-Excerpt from Patricia Bosworth's book, Montgomery Clift: A Biography.
Bosworth discusses Dean's idolization with Monty, and it tells of Monty's
own view of James Dean:
By late 1953 Monty was beginning to hear a lot about a twenty-one-year-old
actor named James Dean. "He's a punk and a helluva talent," Elia
Kazan said. "He likes racing cars, waitresses-and waiters.
He says you're his idol."
"Jimmy was affected by Brando, but he was more moved by Monty," Dean's
good friend, actor Bill Gunn, said. "Jimmy dug Monty's fractured
personality-his dislocated quality. Brando was too obvious.
Monty had more class."
According to Gunn, people put Dean down for mimicking Monty and Brando,
but imitation was absolutely necessary in the desolate fifties. "Monty
and Brando fathered a whole generation of actors-Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson,
Dustin Hoffman, Bob DeNiro. Monty was the first movie star to seem
obsessed-slightly
nuts. There was a tremendous resistence to craziness in the 1950s
and Monty was disturbing-he had an edge."
Dean, a former high school basketball star from Indiana, had hitchhiked
to New York to become an actor in 1952. After months of near starvation
he began working regularly on live TV. His biggest competitors were
Paul Newman and Steve McQueen; they all went up for the same parts, but
everybody remembered Jimmy Dean. During auditions he used to lie
on the floor to relax.
Ultimately during his stay in New York, Dean obtained Monty's unlisted
phone number and called him repeatedly. "Mainy to listen to the sound
of my voice," Monty said. He tried to discourage these calls.
"He'd just say 'Uh-hello, man-uh-this is Jimmy Dean-uh-how are you?
What the fuck was I supposed to say? 'Hello, man-uh-how are you' back?"
Later he found out Dean phoned Brando regularly too, and he also signed
a couple of his letters "James (Brando-Clift) Dean."
After watching Dean on a TV show where he played a psyched-out teenager
reminiscent of himself in Dame Nature, Monty became even warier.
(His only comment was, "Dean is weird.") He would not see
him on Broadway in Gide's The Immoralist, where his sensuous portrayal
of a homosexual Arab houseboy won him both a Tony and a Daniel Blum Award,
and he refused to meet him whenever he had the opportunity. Nevertheless,
he followed his career avidly and questioned all their mutual friends about
him.
In the spring of 1954 Kazan cast Dean as the rebellious twin Cal Trask
in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Paradoxically, the screenplay
had originally been offered to Brando (to play Cal) and Monty (to play
the good brother, Adam).
While it was being filmed, Monty heard a great deal about the production.
Apparently Dean was rude and generally disruptive with other members of
the cast. He carried a gun; he refused to speak to anyone unless
it had to do with the movie, and spent a great deal of time in the dressing
room meditating. "But his behavior doesn't matter," said a friend.
"He is giving an incredibly intense performance as Cal. He is giving
everything."
Even more intriguing to Monty was the gossip about the screen test made
by Dean and Dick Davalos (who played the good brother). The scene,
set in Cal's bedroom, had homosexual overtones, so much so that in the
final version of the film the scene was cut.