Elvis is Dead, but James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Freddie Prinze Aren't

Movieline's David McDonough chatted with James Dean over lunch at Le Grand Passage in Beverly Hills. McDonough told us, "The interview was interrupted every few minutes when bikers wearing Ray-Bans and bandanas on their heads approached the table to get the autograph of the 59-year-old Oscar winner. The peskiest of the intruders turned out to be Mickey Rourke, who begged Dean to drop by his new club, later that evening."

Movieline: "The Dean Show" has just been picked up for its second season. You must be pleased.

James Dean: Sure, it beats a lighted cigarette on the arm. I have to give NBC a lot of credit, though. Our ratings were marginal during the first year, but they said they were committed to the show, and they weren't lying.

Q: Any changes this year?

A: Ally Sheedy, who plays my oldest daughter, will be getting married this season, to a zookeeper. We wanted to find a way to get the show out of the house. And we're going to let Joan Baez sing a few songs. She didn't want to last season, because she's worked so hard to change her image. And I think she's great; I wouldn't have done the show if she hadn't agreed to play my wife.

Q: I noticed you didn't do a lot of shows at the office the first season. Whose idea was it to make your character a mortician?

A: Billy Gray's. I was visiting him on the set of his show "Wall Street" and he said that if people would watch him as Gordon Gekko every week, and they do, that the time was right for a sitcom about an undertaker.

Q: You surprised a lot of people by agreeing to do a series. The only time I remember you doing TV was that two-parter on "Hawaii Five-0" some ten years ago.

A: Yeah, I was visiting Maui at the time, and Jack Lord asked me to come on over. So I did it, just for a kick. But you know, I did a lot of TV in the early days. And then I did that mini-series, "Giant II," with Rock Hudson for Turner Cable, and I enjoyed that very much... so I've come full circle.

Q: Speaking of Rock Hudson...

A: Oh, no. Too tragic. Let's change the subject.

Q: Okay. Isn't it a challenge, doing comedy for the first time?

A: No, I love it. I started out doing comedy. The first film I ever did was Sailor Beware with Martin and Lewis. I used to sit for hours watching Jerry Lewis work. I was totally in awe of him. I considered East of Eden a comedy, you know. That's the way Ray Massey and I played it. We could hardly get through some of the scenes without breaking up. He was a funny guy. Canadian. Martin Short is his nephew.

Q: You got a Best Actor nomination for East of Eden, didn't you? Were you disappointed when you lost?

A: Not really. It's such an honor just to be nominated, you know. And anyway, I won the Oscar two years later, so...

Q: For Somebody Up There Likes Me.

A: Yeah. Funny thing about that. I got that script in the summer of 1955, and I was all set to do it, right after Giant. Then I had this car accident that laid me up for a couple of months. So they gave the part to this kid, Paul Newman, and he was all set to go, when the studio decided to wait for me to get out of the hospital. But by the time I did, I was committed to shooting The Naked and The Dead, finishing up my Warner contract, you know. So they told Newman he was in once more, then they decided to wait for me again. By that time, Newman was so fed up he elected to get out of films and into politics.

Q: So you went on to get the Oscar and he went on to be President.

A: And he was a hell of a lot better President than he was an actor, I'll tell you that!

Q: In the early '70s, the parts began to dry up for you. Any theory on why?

A: Who knows? A combination of things, probably. I was getting older. And, frankly, for about a decade there I had made a series of bad career choices, picked the wrong parts.

Q: Like what?

A: Well, West Side Story. I shouldn't have tried to do my own singing. PT 109, that was a turkey. Far From the Madding Crowd I always wanted to do because I was such a fan of Thomas Hardy. But I should never have directed it as well. It was just too much work. After that, I just wanted some time off, to rest. But then Dennis [Hopper] called. He was directing a biker picture, and Rip Torn dropped out, and Dennis needed someone to play a seedy Southern lawyer. I was exhausted, but I did it as a favor, and ended up winning another Academy Award. Which was nice, but then it seemed like that old Oscar jinx set in. Like George Chakiris, you know? I turned down a couple of good parts, The Last Detail, and Woody Allen's Bananas. And Mike Douglas wanted me for a film of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - do you know it? Great book. I hope he gets it done someday, maybe with De Niro - anyway, I said no to that because I'd already agreed to go do a film for Ingmar Bergman. That took two years and ended up being the only Bergman film that flopped even in Sweden. And then, I don't know, the only thing I could get when I came back home was stuff like Asteroid. Oh, and Dennis got me two weeks for Coppola as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, which I appreciated, but I really wanted the Martin Sheen role. They said I was too old. Anyway, you take the parts you do get and you do your best, because you never know which films are going to work, and which aren't. [Laughs] And which are going to come back and haunt you on video.

Q: Speaking of which, there's a film you did early in your career that's become something of a cult film.

A: Which is that?

Q: Rebel With a Cause.

A: That's Rebel Without a Cause! Yeah, we shot that in about three weeks back in 1955. Nick Ray directed it, and the studio told him he had two months to finish it and he had to shoot at least one scene in this planetarium the studio built for some other movie. I think we shot the whole film at night to save money, but to tell you the truth, I don't really remember that much about it. You say it's become a cult film?

Q: It plays on a double bill at the Nuart Theatre with Glen or Glenda?

A: Well, there you go. That's fame for you. ■

David McDonough lives in New Jersey, and this is his first piece for us.

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