-An excerpt from C. David Heymann's book, Liz: An Intimate Biography
of Elizabeth Taylor. Another look at the Dean-Taylor relationship:
"...The
press, for its part, had cooked up an even more unlikely romance between
Elizabeth Taylor and her other leading man, James Dean, whose performance
as the sensitive young lead in East of Eden earned him a considerable
and faithful following. Fate and talent conspired to mark him as
the fastest-rising star among a new generation of actors. Like Rock
Hudson, Dean had strong homosexual proclivities but occasionally found
himself attracted to and involved with women.
Jeffrey Tanby, an acquaintance of Dean's and a periodic visitor on the
Giant
set,
remembered that Rock and Jimmy "weren't exactly on the best of terms.
They roomed together for a brief period in the early stages of shooting.
According to Jimmy, Rock tried to 'queer' him, and when he resisted, Hudson
became embittered and asked him to leave. That's when Hudson took
up with Elizabeth Taylor. Rock couldn't make enough negative comments
about Dean. He constantly complained to George Stevens that Dean
had been given the best lines and close-ups in the film. Stevens
abhorred Jimmy, considered him irresponsible and disrespectful, but recognized
his undeniable acting ability. As Jett Rink, the impoverished dirt
farmer who strikes it rich on oil, Jimmy had the perfect role to upstage
Hudson. And that's precisely what he did."
Although Elizabeth Taylor similarly resented Dean's shameless scene-stealing
efforts and disregard for other actors' feelings, a strong rapport soon
developed between them. Jimmy demonstrated not only a bewildering
recklessness but also an unorthodox, at times crude, sense of humor.
While crew members, spectators, and fellow actors looked on, Dean once
interrupted an outdoor shoot by yelling, "Cut," and then proceeded to unzip
his jeans and urinate in full view of the crowd. Elizabeth found
such audacious behavior amusing rather than insulting.
As Giant continued shooting in Marfa in June 1955, Elizabeth and
Jimmy drew closer. Carroll Baker, who played Elizabeth's daughter
in the film, observed in her autobiography, Baby Doll: "Elizabeth
went off mysteriously with Jimmy each evening, and none of us could figure
out where they went. They would arrive for dinner together.
She would sit in the balcony next to him during the rushes and then they
would slip away for what seemed like most of the night."
Years later, on March 11, 1993, when Elizabeth was given the American Film
Institute Award for Lifetime Achievement, she informed a live audience
of fifteen hundred at the Beverly Hills Hotel that she had "loved" James
Dean-whether in the physical or platonic sense, she did not specify.
But in Liz's own words in her autobiography, she described the bond as
one of friendship: "We had an extraordinary friendship. We would
sometimes sit up until three in the morning, and he would tell me about
his past, his mother, minister, his loves, and the next day he would just
look straight through me as if he'd given away or revealed too much of
himself. It would take, after one of these sessions, maybe a couple
of days before we'd be back on friendship terms. He was very afraid
to give of himself."
Another factor uniting Taylor and Dean was the difficulty they both experienced
with the director. At one juncture George Stevens admonished Taylor
in public for looking too glamorous. "Until you tone down your veneer,
you'll never be an actress," he told her. To compound the problems,
Dean remained constantly "high" on drugs, predominantly marijuana and hashish,
while Elizabeth had a variety of health problems, including a leg infection,
heat exhaustion, and laryngitis, necessitating repeated delays in the shooting
schedule. Stevens suspected the female star's ailments were either
imagined or contrived.
Before the completion of Giant, Elizabeth presented Dean with a
kitten; he named it Marcus, after an uncle in Fairmount, Indiana.
Taylor later stated: "I think he loved that kitten and was as close to
that kitten as anything else in life."
Then disaster struck. On September 30, 1955, several days after wrapping
up his role in Giant, James Dean was killed in an automobile accident
while speeding to a road race in Salinas, California, in his newly purchased
Porsche 550 Spyder. He had just turned twenty-four.
Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, George Stevens, and a small
group were viewing rushes at Warner Brothers in Burbank when the telephone
started to ring. Stevens picked up the receiver and listened.
When he finally spoke, he could be heard saying, "No, my God. Are
you sure? When?" He hung up the phone and ordered the film
stopped and the lights turned on. He grimly regarded those present
and spoke: "I've just been given the news that Jimmy Dean has been
killed." There was one unified inhalation of breath, and then everybody
in the room fell silent.
The set remained closed for the rest of the day. Taylor encountered
Stevens in the studio parking lot. "He had it coming to him," Stevens
lectured. "He drove like a maniac. He had an obvious death
wish."
The twenty-three-year-old actress's eyebrows arched as she stared at the
seasoned director. "Go to hell, George," she hissed, turning away
and heading for her car.
The day after James Dean's death, a Saturday, Stevens ordered work to recommence
on the film. Elizabeth Taylor balked. James P. Knox, a stuntman
in Giant, recollected that "Stevens seemed unnecessarily harsh on
Elizabeth. She appeared highly upset and 'left' her breakfast in
her dressing room. Once on the set-they were shooting interiors-she
broke down and sobbed. She couldn't stop crying. She became
semihysterical. Stevens became infuriated and forced her to complete
the scene."
Elizabeth finished the scene but remained in a state of near collapse for
three days. She was subsequently hospitalized (October 1-10, 1955)
at St. John's for a variety of ailments-infected bladder, intestinal obstruction,
lung congestion, leg pains, migraine headaches. Stevens remained
convinced that the major cause of Elizabeth's health problems was her reaction
to the death of James Dean and that what follow was purely psychosomatic.
He tried to conclude the picture by using a double, but when he failed
to obtain the desired results, he had to delay the completion of the picture
an additional two weeks.
Lester Persky, an associate producer of the 1968 Elizabeth Taylor film
Boom!,
recalled a conversation he once had with Richard Gulley, who handled public
relations for Giant: "Gulley confirmed that George Stevens
nearly went berserk working with Liz on the film. By this stage of
her career, she had become a holy terror-spoiled, difficult, completely
self-absorbed. No doubt the death of James Dean genuinely affected
her-she had related to him in a very motherly fashion. But this represented
only one of many events during production that Liz used to her own benefit."