Marlon the master and James Dean his slave: Stars had 'secret master and slave S&M relationship' as Streetcar Named Desire star stubbed out cigarettes on his younger lover
James Dean and Marlon Brando had a secret sadomasochistic relationship fueled by the Godfather star's ego and insatiable desire for control, a new book claims.
The two men would meet up for master and servant style s*x sessions where Dean asked to be burned with cigarettes, it alleges.
Friends revealed that Brando was so in charge that he made Dean watch him have s*x with strangers who he had just met as part of a twisted mind game.
Brando never reciprocated Dean's love and played a 'cat-and-mouse game' with his younger lover for his own amusement.
Friends said that Dean was like a 'puppy dog' who would loiter outside Brando's apartment in the cold - in the desperate hope his idol would invite him in for s*x.
Dean and Brando were two of the icons of their generation but their dark personal currents drew them together, the book says.
The two men both studied under acting coach Lee Strasberg, they were both discovered by director Elia Kazan and they were both intense, brooding characters.
In some ways Dean was considered the successor to Brando and only got his roles in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden because Brando turned them both down.
In James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, which is due out next on Blood Moon Productions, authors Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince reveal that their relationship was far more complex than had been thought.
The book is based on conversations with sources and veteran gossip journalists who had known Dean before his death in 1955 at the age of 24.
They reveal that the first time Brando met Dean was not on the set of East of Eden in 1954 as he claimed in his own memoir, 'Songs My Mother Taught Me'.
Instead it was in 1949 when, after an extended stay in Paris, Brando flew back to New York to make a public appearance at the Actors Studio where he had studied under Strasberg.
Following his lead role in A Streetcar Named Desire on both the stage and the screen Brando was being idolized and wanted to give a speech at his alma mater.
At the back of the audience was a young man who Brando would later describe to Bobby Lewis, one of the founders of the actor's studio, as staring at him so intently he 'felt my skin burning'.
Brando thought that Dean had a 'childlike sincerity' and thought Dean was in love with him - and he was right.
Afterwards Dean introduced himself by telling Brando that he was his 'greatest fan' and that he was confused about many things but 'not confused in my admiration for you'.
The two men made small talk about Dean's ability to predict days that people would die - he got his own wrong - before a long pause when they looked into each other's eyes.
Brando leaned in and kissed him, the book says.
Prince and Porter claim that Brando downplayed the extent of his relationship with Dean In Songs My Mother Taught Me.
But it was quite apparent for their celebrity friends who included playwright Tennessee Williams, composer Alec Wilder and Rogers Brackett, a Manhattan advertising executive who was Dean's on-off boyfriend.
Dean is said to have told Brackett that Brando was 'completely in charge of our love-making'.
Brackett recalled Dean saying: 'I got to make love to Brando, which is something I've been longing to do every since I first heard about him….he told me what he wanted and I went along for the ride.'
Stella Adler, the actress and acclaimed acting teacher, said that after that she saw Brando 'everywhere' with Dean.
Wilder said: 'They were definitely a couple. Of course, the words "s*xual fidelity" would be unknown in each of their vocabularies.
'Jimmy and I used to sit and talk for hours in my room at the Algonquin Hotel (in New York). He kept me abreast of the affair.
'I really believe that Jimmy fell in love with Brando that year. As for Brando, I don't think he ever loved Jimmy.
'I met Brando only three times and each time he was with Jimmy. In my opinion, Brando was in love with Brando'.
Dean ditched his trademark white t-shirt and jeans and started to dress smarter and more like Brando.
Stanley Haggert, another of Dean's friends, said that Dean never had any money and that he thought Brando 'wouldn't lend him a cent'.
Haggert thought that Brando 'deliberately wanted him lean and mean on the streets, looking for a handout'.
He said: 'Dean talked frequently about Brando and how frustrated he was in the relationship.
'I got the impression that Jimmy was engaged in a cat-and-mouse affair with Brando, with Brando being the cat, of course. Brando seemed to be toying with Jimmy for his own amusement.
'I think Brando was sadistically using Jimmy, who followed him around like a lovesick puppy with his tongue wagging.'
Prince and Porter say that Brackett thought there was a 'terrible loneliness' in Dean and that despite asking him to be in a monogamous relationship, he could not keep him away from Brando.
Brackett said that Brando rubbed it in Dean's face that he was having affairs with other people.
His cruelty extended to inviting Dean over and making him watch as he had s*x with somebody he had just met on the street.
Brackett said: 'When Brando was out on one of his many dates Jimmy would often stalk him, even following him home.
'On many a night Jimmy would stand beneath Brando's apartment, looking up at his bedroom window as the lights went out, waiting to to be in that bedroom himself.
'One very cold morning Brando came downstairs in his pajamas and invited Jimmy, shivering in the cold, to come upstairs with him. But I fear those acts of kindness were the exception, not the norm'.
In his memoir Brando denied that such a relationship occurred and claimed that Dean was 'never a friend of mine'.
He admitted that the younger actor had a 'ideé fixe about me' but nothing more.
Porter and Prince claim this is untrue and say that Dean and Brando's fates seemed to intertwine themselves in their professional careers too.
At the time Dean was trying to land the role of Nels in the TV series I Remember Mama - the same role which Brando had played in the stage version.
During one dinner Brackett was shocked when Dean took off his shirt to reveal that he was covered in burns in his chest.
When he looked closer he could see they were caused by cigarettes that Dean said Brando had forced into his skin.
Brackett said: 'I was practically ready to call the police on the brutal son-of-a-bitch until Jimmy told me that he'd asked Brando to do that to him.
'For the first time in my life I came to realize what a masochist Jimmy was - or was becoming'
According to Truman Capote, there was no doubt about the relationship between Dean and Brando but the way he saw it, there was no love - just s*x.
Others thought that their professional rivalry was the source of their s*xual tension and had Dean not died so young it would have continued.
Ironically Dean's relationship with a young Steven McQueen took on some of the similarities of his relationship to Brando, only in reverse.
Friends recalled how McQueen would mimic everything about Dean including the way he turned the newspaper and the way he drank his coffee.
The two men were seen in Greenwich village in the 1950s riding shirtless on their motorcycles through the neighborhood and spending hours together in cafes.
Dean supposedly also had a fling with Marilyn Monroe when they spent two weekends a beach house on Fire Island, an idyllic getaway East of New York.
The book claims that another of Dean's lovers was Walt Disney, who faced repeated rumors that he was secretly gay.
In 1976, a decade after he died, gossip newspaper The Hollywood Star ran a front page story with the headline: 'Walt Disney Was Homos*xual' which purported to reveal the truth.
Porter and Prince say that, according to dozens of sources, Disney was indeed gay and that he supposedly rented apartments in Los Angeles under different names where he would meet lovers.
Disney supposedly met Dean one night at the home of George Cukor, the director whose films included My Fair Lady.
Cukor felt that he owed Dean a favor to make up for casting Anthony Perkins instead of him in the 1953 drama The Actress.
Disney's initial impression was that Dean was a 'clean-cut All-American boy' and after getting reassurances from Cukor he was discreet, the three went upstairs to have s*x together.
Dean later claimed to a gossip reporter that he was devoured by two 'ravenous mouths' but afterwards Cukor would not return his phone calls.
