Michael Ochs Archives
James Dean was blackmailed by a former male lover who threatened to out him on the eve of his big-screen break, according to a new book.
In “Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean,” which drops Tuesday, author Jason Colavito claims the ill-fated Hollywood icon shelled out $800 to advertising executive Rogers Brackett only days before his first movie, “East of Eden,” premiered, averting a public scandal that would have cost him his career in the homophobic 1950s.
In excerpts published by DailyMail, Colavito details the disastrous affair which left Dean feeling sexually exploited.
“I didn’t know it was the whore who paid – I thought it was the other way around,” Dean reportedly said.
The $800 blackmail — around $9,395 today, per the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis — was an enormous sum at a time when a man’s median salary in the US was around $3,100 per year, per DailyMail.
Dean and Brackett met in 1951, when Dean was a parking valet next door to CBS studios, where the radio drama “Alias Jane Doe” — produced by Brackett’s advertising agency — was recorded.
Wealthy and older than Dean, Brackett was “struck by the golden beauty of the youth who took his keys,” according to Colavito. When Dean told the exec that he was an actor, Brackett reportedly said he would keep the handsome youngster in mind for roles on the radio show.
Not long after, Colavito says a “smitten” Brackett found a part for Dean on “Alias Jane Doe,” and Dean quickly grew attached to Brackett.
“Although these feelings scared Dean, Brackett unlocked something Dean had kept so closely guarded that it had threatened to break him,” Colavito claims.
When a destitute Dean found himself on the verge of homelessness, Brackett allegedly asked the actor to move in with him. But the relationship grew tense.
“Jimmy was like a child. He behaved badly just to get attention,” Brackett reportedly said of Dean years later. “[H]e was a kid I loved, sometimes parentally, sometimes not parentally.”
After a tumultuous romance, the pair parted ways and Brackett moved to Chicago while Dean relocated to New York City.
Despite their distance, an impoverished Dean accepted financial support from Brackett, who — with “great reluctance” — forked over $1,000 to the actor, including $450 for hotel bills and more than $700 spent on gifts and loans.
During this period, Dean saw Brackett as “increasingly desperate” and “manipulative,” Colavito writes. The ad-man allegedly introduced Dean to influential friends who made it clear they wanted to have sex with the handsome up-and-comer.
Brackett reportedly continued to help Dean’s career, working his rolodex to secure Dean a part in the 1952 Broadway play, “See the Jaguar.”
After drifting apart, Brackett came back into Dean’s life just as the actor’s career was on the up-swing, and his was bottoming out.
In March 1955, just weeks before the premiere of Dean’s first movie, “East of Eden,” Brackett, now unemployed and looking to raise cash for an opera he was trying to producer with composer Alec Wilder, supposedly demanded Dean give him $1,200 in repayment for the financial support he provided the star during his early days in New York.
“Brackett imposed on Dean for a drink and, striking a more conciliatory tone, asked him for money – a loan, he called it,” Colavito writes.
“The brazenness of the request shocked Dean, who had come to believe his time ‘dancing’ for Brackett’s friends had been abusive.”
Colavito claims Dean told Brackett, “Sorry, pops.”
But after a verbal lashing from Wilder, replete with the implications of the damage Brackett could do to his fledgling career, Dean reluctantly agreed to pen an apology to his former paramour.
Unfortunately for Dean, the letter didn’t end the matter, and Brackett sent the future Oscar-nominee a legal demand for the funds and filed a suit in New York Municipal court for $1,100.
“Implicit in the correspondence and conversations between Brackett’s team and Dean’s is the threat that the suit might become public, which both Brackett and Dean knew would destroy Dean’s career,” Colavito told DailyMail.
Wanting to “avoid a scandal when he could least afford one,” Dean settled with Brackett and agreed to pay $800 in weekly installments of $100, according to court documents obtained by Colavito and published in his book.
Dean’s agent also got “East of Eden” distributor Warner Bros. to pay Brackett a large “finder’s fee” to guarantee his “continued silence,” per the author.
According to the court documents, Brackett’s suit makes no mention of his and Dean’s affair, but only the expenses he said he was owed.
“This story has never been told before, and all parties involved worked hard to make sure no one ever found out,” Colavito told DailyMail.
“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.”
Dean died in a tragic car crash only six months after the “East of Eden” premiere.