New Details About James Dean Gay Affairs
 |
 |
It was recently announced that the book Surviving James Dean will be adapted for the big screen, a memoir from the actor’s good friend, one-time roommate, and alleged former lover William Bast, who detailed their years-long on-again-off-again secret romance, right up until Dean’s tragic death at 24 in 1955.
But now, scandalous details have emerged about another one of Dean’s (alleged) gay lovers, and we’re starting to think there are enough stories here for a whole film series dedicated to the screen idol’s illicit affairs.
In the new biography Jimmy: The Secret Life Of James Dean (out Nov. 19 from Applause Books), author James Colavito pours through exhaustive research—including hundreds of rarely seen pages of Dean’s personal and business records—to re-contextualize the iconic Old Hollywood’s stars life and legacy as a queer man.
Your dose of fabulosi-TEA
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.
Among the book’s revelations is a dark story of love, lust, blackmail, and betrayal between Dean and Rogers Brackett, the closeted radio director & TV producer who claims to have “discovered” the star.
 |
After Dean dropped out of the theater program at UCLA (during which time he met & grew close with the aforementioned Bast), he was looking for any industry work he could find, and took up a job as a parking attendant at the CBS Studios lot.
It’s there that he first caught Brackett’s eye, who was at the time working for an ad agency that produced CBS’s afternoon radio drama Alias Jane Doe. The producer was immediately “smitten” with the wannabe star (as the rest of the world would soon be), later offering him a role on the radio series, then eventually his own home after discovering Dean was on the verge of homelessness.
From that point forward, the pair began a rather complicated mentor-mentee relationship, one that could be both paternal and sexual in nature. Per Colavito’s book, Brackett once remarked that “Jimmy was like a child. He behaved badly just to get attention… he was a kid I loved, sometimes parentally, sometimes not parentally.”
And it was with Brackett’s advice and encouragement that Dean eventually landed his first Broadway role in See The Jaguar, moving to New York City. It was then, when folks began to make note of his theatrical work, that Hollywood finally came calling.
Tensions grew between the two as Dean’s career took off, and Brackett gradually became less and less central to his life. That Shortly before the film began to screen, Brackett popped back into the picture. He had lost his agency job and was short on cash himself as he worked on an opera with composer Alec Wilder, so, given the role he played in turning Dean into a star, now was asking him for money, which he viewed as fair payback.
Per Colavito’s research, Dean had come to recognize his time with Brackett as abusive and initially refused to pay up, though “the undercurrent threatening public scandal should Dean refuse was obvious,” so the actor eventually signed a letter of apology, at Wilder’s behest, but not before an “explosive argument” that allegedly culminated in him shouting:
“I didn’t know it was the wh*re who paid – I thought it was the other way around.”
Still, that wasn’t enough for Brackett, who eventually sent a formal legal demand for $1,200, which he felt was the equivalent of what he’d given Dean throughout their secret affair, covering hotel bills and various gifts he had purchased for the actor.
The threat was heavily implied: If Dean didn’t comply, Brackett would go public about the actor’s homosexuality, which at the time would surely have ruined his career, just as it was beginning. It was blackmail, period.
 |
After Brackett filed suit, Dean agreed to a settlement of $800 (the equivalent of over $10k today) to be paid in $100 weekly installments to—as Colavito writes—”avoid a scandal when he could least afford one.” Apparently he actor’s agent also got Warner Bros. to pay Brackett a hefty “finder’s fee” to ensure he wouldn’t threaten to spill Dean’s secrets again.
In their reporting on Jimmy: The Secret Life Of James Dean, The Daily Mail writes that the copies of the court documents appearing in the book don’t give any indication of the anger or danger between Dean and Brackett, but they point to the amount of money on the line (which, again, was considered much more at the time) as a clear sign of how high-stakes the entire ordeal was.
“This story has never been told before, and all parties involved worked hard to make sure no one ever found out,” Colavito tells the publication. “And for seventy years, no one did. The only reason we know about it today is that Dean’s agent secretly kept copies of his papers hidden away for decades.”
 |
Brackett lived for many decades after Dean’s tragic car accident, passing in 1993. Various retrospectives and biographies on Dean’s life and career do, indeed, credit Brackett for setting him on a path to success, and some have even made note of the heated exchange when he asked the burgeoning star for money.
But in Jimmy: The Secret Life Of James Dean, Colavito definitely paints the nature of their relationship in a slightly different light, even purporting that Dean may have viewed it as exploitative and abusive.
We’ll be curious to see how this might play into the upcoming movie about Dean and Bast’s relationship, if at all. Or, perhaps it’ll get turned into a movie of its own! All we know for sure is that audiences are still obsessed with James Dean’s story, even 70 years later.
Comments