Dueling Bongos

Mulling over our prior post, which mused, to an exhaustive extent, about what happens when two superstars are tossed together in what a studio hopes to be a successful recipe at the box office, we regret that the moviehouse wasn’t large enough to accommodate such glaring omissions as George C. Scott and Marlon Brando in "The Formula," John Wayne and Henry Fonda in "Fort Apache," John Wayne and James Stewart in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," James Stewart and Henry Fonda in "Firecreek," Barbra Streisand and Jack Nicholson in "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in "The Fortune," Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in "Ishtar," Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in "Papillon," and Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman in "Runaway Jury."

And don’t even get us started on the several pairings of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, namely "I Walk Alone," "Gunfight at the OK Corral," "The Devil’s Disciple," "Seven Days in May" and "Tough Guys."

What intrigued us more than the exclusions was a screen team that never was, perhaps because of a late afternoon auto accident near Cholame, California, at the lonely intersection of State Highways 46 and 41, September 30, 1955.

"People were telling me I behaved like Brando before I knew who Brando was!" James Dean once told the Los Angeles Times. On the other hand, Dean would frequently drive past Marlon Brando’s New York address on West 57th Street and say aloud, "I wonder if the General is in tonight."

(Above: James Dean and Raymond Massey in "East of Eden")

During the filming of Dean’s breakthrough role in "East of Eden" (1955), director Elia Kazan, who was responsible for Brando’s iconic performances in "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Viva Zapata!" and "On the Waterfront," invited Brando to the set.

(Above: Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Julie Harris and James Dean)

Brando was supposedly hoping to pick up tips on directing from his former mentor, but Kazan later claimed that he himself was eager to see what effect Brando’s presence would have on Dean. Kazan recalled that Brando behaved graciously toward Dean, who "was so adoring of Marlon that he seemed shrunken and twisted in misery."

The following day, Dean returned the dubious favor by visiting the studio where Brando was portraying Napoleon Bonaparte in "Désirée."




"After we met on the set of ‘East of Eden,’" Brando noted in his 1994 memoir Songs My Mother Taught Me, "Jimmy began calling me for advice or to suggest a night out. We talked on the phone and ran into each other at parties but never became close."

Dean was at a Hollywood party for Sammy Davis Jr. when Brando showed up and subsequently snubbed a visibly crushed Dean into the early morning hours. At another party, Brando snidely predicted that the newly arrived Dean would discard his overcoat in a heap on the floor because that was what he himself was known for. According to Brando biographer Peter Manso, Brando refused to use Dean’s name in public, referring to him simply as "the kid."

When "East of Eden" was released, Brando reportedly remarked, "Mr. Dean appears to be wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talent." That criticism notwithstanding, Dean’s performance roused filmgoers and filmmakers to the realization that the reigning rebel of the screen, Brando, at the age of 31, was growing old, and "the replacement chosen was James Dean," according to media exptert Robert Tysl, who added that the campaign to invest 24-year-old Dean with Brando’s image was "obvious and undeniable." Variety columnist Army Archerd referred to Dean as "the poor man’s Brando" and noted that Brando would often launch into a dead-on impression of Dean.

Everyone was seemingly aware that Dean idolized Brando, but Dean wanted to keep his adulation private. (Kazan said that Dean spoke about Brando in "a cathedral hush.") He publicly maintained that any comparison was an unfriendly gesture, declaring, "Don’t give me any of this shit that I remind you of Marlon Brando," yet when he heard that psychiatrist Dr. Bela Mittleman was Brando’s analyst, he wasted no time in trying to become a patient of his, as well.

James Dean did tell the Los Angeles Times that he and Brando might be identified with the "same school" of acting, but he believed that his personal modes of expression were as valid as Brando’s. "It’s true I am constantly reminding people of him," Dean said. "They discover resemblances - we are both from farms, dress as we please, ride motorcycles, and work for Elia Kazan." He asserted that comparisons neither bothered nor flattered him.






(Above: Elia Kazan and James Dean)


Two years after James Dean’s death in a head-on collision on California Route 46, in a November 1957 interview by Truman Capote for New Yorker magazine, Marlon Brando said that Dean "had an idée fixe about me. Whatever I did, he did." Brando told Capote he was considering narrating a documentary about Dean "to show he wasn’t a hero; show what he really was - just a lost boy trying to find himself…I’d like to do it…as a kind of expiation for some of my own sins."

In his autobiography, Brando painstakingly strove to depict Dean in a more kindly, albeit often obviously condescending, light. "When we met," he wrote, "I sensed some of the same aspects of the midwestern farm boy who had suddenly been transplanted to the big city that I’d had when I went to New York - as well as some of the same anxieties I’d felt after being thrust into the status of celebrity at a young age."















Brando recalled that Dean "was nervous when we met and made it clear that he was not only mimicking my acting but also what he believed was my lifestyle. He said he was learning to play the conga drums and had taken up motorcycling, and he obviously wanted my approval of his work."

















Apparently obliged to impart his wisdom on safe driving after Dean had bruised his leg in a tumble from his Triumph motorcycle, Brando (whose favorite ride was a Triumph Thunderbird 6T) purportedly told him, "If you get in an accident, you’re liable to slide off and lose half your face. That’s okay if you’re in some other business, but as an actor you’ll have trouble getting by without it."

Brando asserted that he told Dean "he was foolish to try to copy me as an actor. ‘Jimmy, you have to be who you are, not who I am. You mustn’t try to copy me. Emulate the best aspect of yourself.’ I said it was a dead-end street to try to be somebody else."

According to Brando, "I think he regarded me as a kind of older brother or mentor, and I suppose I responded to him as if I was. I felt a kinship with him and was sorry for him…I could see in his eyes and in the way he moved and spoke that he had suffered a lot. He was tortured by insecurities."




(Above: Sal Mineo and James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause")


Brando noted, "Like me, he became a symbol of social change during the 1950s by happenstance. ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ (which, in its early development - little resembling what would eventually be filmed - was planned as Brando’s screen debut, for which he even did a screen test) was a story about a new lost generation of young people. Jimmy Dean and I were sometimes cast as symbols of this transformation - and in some cases as instigators of alienation."

In florid prose worthy of a eulogy, Brando wrote in his memoir, "Jimmy Dean, who made only three pictures…had everything going for him. He was not only on his way to becoming a good actor, but he had a personality and presence that made audiences curious about him, as well as looks and vulnerability that women found especially appealing…He wasn’t volcanic or dynamic, but he had a subtle energy and an intangible injured quality that had a tremendous impact on audiences."




(Above: James Dean in "Giant")




Brando recalled, "He was still developing when I first met him, but by the time he made ‘Giant,’ he was no longer trying to imitate me. He was awfully good in that last picture, and people identified with his pain and made him a cult hero. We can only guess what kind of actor he would have become in another twenty years. I think he could have become a great one. Instead he died and was forever entombed in his myth."





Afterword

Isn’t it funny how some cultural icons become "entombed" in their own myth long before their physical demise?