New details emerge about James Dean’s alleged gay affair with Hollywood producer & blackmail plot
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.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.
