Six decades have passed, yet his legend remains as vital as ever. Something else has happened too: his work has endured. He may have made only three pictures, but his performances were so innovative in their style and so perfect in their execution that Dean is considered to be as important as actors with much larger bodies of work. But Dean may not have had the career he had – he certainly would not have made the pictures he did – if it had not been for one woman, Geraldine Page.
They were both members of the Actors Studio, but they became close in late 1953, when they were cast in The Immoralist, Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s adaptation of Andre Gide’s novel. Billy Rose, the show’s producer, hired Herman Shumlin to direct. To appear opposite Page, a rising star on Broadway, Rose cast Louis Jourdan. The two stars could not have been more different: Page was a student of Stanislavski, Jourdan a matinee idol. Then again, the conflict may have actually helped the play, since its plot centered around newlyweds Michel (Jourdan) and Marceline (Page), who, unable to consummate their marriage for two months, go on a honeymoon to Algeria. There, Michel is seduced by an Arab houseboy, played by Dean, and afterwards, consumed by guilt, finally has sex with Marceline, who becomes pregnant, locking the couple in a loveless marriage.
From the first day of rehearsal, December 18, 1953, there was trouble. Page and Jourdan clashed, while Dean was rattled by insecurity and fear. “Jimmy was very nervous and frightened,” recalled Salem Ludwig, an understudy and the show’s Actors Equity Association representative. “He overcame his fear by pretending to be a tough guy. He was young, and this show was a big step in his career.” Indeed, Dean’s only other Broadway credit, See the Jaguar, was a flop that had closed after five performances.
Shumlin indulged Dean, who began to make breakthroughs in his character. By January 9, however, when the company moved to Philadelphia for tryouts, Shumlin couldn’t figure out how to stage the homoerotic scenes, so Rose fired him. The new director was Daniel Mann, who fixed the staging but failed to recognize Dean’s paralyzing terror. The young actor’s lack of confidence caused him to act out, demanding attention from those around him. The situation reached a breaking point one day during rehearsal when Mann, fed up with Dean’s behavior, told him to shut up. Stunned, Dean seethed. The two men stood on stage, toe-to-toe, until Dean finally spun around, retrieved his jacket, and stalked out of the theatre. Rose, who watched the episode unfold from the empty auditorium, decided to fire Dean.
There was only one problem. Page wouldn’t stand for it. “My mother,” Angelica Page said, “told the director and the producer, ‘You’re letting pure gold walk out of that door. If he’s not in this show, I’m not in this show.’ She meant what she said, too. If Jimmy was not going to be there on opening night, she wasn’t either.”
Rose must have believed her: Dean was not fired. But Page still had to make sure Dean didn’t quit. “I got a call from Geraldine that Jimmy was in her room,” Ludwig recalled. “I went up and there was Jimmy sitting there, furious, ready to kill someone. 'Jimmy, what happened?’ I said. 'I didn’t want to get in a fight,’ he said, 'so now I’m packed and ready to go.’ I said, 'You can’t do that. Nobody will hire you in the future.’ He said, 'I don’t care. I’m leaving.’
"Then I said, 'Jimmy, there are six blacklisted actors in this show who haven’t worked in a long time. If you walk out and the show closes, they’re out of a job,’” Ludwig said. “There was a pause. Soon tears started to flow down Jimmy’s cheeks and he said, 'I’ll do it.’”
Dean did well in the Philadelphia tryouts, but he hit his stride in New York previews. Elia Kazan saw the last preview and sought out Dean after the show to offer him a lead role in East of Eden, complete with a Warner Bros. contract. So, on opening night, after turning in a stunning performance, Dean handed Rose his two-week notice. None of this would have happened, of course, if Page had not put her professional reputation on the line and threatened to quit the show if Rose fired Dean. Otherwise, Rose would have – that was certainly his style.
When the conflict with Dean developed, Rose may not have realized the situation had both professional and personal implications for Page. Starting around the time of the first rehearsal and continuing into the play’s New York run, she and Dean had been having an affair. The attraction was obvious. Beautiful and captivating, Dean projected a powerful sexual appeal, while, with her classic leading-lady looks, Page radiated her own allure.
As if to create mementos of the affair, Dean made freehand drawings for Page, which he did only for those people about whom he cared deeply. A talented amateur artist, Dean enjoyed drawing informal sketches on the backs of napkins and sheets of paper. Page cherished the drawings, putting them for safe keeping in a small, white envelope on which she wrote: “Please save these masterpieces for me by Mr. James Dean.”
“According to my mother, their affair went on for three-and-a-half months,” Angelica Page said. “In many ways my mother never really got over Jimmy. It was not unusual for me to go to her dressing room through the years, obviously many years after Dean was gone, and find pictures of him taped up on her mirror. My mother never forgot about Jimmy – never. I believe they were artistic soul mates.”
Photo of Barbara Baxley and James Dean on the set of “East of Eden”
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“There is not enough cocaine in the world that could provide as much energy and wild happiness as that set [of “East of Eden”], those people, that feeling that everything was possible. [Elia] Kazan gave us freedom and Jimmy [Dean] was the bright comet we all had prayed we could be, or that we could be near.“
