James Dean: Last News

“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.