Cast Aways: Part VIII

Fred and Ginger reunite for their second cinematic collaboration, 

The Gay Divorcee.

The visual splendor of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in motion continues to fascinate and hypnotize even the most novice of film fans. The synchronicity of their partnership and the unexpected chemistry of their personae makes them inseparable in the history of cinema. What they had was magical. This is evidenced in the fact that Fred first danced on film with Joan Crawford in Dancing Lady for MGM, and that partnership did not lead to future pairings. Perhaps more than any other onscreen couple, Astaire and Rogers portrayed true movie romance head to toe. This makes one wonder what the world of filmdom would have been without them. Not only could a glitch in their seemingly divine partnership have negatively affected the rest of their careers, preventing them from building the reputations that achieved them other, separate acting opportunities (his Easter Parade, her Kitty Foyle par exemple), but there too would have been a gaping hole in cinema where its heart should be. Had fate not intervened, history could have danced along at a clumsier pace. Originally, Dorothy Jordan (right) was slated to dance the infamous "Carioca" with Fred in his first RKO film, Flying Down to Rio. Fortunately for Ginger, Dorothy had opted to marry producer Merian C. Cooper instead. In turn, studio head Merian, who luckily had seen a screen test of Ginger, saw enough potential in her to give her the small role in the musical-- a genre for which the action man had little interest. The rest is history. While one can't argue the talents of Dorothy, it also can't be argued that America's embrace of the art of dance would have been greatly affected had she gone toe to toe, or rather forehead to forehead, with Freddy instead of Ginger that first fateful dance.

Though Ginger (left) was lucky in landing what turned out to be a ten picture gig with Fred, there were a few acting opportunities that she passed up. It was Barbara Stanwyck who would later joke that she was always given the roles Ginger vetoed, but it was more obviously Olivia de Havilland who seemed to have the luck of the draw with Ginger's discards. It turns out that Ginger, one of the top female stars of her day, was offered both To Each His Own and The Snake Pit before Olivia snatched them up. One wonders why Ginger would pass on two such meaty roles-- one, the tale of a woman forced to give up her child and watch him be raised by another family, and the other the raw and shocking study of one woman's life in a mental institution. Perhaps Ginger was a little more worried about protecting her glamorous image than Olivia, who had no qualms about hurling herself into any role, no matter the subject matter. Well, almost anyway. Olivia allegedly turned down Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire because she found the character too... unladylike. While Olivia may have flinched at playing a lady of the night, she did not balk at portraying emotionally and mentally conflicted women from other varied walks of life. After O de H won the Oscar for To Each His Own and snagged another nomination for The Snake Pit, Ginger admittedly kicked herself with her taps. But, all is fair in film and war, and in the end, Ginger knew which roles she was best suited for. Besides, she already had her own Oscar to keep her company.

Olivia De Havilland combats a nervous breakdown and a strait jacket

 in The Snake Pit.

 

Before Alfred Hitchcock invented Grace Kelly, Cecil B. DeMille had done the same for Gloria Swanson. Gloria had gone from one of the many Sennett "bathing beauties" to one of the most famous and envied women in the world due to her work with Cecil, who had helped to mold her erotic and powerful image in films like Male and Female and Why Change Your Wife?. But Gloria eventually made her exit from Paramount Pictures to go rogue, leaving behind her maker and an unfulfilled career together. Cecil didn't pine, (as Hitch would later do for Ingrid Bergman when she abdicated her throne as his muse to marry Roberto Rosselini), but he still missed working with his little fella and often tried to elicit her freelancing services. He even offered her the "role of a lifetime" as Mary Magdalene in his epic The King of Kings. Initially, Gloria turned the chance down, having just suffered through a nervous breakdown coming on the heels of her disastrous divorce from the blackmailing Herbert K. Somborn and subsequent marriage to the royal Henri de la Falaise. Exhausted, Gloria needed time off... Or so she thought. She grew tired of being tired, and later inquired about the role, raising Cecil's hopes-- only to turn it down a second time to play a very different prostitute in Sadie Thompson. As a result, Cecil cast Jacqueline Logan (right) in the role of the scandalous and saved MM. It is the role for which she is most often remembered.

Gloria Swanson slips into another prostitute role in Sadie Thompson

 and cozies up to Lionel Barrymore.

Ava Gardner, an actress of the old school Hollywood style (see left), was intrigued about working with edgy new star Paul Newman when news of the Tennessee Williams adaptation Sweet Bird of Youth came to her attention. Ava always had little respect for her own acting gifts, so to work with someone who was being lauded as a great talent both flattered and intimidated her. Of course, as a sensual woman, she no doubt was equally attracted to the idea of working with Paul, whose pale blue eyes certainly must have reminded her of ex-hubby Frank Sinatra's steely and intense gaze. However, the pairing was not to be. Ava found the role of Alexandra Del Lago-- an aging, drunken actress-- a bit too close to home. The superb Geraldine Page swooped in instead and flew away with the movie. Nonetheless, Paul and Ava were teamed up in a later picture, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, directed by Ava's old pal John Huston. Unfortunately, the off screen chemistry was not as hot as Ava had hoped, although this had much to do with Paul's marriage to soul mate Joanne Woodward. Because Ava's reception from Paul was so chilly, the woman who could have any man she wanted was a bit miffed. She would refer to Paul as one of her most "unfavorite actors." Yet, her brief three-days of work on the film, playing "the world's most beautiful woman," of course, was still enjoyable, and while she may not have warmed to her co-star, she as always enjoyed joking and laughing with the rest of the film crew-- Huston included.

 

Geraldine Page reaps the benefits of Ava's uncertainty with Paul Newman

 in Sweet Bird of Youth.

When Paul was coming up in Hollywood, one of his greatest competitors for roles was James Dean. Both young, good-looking men proved that they had more going on than their pretty faces, but because James burst onto the scene to acclaim before Paul in East of Eden, his popularity allowed him to have first choice of roles. (Ironically, Paul would be up for the role of Aron Trask, brother to Jimmy's Cal, in Eden, but would lose the role to Richard Davalos). However, Dean's sudden death not only left a hole in the hearts of his fans, but it also, in bittersweet fashion, allowed Paul to step in and stake his own claim as a young heartthrob in Hollywood. Originally, the role of Rocky in Somebody Up There Likes Me was to go to James, which would certainly have been super awkward since the film would co-star ex-paramour Pier Angeli (they sit together in better days, right). When Jimmy shockingly died, Paul inherited the role of his former friend and made it his own. His performance would help to further establish his stellar reputation as a promising and gifted newcomer, and his continued devotion to his work and craft would earn him a place in Hollywood lore as one of our most diversified, defiant, and damn-goodlooking stars.

Paul takes his place in the (acting) ring in Somebody Up

 There Likes Me.

STAR OF THE MONTH: James Dean

Hollywood's Favorite Rebel: James Dean

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy... Why'd ya' do it? Over fifty years later, your absence still aches. The whole trouble with legends is that their reputation often eclipses their talent. Just as Marilyn and Elvis tend to disappear behind all of the hullabaloo said about them, so too has Dean become more of a symbol than a human being. I've often been asked, "What's the big deal? Was he really that good?" I reply with a resounding slap and a "You bet your sweet life!" Yes, he was good. My God, was he good. The legacy he left behind is the result of an astounding and almost electric talent, one that set him completely apart from his contemporaries, and history has maintained his power. When he died, many would draw comparisons between his death and that of Rudolph Valentino. The effect was equally profound. As my grandmother Mary Lou put it, "I cried my eyes out." So, to prove my point, ask yourself: What celebrity today would I mourn with a like passion were his life to be suddenly snuffed out? Go ahead, I'm waiting...

Dean woos Julie Harris and the rest of America in his first 

breakthrough role in East of Eden.

You see? James was special. While the eruption of the method actor was spearheaded by the dual force of Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, Dean's effect was perhaps even more poignant simply due to his age. It was his youth more than anything else that set him apart. He wasn't that foreign adversary called the "adult"-- someone that kids merely dressed up and pretended to be-- he was the angst ridden young man that they were. He represented their transition: the awkward stage when adolescence strives to become maturity. He was the being we all once were, and whom we had to survive, to reach adulthood. His embodiment of the confusion, rage, and rebellion that was suddenly being awakened in the dormant nuclear family society was one that every teen in American could relate to. He gave adolescence a face and a voice. His performances were both loud and silent, carefully cultivated, yet intensified by sudden bursts of improvisation. While Brando is attributed with creating a physical energy that enveloped the atmosphere, and Clift is the man who more fully brought to the surface the complications of inner emotion, Jimmy was the most adept at using his environment-- becoming a part of it, tangling with it, and moving through it as his own organism. There is not one piece of film where he does not look completely at home, completely attached to his surroundings, even if he is pounding his fists against it. He rests his chin on a wall, rolls on the ground, casually plucks leaves from a tree, or soaks in a burst of oil from the very earth he is rooted to all with equal ease.

Dean and Corey Allen prepare to play a game of chicken, 

because "You gotta do somethin'."

Oddly, in his personal life, Dean seemed to be rooted to nothing and no one except his own mania. His eccentricities were merely a part of what made him so alluring. Just how calculated his manner was remains a topic of controversy. His psyche suffered an early fracture with the premature passing of his mother, whom he adored, when he was but 9-years-old. Just as Gable would endure the ongoing saga of the little boy lost after his own mother's death, so too would James seem to be on a perpetual quest for the severed maternal love for which there is no replacement. Despite the fact that he would mature under the care of his loving aunt and uncle on their Indiana farm, he too would feel the eternal burn of abandonment on the part of his father, who sent him away initially because he was unable to care for him alone and more finitely when he was drafted into the war. Born of this dual loss was the classic Dean penchant for chronic searching. He became a frenetic and curious boy who was fascinated by everything, constantly on the move, competing and excelling at various sports, and raising Hell by speeding around town on his first motorbike. An early and innate gift for mimicry, which kept his peers rolling with laughter, would naturally translate to acting. He never really found within all of these things what he was looking for, but still he continued the hunt.

The classic image of Dean's cool: a car and a cigarette.

His ambidextrous nature would continue into his young adulthood, and while acting became the one thing that he remained solidly faithful to, his insatiable need for information made him thoroughly knowledgeable on a great many subjects: athletics, art, music, foreign languages, etc. He became an unpredictable creature. He would appear at a friend's doorstep with his drums, perform an interlude for a few hours, then abruptly disappear-- usually through the window. He would be full of smiles one moment, joking and laughing, and then become sullen and distant the next. There were two Deans: you either loved him and his idiosyncrasies, or you loathed him and his outlandish tomfoolery. Actually, there were more than two of him... Dean wore so many faces and represented so many different things to his friends that each knew him in a different way. This contributed to the continuing confusion as to just who he really was, including sexually. Friend Martin Landau knew one Dean and swore up and down that "This guy was not gay." College roommate and lifelong friend William Bast knew another Dean and claims that the two had an intermittent sexual relationship over the years. The nature of Dean's relationship with the Rev. James DeWeerd as a child also raises questions, as does the recently released revelation he made to the late Elizabeth Taylor, who claimed he confided to her his molestation by a minister as a youth. On the one hand, you have his deeply romantic love affair with Pier Angeli-- who is popularly recalled as the "one who got away" and whose wedding Dean sat outside, fuming on his motorcycle. On the other, there are the claims of Rogers Brackett-- who acted as a sort of patron for Dean when he was starting out and too claims that the two had a damaging and complicated affair. It is hard to find the clear and definitive line of truth. The theories are as various as the theorizers: he was a homosexual in denial or he was a bisexual that preferred women. People tend to imagine the Dean that they would have preferred. 

One of JD's goals as an actor was to make a Western, a 

hope fulfilled in George Stevens's Giant.

But perhaps this was all part of his plan. In any event, it had no impact on the public's worship. Whatever his sexual nature, he was masculine enough to maintain male respect and adulation, and sensitive and beautiful enough to continue making young girls swoon. His image, the James Dean he created in life and left behind in death, was part truth and part illusion. He tested his audiences in his private life as much as he did on the screen. His crazy shenanigans-- pulling his shirt over his head while he was eating to detract/attract attention, or his casually strolling into a stranger's home to help himself to a sandwich-- were things that he did consciously and unconsciously. He added to his own mystique, later becoming ensnared by the very enigma he had created. He once turned to a friend after being rude to a studio-head and asked, "If you ever figure out why I just did that, tell me will ya'?" Being his friend was, in fact, a challenge. He pulled stunts to push those closest away, trying to see who would remain faithful no matter what he pulled. To this day, no one can say with any certainty who the Hell James Dean was. He remains as the proverbial tree in the woods-- making even those who knew him best sometimes wonder if he even existed at all.

Dean and mechanic Rolf Weutherich prepare for Dean's last drive 

in "Little Bastard."

In the end, it became too complicated for James Dean to be James Dean. His insatiable love for acting, which took him from Los Angeles to New York and back again, had but one foe for the number one place in his heart: racing. Dean loved to drive. Not only did the speed fulfill his craving for pulsating adrenaline and invigorating stimuli, but it gave him escape. Behind the wheel, he was focused, in control, and away from both the madness of the world and his own uncertainties, insecurities, and emotions. It gave him strength, to defy and conquer danger at once. As in all things he tried, he excelled at driving. Many seasoned racers remarked on his "steel hands" and imperturbable focus, but most importantly his total lack of fear. Ironically, he was safer on the fiery and foreboding dirt paths of the racetrack than he was on the open road. A freak accident in 1955 on route 46 claimed the life of a man that fate alone had the power to kill. Herein do we find the popular slogans: "Live fast, die young" and "Too fast to live, too young to die." Dean would have been irked by this legacy. The youths who look up to him, who seek to emulate him by being "complicated," "dark," and "tortured," those who worship his offspring-- Morrison, Cobain, Phoenix-- by mirroring his tragedy, do not understand his passions. Dean hungered for life not death. While he openly admitted an uncanny premonition that he would not make it to thirty, he also was quoted as saying, (when questioned about his daredevil ways), that he would never purposely endanger his life, because he had too much to live for, too much he had yet to do, too much he wanted to learn. Dean was far from "done," and we were not yet finished with him when he was abruptly taken. Sadly, legends can only be born in death. 

Dean became good friends with photographer Dennis Stock, who took this "silly" photo, 

which would become morbidly popular after Jimmy's death.

The legend lives on in the many faces he left behind: the lost puppy you want to nurture, the fidgety rebel who makes you want to defy, and the beam of irrepressible sex appeal that makes you want to do many, many things.

~ ~ ~

In college, one of my professors told me that the scene in which Sal Mineo looks into his locker mirror in Rebel Without A Cause, and sees James Dean's face reflected back at him, is the most written about moment in cinematic history. I believe it. I believe it, because it is perhaps one of the most honest moments ever captured on film. All of us look onto the movie screen waiting to see little pieces of ourselves reflected back, and we look for them in the most beautiful of Hollywood's faces. Since Dean remains one of our most cherished idols, we to this day still look at him and see ourselves. He exteriorized our true demons and yet delivered his performances with a grace, a swagger, and a charm that we too hoped to possess. He was the man of our dreams and the self of our dreams. In trying to become all human beings, he succeeded only in making us want to be like him. He was just cool. Really, damn cool. Had he survived, there's no telling how much further his talent could have taken himself and us. His career, his human interpretation, his voyage had just begun. Oh Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy... Why'd ya do it?

James reveals himself as yet another Christ figure, here with 

Elizabeth Taylor in Giant.

Happy May.