Notes

"Things get mixed up all the time. I see a person I would like to get close to (everybody) then I think it would be just the same as before and they don’t give a shit about me. Then I say something nasty, or nothing at all and walk away. The poor person doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t realize that I have decided I don’t like him. What’s wrong with people. Idiots."Jimmy and I started talking very personally. A couple of times before this I had seen him be cold or abrupt with people - but these things aways ended in something causing pain for him. He was always putting people through a series of circus hoops before letting them get close. He was like Marlon: he ate people - consumed all they knew, their mannerisms, all he could use as an artist. Everyone was a source for his creativity. He really wanted to be a participant in life. But he was constantly fucking himself over by behavior designed to alienate people.
I tried to get it across to him, to prepare him in some way, but he just didn’t seem to take it in. I told him straight one evening, “Your mother’s never coming home again”. All he did was stare at me. Even as a child he wasn’t much to talk about his hurts. And his cousin Joan added: He shut it all inside him. The only person he could have talked about it with was lying there in the casket.
So maybe Jimmy felt no one would understand him like his mother did? (I also think thats why he liked people Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Harris, because they were such caring, maternal women.) So, I think that led him into acting too. He found many ways to express himself while he was growing up, but acting meant the most to him. He could express all those emotions he was constantly holding in. I think he also wanted to be a great actor to prove to both his parents that he actually was somebody. He felt like both his mother and father abandoned him, even though neither of them actually wanted to leave him. This is what Dennis Hopper said about Jimmy:
Once on the set, I told Jimmy I had to know what he was doing because acting was my whole life. I asked him why he became and actor and he said, “Because I hate my mother and father. I wanted to get up on stage… and I wanted to show them. I’ll tell you what made me want to become an actor, what gave me that drive to be the best. My mother died when I was almost nine. I used to sneak out of my uncle’s house at night and go to her grave, and I used to cry and cry on her grave - Mother, why did you leave me? Why did you leave me? I need you… I want you.” Okay, well that eventually turned into Jimmy pounding on the grave saying, “I’ll show you for leaving me… fuck you, I’m gonna be so fuckin’ great without you!”
Dean’s Cal Trask with his slinking gait and strangled speech is the classic depiction of the good boy who is bad because he feels too much and is loved too little, the boy for whom everything goes wrong because he tries too hard. It is a performance and a film that millions of men have watched with a lump in their throats and a look of bittersweet recognition on their faces
I was struck by how very much James Dean off-camera resembled the James Dean you saw on-camera. He worked very hard at his craft, rehearsed with very much the same intensity that he gave the part on-camera… Most of us, after a while in pictures, hold back somewhat in rehearsal and save our punch for the take. Jimmy did not do this. He seemed to go all out almost any time that he read his lines. - Ronald Reagan
…he sat down on a huge Coca Cola cooler and stared at the customer. She looked at him and then away, repeating the action several times. He kept staring. About the fifth time she leaned over to the unseen attendant and pointed at Jim. He kept his expression as he slid off the box and walked away. - Roy Schatt
I knew James Dean as a friend and as a student. He was a disrupter of norms, a bender of rules, a disquieter of calm. - Roy Schatt
He was a bastard sometimes in the sense that he was not reliable and didn’t show up for many appointments, but I hung in because I liked him enough so that when he got into one of his moods, I would pull away and not get near him for a while. I was able to relate to him because he often expressed different parts of me. - Dennis Stock
I joined the cast of Giant after a long absence from the movies. So much had happened, I wasn’t sure I could catch up. Then I met Jimmy. He was the most wonderful tease in the world. And he made me laugh. He must have guessed that laughter was what I needed. I find that remembering him still makes me smile. I think that would please him. - Jane Withers
Jimmy Dean was 12 years old and had been living with the Winslows for three years when Marcus Winslow Jr. was born on Nov. 2, 1943. “Markie”, as Jimmy fondly referred to him, was more like Jimmy’s little brother than his cousin. Although Jimmy moved to California in 1949, he made frequent return visits to Fairmount, during which he spent much of his time with Markie, playing with him, teaching him, trying to be a role model for him.
What did Jimmy talk about? He talked about Markie. He loved that little boy… - Beulah Rot
He came to our house often because, he said, he missed Markie, the young cousin he had grown up with in Indiana, and Jay, then five, was about Markie’s age. Jimmy had a remarkable ability to communicate with children, the younger the better. He listened attentively to Jay’s stories about his school friends and asked the questions one school friend asks another: Why do you like so and so? Is he stronger than you? Are you afraid of the dark? He paid close attention to the answers and to the body language. I sometimes felt he knew more about my son than I myself did. - Joe Hyams
Jimmy enjoyed a stunt in which he would walk over a sidewalk grating, make a great “swooshing” sound, and lift his overcoat over his head. Marty, who was walking about ten feet behind him, would run up. “Good grief! What was that?” Marty would scream. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Jimmy would cry. “It came from down there. I think something’s about to explode.” When a sufficiently huge crowd had gathered and the braver ones were trying to work up their nerve to approach the grating, Jimmy and Marty would steal away, cross the street and watch the excitement from there. “Some bunch, aren’t they?” Jimmy would say, smiling broadly.
Jimmy later described his date with Terry to Lew and me [Joe Hyams] as “a fucking bore. She just went with me for the publicity, and I don’t know why in the hell I let Dick talk me into it.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those wise ones who try to put Hollywood down. It just happens that I fit to cadence and pace better here [in New York] as far as living goes. New York is vital, and above all, fertile. They’re a little harder to find, maybe, but out there in Hollywood, behind all that brick and mortar, there are human beings just as sensitive to fertility. The problem for this cat, myself, is not to get lost.
He was the child who goes to a secret corner and refuses to speak. - Nick Ray
He is not our hero because he was perfect, but because he perfectly represented the damaged but beautiful soul of our time. - Andy Warhol
One night the group went to Arlene’s brownstone for a party. Some young men in leather jackets crashed the party and started to quietly terrorize the guests. Jimmy and Marty (Martin Landau, James Dean’s close friend and fellow actor) went into the kitchen and decided to do something drastic that would frighten the unwanted guests into leaving. They flipped coins to decide who would be the victim and who would be the killer, and then they started a loud argument in the kitchen that spilled out into the living room, where Marty, with ketchup on his chest, fell onto the floor as Jimmy stood over him with a kitchen knife in his hand. “It was an impromptu scene, but it worked,” recalls Marty. “The guys split. They figured the cops would be on the way any minute.
”I barely remember that it was shot. It’s the one of my sitting on Jimmy’s cycle. I’d been photographing Jimmy and suddenly during the take, Jimmy grabbed the camera off my neck and commanded: ‘Hey, Phil! I want a picture of you on my bike.’ So he shot it.”
Phil’s grandchildren all know the amazing lore that surrounds James Dean. “Boy, are they impressed,” Phil says. “Seeing Granddad sitting on that bike!”
In retrospect it seems to me that I felt by being around him something was about to happen or was already happening, but I just wasn’t smart enough to get it. He was fascinating to be with and watch. There was the way he moved. He could lift a glass of water to his mouth with and intensity and grace that made it seem he had never before touched a glass, never carried that particular weight through the air. What he said wasn’t especially smart or memorable; it was the way he said it that made it interesting, the delivery and the hand gestures. I never felt i was a disciple and should take notes because they would be valuable someday. Nor did I realize that I was lucky to be his friend until years later when he became a legend. - Joe Hyams
He was much more beautiful to me, and much more interesting, and much more complicated than any of the parts that he played, or any of the performances that you saw.
Acting is just interpretation, I want to create for myself.
- James Dean
He was very protective of himself. He was a sensitive guy and my feeling is that he didn’t really allow people into him because he was busy protecting this awareness that he had, and he didn’t want to be split off socially and find himself playing games, so he stayed to himself. When he felt very secure then occasionally he would open up.
He kept the cast and crew waiting for one whole hour. Keeping an entire company waiting for an hour sent the production department in a panic.
Jimmy spent the hour… sitting in his darkened dressing room with a record player blasting out the “Ride of the Valkyrie,” and drinking a quart of cheap red wine. When he felt ready, he stormed out, strode onto the set, did the scene, which was practically a seven-minute monologue, in one take, so brilliantly, that even the hard-boiled crew cheered and applauded.
Jimmy was always improvising and he cried a lot… He loved to do that and he could do it very well.
"I really don’t know who I am, but it really doesn’t matter."|
-James Dean
Jimmy symbolized the scapegoat who draws the lightning upon himself. His “bad” behavior was really a rebellion against an old definition of good and evil. Kael objects to a movie star leading a nihilistic movement that lacked a premeditated program. But Jimmy had taken the first step. He had the courage to just say, “No, I don’t believe it. I have to find out for myself.”
There were probably very few directors with whom Jimmy could ever have worked. To work with him meant exploring his nature, trying to understand it; without this, his powers of expression were frozen. He retreated, he sulked. He always wanted to make a film which he could personally believe, but it was never easy for him. Between belief and action lay the obstacle of his own deep, obscure uncertainty.
”He was not funny,” recalls Dennis. “I had no idea he was going to do that, and I’d never have suggested he do such things. It frightened me, and I know it frightened him, too. In retrospect, I think his way of dealing with fear was to make fun of it, to taunt it.”
The last picture Dennis took was of Jimmy sitting up in the coffin, hands clasped and staring directly into the camera, a lost expression on his face.
”Everything had gone out of Jimmy by then, all the showmanship, all the cuteness. There was nothing there other than a lost person who really doesn’t quite understand why he is doing what he is doing. That’s not a moment to underestimate.”
He used to come on the set and watch the scenes, even when he wasn’t in them. He was that interested in the whole picture, and not just his part.
“There’s something so different about Jimmy. It’s so hard to describe when you first meet him… the little boy quality. Insecure, uptight, but very involved. Trying very desperately to make conversation, badly. I found him utterly fascinating… We had a lot of fights. I was very emotional. I cried and screamed a lot back then. But Jimmy never screamed back. The hardest thing for Jimmy to do was be angry.” - Barbara Glenn

He “longed for someone to understand him” and was “always asking for advice” - Ursula Andress

“He wanted me to love him unconditionally, but Jimmy was not able to love someone else in return … it was the troubled boy that wanted to be loved very badly. I loved Jimmy as I have loved no one else in my life, but I could not give him the enormous amount that he needed. Loving Jimmy was something that could empty a person.” - Pier Angel
I probably should have a press agent. But I don’t care what people write about me. I’ll talk to the ones I like; the others can print what they please.
-James Dean
Once I told him I loved him, but he pretended he didn’t hear. and then he said ‘You can’t love me, I don’t think anyone can yet’.
To this day, I can sometimes hear his comments and imagine his reactions and I often think of one evening in particular. We had just finished a meal and we were smoking while coffee brewed. I studied my pipe and he stared ahead as streams of thin blue smoke rose from the cigarette in his mouth over his eyes and around his head, mixing with my pipe smoke and finally drifting upward. I watched a smile grow on his lips; the angle of his cigarette barely changing. It moved to his eyes, but he crinkled his eyelids into slits almost obscuring the dark blue behind them. He then asked me why my pipe was caked with crud and I told him it made the smoke taste sweeter. I asked why he had a cigarette resting over his left ear and he explained that he would light it “as soon as I’m finished with this one, man. But its really there for you to ask about.” We both smiled.
If choice is in order - I’d rather have people hiss than yawn. Any public figure sets himself up as a target and that is the chance he takes. Most of us have more than one choice and I chose to be what I am, rather than remain a farm boy back in Indiana … Despite endless odds and issues along the way, I’ve never regretted it.
- James Dean
He was still an insomniac, and night after night he would stay up driving, or drinking, with local cronies or with friends from back home who would come to visit. But no matter how late he stayed up, somehow he usually managed to make it to the set on time. There were exceptions, of course, with which Hollywood legend abounds, but in my experience when Jimmy held up shooting, or showed up late, it was usually because he was at odds with the studio; it was his way of scoring a point for what he considered to be justice.
I thought he was an extreme grotesque of a boy; I thought he was a twisted boy. And I thought, twisted by the denial of love. And it turned out, as I got to know his father and I got to know about his family that he had been, in fact, twisted by the denial of love.
“I don’t know. She’s such a figment of my imagination. I go whoop in the stomach when you just ask me if I’d like to meet her. Too much woman. You look at her and think, I’d like to have that.”
I want to grow away from all the petty little world we exist in. I want to leave it all behind, all the petty little thoughts about unimportant little things, things that’ll be forgotten a hundred years from now anyway. There’s a level somewhere where everything is solid and important. I’m going to try to reach up there and find a place I know is pretty close to perfect, a place where this whole messy world should be, could be, if it’d just take the time to learn.

- James Dean

"I figure there’s nothing you can’t do, if you put everything into it. The only thing that stops people from getting what they want is themselves. They put too many barriers in their paths. It’s like they’re afraid to succeed. In a way, I guess I know why. There’s a terrific amount of responsibility that goes with success, and the greater the success, the greater the responsibility… But I think, if you’re not afraid, if you take everything you are, everything worthwhile in you, and direct it at one goal, one ultimate mark, you’ve got to get there. If you start accepting the world, letting things happen to you, around you, things will happen like you never dreamed they’d happen."
- James Dean
Jimmy was a chameleon, protean by nature and by profession, with the power to assume different characters, become different creatures, in order to avoid capture. Only if caught and held would the Greek god Proteus confide the truth. Few ever caught and none ever held Jimmy.
The ancient Greeks had four words for love - philia (friendship), storge (familial love), eros (sexual love), and agape (unconditional or sacrificial love)
One of the deepest drives of human nature is the desire to be appreciated, the longing to be liked, to be held in esteem, to be a sought-after person. There are six needs in life: love, security, self-esteem, recognition, new experiences, and last, but not least, the need for creative expression.
- James Dean
I can’t do something just because somebody tells me to do it. If I get a part as an old man, I watch an old man, listen to him, and then I mock him until I feel like an old man, too. If I get a part, even if its washing dishes, I’ll go home and get a dishpan and wash and wash until my hands peel and I know exactly how it feels to wash dishes. That’s the way I have to act. That’s the only way I can act.
-James Dean
I came to Hollywood to act, not to charm society. - James Dean