- Edmund Purdom, The Egyptian, 1954. When Marlon Brando stalked out of this “Egyptian pile of camel dung, ” head Fox Darryl Zanuck decided to bring in the clone. He forgot how much of a clone Jimmy was. He didn’t do Biblical epics. And he didn’t do shit.
- John Kerr, The Cobweb, 1955. Kerr beat Dean to Broadway’s Tea and Sympathy in 1953 and inherited his TV role in The Corn Is Green in 1956. Associate producer Jud Kinberg said Jimmy wanted the role for three reasons: 1. He had ideas how to play a psychopath; 2, he figured working for MGM would force Jack Warner to improve or end his Warners contract; 3, working at MGM also meant being close to girlfriend Pier Angeli. But Metro said no. And was soon pleading for him.
- Tab Hunter, Battle Cry, 1954. Imagine that… an old warhorse like Raoul Walsh choosing Hunter, a pretty boy, over Dean, a pretty damn good actor – the difference between a full and an empty glass. Claims that Battle Cry was playing at the Texas Theater in Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after the JFJK assassination are false. It was Cry of Battle in a 60s double bill with War Is Hell.
- Paul Newman, The Silver Chalice, 1954. Dean’s agent warned him off the poor script. Newman, beaten by Dean to Cal Trask in East of Eden, 1954, took over Basil the sculptor. (Basil?!!) He knew he didn’t have the legs for what he called a cocktail dress – having been in a toga as Plato in one of Sidney Lumet’s You Are There series: The Death of Socrates, Lumet (his assistant was John Frankenheimer) launched Dean, Newman and Sal Mineo in his New York TV shows. Dean visited the Newman set, where he met the (alleged) love of his short life: Pier Angeli. But Mama made she she wed an Italian singer Vic Damone. When Chalice hit the tube years later. Newman apologised for his film debut performance in full page ads in the Hollywood warning people off “the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s.”
- Gordon MacRae, Oklahoma, 1955.
He saw both but director Fred Zinnemann wanted actors rather than singers in the Pulitzer Prize-winning, preeminent US musical. Ailene Roberts, Eva Marie Saint, Joanne Woodward for Laurey… Ernest Borgnine, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, Rod Steiger or Eli Wallach for poor Jud Fry… Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman or, above all, James Dean as Curly, Fred recalled their meet when Jimmy sang ‘Poor Jud Is Dead’ opposite Rod Steiger as Jud in colour and black-and-white… “He was supposed to come up for an interview at 11. Eleven came, and he was not here; 11:30 came, and he still was not here. Then around noon, in comes Jimmy, furious. He was all dressed up like a cowboy, for the part, and since he was an unknown at the time… They kept throwing him out of the hotel! Finally, he came up in the freight elevator. This was 1954 and second-rate cowboys were not tolerated in grand New York hotel lobbies. Later, he made a screen test – with the surrey with the fringe on top. Sensational! His singing voice may not have been equal to the task, but that test is a classic. I wish I knew if it still lies hidden in some attic or garage.” Steiger saw it differently. “He hadn’t quite got his technique together… At the time of his death, he was working too much on instinct. He’d be brilliant in one scene and then blow the next.” Paul Newman also tested as Curly. They became friends, riding motor-bikes together. When Jimmy tried to take it to another level, Newman exited left. Hurriedly. - Paul Newman, The Battler, TV, 1955. Hiding his Silver Chalice scars (and knees) Newman was back in New York when director Arthur Penn asked him to be Hemingway‘s autobiographcal hero, Nick Adams, in his meeting with punchy boxer Ad Francis – booked for James Dean. Two weeks before the live telecast, Dean was killed in his Porsche on September 30. End of project. Not. Quite. Both Penn and Fred Coe (who had produced Newman’s Our Town also for TV) reckoned he could handle the pugilist. “I was rocked by Dean’s death,” said Penn,“ but Paul was a very interesting young actor and he was already involved. He knew the project.” Sure, but emotionally, he said at first, he couldn’t hack it. He gave in and Dewey Martin took over his role. Newman felt inadequate, no matter how much Joanne Woodward told him the opposite. Reviews were not hot but playing the bruiser directly led, of course (as Newman knew knew it would have for Dean) to playing boxer Rocky Graziano in the film of his (and journo Rowland Barber’s) book, Somebody Up There Likes Me: The Story of My Life.
- Paul Newman, Somebody Up There Likes Me, 1956. Due as Jimmy’s next assignment after Giant… He had already started training in the ring with Mushy Callahan, the ex-boxer stuntman he’d used during Rebel Without A Cause when was killed in a car crash. Director Robert Wise saw The Battlerand found his replacement for Dean as Rocky Graziano. Newman praIsed MGM chief Dore Schary for helping him regain his confidence for a second time in his dead friend’s shoes. Director Robert Wise, already known for a 1948 boxing drama, The Set-Up, Wise never saw Dean as physically right for a middleweight. ”Paul did one of his best characterisations in it. He really caught the man.” That was because the star met the champ and studied him. ”His responses were immediate, emotional… a terrific restlessness about him, a kinda urgency and a thrust… he spits a lot, which I do to thios day.”Some years earlier Brando told Newman how he had studied Graziano for his Stanley Kowalski in AStreetcar Named Desire, even sent thim tickets to the Broadway play. ”That kid is playin’ me,” said Rocky. Both of them! Except Newman said he was playing aGraziano, not theGraziano… in Steve McQueen’s film debut!
- Anthony Perkins, The Sea Wall, Italy-France-USA, 1956. Italian cinemogul Dino De Laurentiis cinemogul offered Joseph Dufrense to Dean just before his shock death. Dino had even signed Jo Van Fleet to play his mother (as she had in East of Eden) after Anna Magnani bowed out.
- James Stewart, Spirit of St. Louis, 1957. Warners developed the saga of the first Transatlantic flight for Dean when he was 25, same age as the history-making Charles Lindberg. The USAF Brigadier-General Stewart was a flyer, but too old. ” “I was smart enough to know I was twice Lindberg’s age [45 to 27].” Jack Warner kept turning him down. For the first time in his life, Jim went on a diet “to get rid of the few measly pounds middle-age had bestowed upon me” and dyed his hair. “So finally Jack Warner gave me the part so they could get going because the budget was just going up and up and they needed to get results on film.” Warner called it “the most disastrous failure we ever had” Among one Warners cattle call for unknowns: Clint Eastwood.
- Elvis Presley, King Creole, 1957. Imagine Presley’s rapture at winning a role once aimed at his idols: Brando and Dean! (“My acting school!”). Both Dean and Paul Newman passed as the tale (when still about a boxer) was much the same as the biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano, Somebody Up There Likes Me, that Newman inherited after Dean’s shock death. In his fourth and favourite movie, Presley never let his idols down. “Good comic timing,” noted the LA Times, “considerable intelligence and even flashes of sensitivity.” Sadly never again. Next stop, the US Army. And a comeback in non-stop bilge. (Bobby Darin was once set for a re-make). Sadly, never again. After this, the US Army cut his hair and, apparently, his balls.
- Paul Newman, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 1957. For some reason, poor Ben Gazarra was never asked to reprise his Broadway triumph as Brick. MGM looked at everyone else: Montgomery Clift, Don Murray, William Shatner. Even the too old Robert Mitchum – and Elvis Presley, whose manager, Colonel Parker, was furious. “My boy ain’t no fruit!”
- Paul Newman, The Left-Handed Gun, 1958. Having seen Arthur Penn’s TVersion of The Death of Billy The Kid by Gore Vidal, Jimmy got his agent to arrange a Warner movie deal. After Rocky Graziano, it became the fourth Dean role inherited by Paul Newman.
- Anthony Perkins, The Sea Wall, 1958. Inherited on Dean’s tragic death.
- Laurence Harvey, Of Human Bondage, l964. The re-make of the 1946 movie was veteran director Henry Hathaway’s plan for… Marilyn and Dean! It became Kim Novak and Harvey. Not quite the same electricity.
- Richard Kiley, The Little Prince, 1974. As early as making Rebel Without A Cause, Jimmy was talking about adapting the Saint-Exupery classic – and maybe directing it. Al Pacino said: “James Dean was an acting sonnet – Brando, a planet unto himself.”
Tribute>>>>>>>>
“I remember being incredibly moved by Jimmy Dean, in East of Eden. There was something so raw and powerful about that performance. His vulnerability… his confusion about his entire history, his identity, his desperation to be loved. That performance just broke my heart.” – Leonardo DiCaprio, Deadline Hollywood, 2016, Leo nearly played Dean in a Michael Mann biopic. “I did a screen test,” he told Deadline’s Mike Fleming. “I think I was 18. It turned out pretty well. We saw clips of Giant, and then he put me in the back of the car with that cowboy hat. But I was a very young looking kid… He decided to wait a couple of years, but I… looked really young.”
Birth year: 1931Death year: 1955Other name: Casting Calls: 14