, c) that he could be a pretty difficult guy to be around.
But was the same-sex activities "only for trade"? The most interesting question is why no one - as far as I know - asks the same question about Dean's alledged girl crazyness: why couldn't Pier Angeli also be considered "only for trade"? We know it's a certified fact that Rock Hudson's marriage to Henry Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates was nothing but a career move constructed by the wizard of sexual make-believe in 1950s Hollywood.
Who the fuck was Henry Willson? He was an agent and became one of the central powerbrokers in 1950s Hollywood. You could say that at that time there were two categories of male actors in Tinseltown: to the left side of the movie screen slouched the tormented neurotics like Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift.
To the right side of the screen we had a big bunch of male beauties collectively baptized "Henry's Boys": the actors who had Henry Willson as their agent. To name just a few we had Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison - and not a single one bore the name their parents had given them, and a great many of Henry's Boys were super homo. Henry Willson himself was an arch-faggot baptizing his boys to make them sound like superhetero all-american pussy-pounders.
So Roy Scherer jr became "Rock Hudson", Francis Timothy McCown was "Rory Calhoun", Merle Johnson jr became "Troy Donahue" and Arthur Gelien was "Tab Hunter". The supreme art of Henry Willson was to let homophobic 1950s America phantazise that their movie favourites were all the biggest straight married sex athletes. As certified as the motherhood of Catherine Hepburn...
Bio-do
entaries and biopics.As far as I know the first bio-do
entary was James Dean Story released in 1957 and made by a young Robert Altman and co-directed by George W. George. Maybe not one of Altman's best movies but the first JD docu!If you've looked into the books and movies about JD as I've done the last weeks, you'll find some commercially motivated patterns: Most books and movies are published and sometimes re-published in close connection to the anniversaries of Deans death and the premieres of the three big movies in 1955-56, so we get the first major flood in 1974-75-76, and the next JD Tsunami in 2005-2006. That's really not a big mystery, but the biography of JD is an industry.
The next YT clip is the 1976 biopic James Dean with Stephen McHattie as JD. Robert Butler directed and it was written by William Bast, played by Michael Brandon in the film. The movie starts when Bill and JD met in LA in 1951 and ends after the lethal crash in autumn 1955. In 1976 it was still impossible for Bast to directly mention that there was a sexual side to their friendship, but there's a convoluted conversation between JD and Bill about 50+ minutes in to the movie where JD asks Bill if he has made out with another guy.
The 2001 James Dean made-for-TV biopic is directed by Mark Rydell and has a young James Franco as JD. The only allusion to non-normative sexuality in this film is a vague mentioning of JD's early mentor Rogers Brackett as a gay man. Otherwise this is a movie where Pier Angeli is everything and JD's father Winton Dean is the Big Bad Wolf.
I'm sure some of you know that Matthew Mishory's Joshua Tree, 1951 from 2012 is my personal favourite among all the JD biopics, so once again here's a directlink:http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=531709
The last biopic in this post is Anton Corbijn's Life (2015) with Dean DeHaan as JD and Robert Pattinson as Dennis Stock. This is a film without an incling of bisexuality in the way JD is portrayed. I had lots of help from haiducii to get this movie posted on GH, thanks pal! :
http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=532322
Well my friends, every post has to end but I want to give this post the best possible ending in my opinion, knowing full well that myself and haiducii aren't the only film nerds in this thread. Just a few years after JD's death in 1955 the studio system collapsed, and the 1960s became a very difficult period for the US film industry, but in the late 1970s Hollywood was flourishing again!
How did the change from studio system collaps in early 1960s to the new golden age in the mid-to-late 1970s happen? This story has never been as skillfully told as in this 2003 do
entary based on Peter Biskind's 1999 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. So - Happy Spring Break :cheers:
