The special affair of Marlon Brando and James Dean decoded by an expert
The release of James Dean's biography, Tomorrow never comes, by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, will undoubtedly have the effect of a bomb! A cinema specialist Jean-Philippe Guérand, author of the biography on James Dean, was kind enough to answer us.
James Dean has always admired Marlon Brando. In his book, devoted to the star of La fureur de vivre, Jean-Philippe Guérand explains: "he harassed him day and night with his calls, tried to meet him in cocktails and social events, bordered on mimicry for related reasons. both to his iconic personality as a star from the Actor's Studio and to his sexual ambiguity ”. This relationship has always been denied by Marlon Brando, notably in his autobiography Songs my mother taught me.
Today, writers go deeper into this story. Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, authors of James Dean: Tomorrow never comes, which will be released in April, in the United States, reveal the underside of the sadomasochistic relationship maintained by the two actors.
James Dean's private life was withheld from the general public until his death. It’s when he dies that we learn the truth about his sex life. He had been romantically involved with a man for five years. Much less tumultuous than Marlon Brando, whose magazines revealed the many love stories and conquests for both women and men!
JAMES DEAN, THE TOUTOU OF MARLON BRANDO
They reportedly met in 1949, when James Dean was just a film student. He would have approached Marlon Brando after a lecture given at his school. He reportedly let her know he was "her biggest fan" and the actor responded with a kiss. Failing to resemble a love story, their relationship would rather resemble a sadomasochistic erotic tradition. It is by collecting testimonies from celebrity journalists who knew James Dean and that of Rogers Brackett, James Dean's agent, that authors Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince uncover the details of this relationship.
According to their confessions, Marlon Brando behaved like the "master". He took great pleasure in causing physical and mental pain to his "doggie", James Dean. The latter, completely in the grip of the star, asked him to put out his cigarettes on his body and agreed to watch his partner make love to other men. According to Jean-Philippe Guérand, James Dean has often been described himself as a masochist, “being dominated did not displease him. Kenneth Anger even claims in his book Hollywood Babylon an unverifiable fact that Dean was nicknamed "the human ashtray" because he liked having cigarettes smashed on his chest. " If James had romantic feelings, Marlon Brando didn't, "that passion was really one-sided and never got past the stage of intentions," he adds. Completely submissive to his partner, the young man has reportedly refused his agent's help several times to get rid of him.
THE COMING OUT OF THE STARS
To protect the actors of the time, the studios provided exclusive information to the media. "It was when Rock Hudson admitted to having AIDS that he was discovered to be homosexual," says Jean-Philippe Guérand. For other stars, their sexual relations were not known until after their deaths, such as James Dean and Cary Grant. It was learned after the latter's death that he had cohabited with western actor Randolph Scott. Now many photos of the two of them are circulating on the Internet in visibly intimate situations.
Today, the Internet and the speed of information circulating through it make it impossible to keep a secret. "The surest way to live in peace is no longer to live in hiding, which is impossible unless you stay cloistered away from the world, but instead come out and publicly embrace your inclinations. From then on, we also become much less interesting for the People press because we are becoming commonplace ”concludes the cinema specialist.
