During the siege of silence, my host located a letter buried among the dinner plates, and read it while he ate, like a gentleman perusing his breakfast newspaper. Presently, remembering me, he remarked, "From a friend of mine. He's making a documentary, the life of James Dean. He wants me to do the narration. I think I might." He tossed the letter aside and pulled his apple pie, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, toward him. "Maybe not, though. I get excited about something, but it never lasts more than seven minutes. Seven minutes exactly. That's my limit. I never know why I get up in the morning." Finishing his pie, he gazed speculatively at my portion; I passed it to him. "But I'm really considering this Dean thing. It could be important."
James Dean, the young motion-picture actor killed in a car accident in 1955, was promoted throughout his phosphorescent career as the All-American "mixed-up kid," the symbol of misunderstood hot-rodding youth with a switch-blade approach to life's little problems. When he died, an expensive film in which he had starred, Giant, had yet to be released, and the picture's press agents, seeking to offset any ill effects that Dean's demise might have on the commercial prospects of their product, succeeded by "glamorizing" the tragedy, and, in ironic consequence, created a Dean legend of rather necrophilic appeal. Though Brando was seven years older than Dean, and professionally more secure, the two actors came to be associated in the collective movie-fan mind. Many critics reviewing Dean's first film, East of Eden, remarked on the well-nigh plagiaristic resemblance between his acting mannerisms and Brando's. Offscreen, too, Dean appeared to be practicing the sincerest form of flattery; like Brando, he tore around on motorcycles, played bongo drums, dressed the role of rowdy, spouted an intellectual rigmarole, cultivated a cranky, colorful newspaper personality that mingled, to a skillfully potent degree, plain bad boy and sensitive sphinx.
"No, Dean was never a friend of mine," said Brando, in response to a question that he seemed surprised to have been asked. "That's not why I may do the narration job. I hardly knew him. But he had an idee fixe about me. Whatever I did he did. He was always trying to get close to me. He used to call up." Brando lifted an imaginary telephone, put it to his ear with a cunning, eavesdropper's smile. "I'd listen to him talking to the answering service, asking for me, leaving messages. But I never spoke up. I never called him back. No, when I -"
The scene was interrupted
by the ringing of a real telephone. "Yeah?" he said, picking it up.
"Speaking. From where? ... Manila? ... Well, I don't
know anybody in Manila. Tell them I'm not here. No, when I
finally met Dean," he said, hanging up, "it was at a party. Where
he was throwing himself around, acting the madman. So I spoke to
him. I took him aside and asked him didn't he know he was sick?
That he needed help?" The memory evoked an intensified version of
Brando's familiar look of enlightened compassion. "He listened to
me. He knew he was sick. I gave him the name of an analyst,
and he went. And at least his work improved. Toward
the end, I think he was beginning to find his own way as an actor.
But this glorifying of Dean is all wrong. That's why I believe the
documentary could be important. To show that he wasn't a hero; show
what he really was-just a lost boy trying to find himself. That ought
to be done, and I'd like to do it - maybe as a kind of expiation for some
of my own sins. Like making The Wild One." He was referring
to the strange film in which he was presented as the Fuhrer of a tribe
of Fascistlike delinquents. "But. Who knows? Seven minutes
is my limit."