Re: First Draft-Literary Journalism-Jimmy

Jimmy
Hi, Y’all, my name’s Jimmy, Jimmy Dean, folk’s aroun’ here call me Jimmy and my family. But to most of the world out there, around the globe, they know me as: James Dean. I was born on February 8th, 1931. To Mildred and Winton Dean. Boy did I love my mama, I felt she was the only person who understood me, understands me. Mother why did you have to go, why did you have to leave me mama in this cold world. Where no one understands me. Fuck, hey there, baby, sweetie, goin’ pass me one of them cigarette’s, you got a lighter, ok, ahh; I love that sweet taste of them cigarettes.
Always make me feel real cool, real cool. Well, where was I, oh yeah, now, mother. Sweet, sweet, mother. As I was saying I was born to Mildred and Winton Dean and I was born in good ol’ Marion, Indiana. Hoosier, is what we’re called, say it to me one more time, baby, Hoosier! We’s all just a bunch of farm hicks out here.
Even though I grew up on a farm, I traveled back and forth to Los Angeles and Marion, Indiana when I was a young child. My father was a Dental Technician and so we moved there because of a job opening and because that’s where the army sent him. As I was a little boy, mother always would put me into all different kinds of art, I use to play the violin and after school she would always read me poetry, such as Robert Frost. I also loved listening to classical music. Quite frankly, I still do.
Unfortunately, though, mother got real sick, I remember grandmother came down from Indiana and she was helpin’ around the house, doing’ all the cleaning and washin’ and stuff like that. Father was at work, and one day, mother wasn’t doin’ so good. Doctor
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says, she was sick, real sick. She was sick with Ovarian Cancer, now you see in those days during 1939 we didn’t have the technology that could of helped take the cancer out and I can see in my mama’s eyes. Her beautiful sunken eyes just like mine and I can see the darkness in her eyes the black cancer that were them eggs and eating them ovaries away too.
And then that was it, my nine year old gaze at her pupils and her loving, mother, eyes, and the horrible dark cancer behind them pupils and it was time to let her go. No tears, no crying, just empty now.
Before I knew it was good bye, L.A. and back to Indiana. As me and my grandmother left Los Angeles we went by train back home to Indiana. Mother was in there to. She was in her coffin traveling back with us and we buried her back in Indiana. Sad thing is Father did not go with us. He did not attend mother’s funeral nor did he raise me for the past 9 years of my life.
So from nine years old on I was raised by my good ol’ Aunt and Uncle (Ortense and Marcus) Winslow. So here I am playing with my cousin Marcus “Markie” Winslow. We’re having fun. I love that boy. He now owns and is incorporated with the James Dean Inc. Good cigarette, smoke, I tell ya. I’m almost done, too, I’m gonna need me ‘nother one in a jiffy.
I lived with my aunt and uncle till I was 18 years old. I lived in Fairmount, Indiana, with Aunt Marcus, Aunt Winslow, Markie and their daughter (my cousin) in a farm house. Still standing up today as we speak. I attended Fairmount High School from 1945 till 1949 and I was in sports such as baseball and basketball. The two most
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wonderful people I got to know and have in my life was the great Adeline Nell who was my Spanish, Drama, and Speech and the infamous Reverend James DeWeerd.
I really liked Mrs. Nell she taught me everything I needed to know about Drama and Speech. I use to go over James’s house now that man had style he had grace and I looked up to him too. He taught me about life and how you need to enjoy life and go around and explore everything.
Mr. DeWeerd taught me how to live the sophisticated life and we would also listen Tchovisky and other classical music when I would go over. There is nothing anything better that I loved to do was be on that motersickle. I’d drive through Fairmount goin’ as fast as I could, racing, and racin’ through life and on the farm through the cornfields.
I graduated in June of 1949 and my Aunt and Uncle threw me a going away party. Because I was going to L.A. to become an Actor my father also lived there. He had told me that I could go on and live with him and that he wanted me to study law. My father lived in Santa Monica, California. That is where my mother, father, and I had lived when I was a little boy.
I attended Santa Monica Community College and I was taking law courses but it just wasn’t for me, Jimmy. I got fed up with the law courses and I started what I enjoy and love the most. I started taking Acting classes. I then enrolled my self at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) it was there I joined my first Fraternity but them brothers them I wasn’t digging them. I’d get into fist fights and their presence alone was

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buggin’ me. So they kicked me out and things weren’t going to well with my father. He doggone got upset ‘cause I wasn’t taken anymore of them law courses.
So I left and dropped out of school and met up with Bill Blast a new friend of mine. And I started doin’ acting gigs and I got me a part time job at a place parking cars.
My first gig that I got was doin’ a Pepsi commercial and that was a’ round 1952. There was just a bunch of people I‘d been meeting and goin’ out with but I always felt empty inside. I’d like to be alone and sit in the dark. I couldn’t sleep I’d be up all night at the cafés and diners drinking coffee and chit-chatting with whomever’s was at the diners at 2am or 4am in the morning. You see I was what you call a somniac, an Insomniac, yeah, so.
So if you see me in pictures ‘n stuff and I have bags under my eyes it’s because I’d been up all night. Plus my mother had bags under her eyes maybe it’s hereditary.
A lot happened from 1952-1955 and it seems all like a blur to me it felt like everything went right past me like I was on my motersicle. All I know is I was doing television shows for “Hallmark” and I was in several plays like Meet the Jaguar and the Immoralist. Oh and what a funny thing I was doing a commercial by ford they had asked me to be the spokesperson on telling them kids to becareful and slow down on the roads and highways and you know what I told them on that commercial: “It might me one of you guys saving my life.”
There was a very special girl in my life her name was Pierre-Angeli, it was doomed from the beginning. Tragic love never has a happy ending her mother was an Italian bruja. She never liked me I was to dangerous and not good for her daughter. I was
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not man enough and I wasn’t Catholic. Catholic my penis man, I was just as good and better than that Vic Damone guy. Oh, geez, how I miss Pierre, I would just love her to death and I would do anything to see her again. It’s too bad she ended up marrying Vic and having their perfect Catholic wedding and it’s what her mother wanted not Pierre.
You know what I was right there outside of the church on my motercikle smoking a cigarette and I didn’t have the nerve to go in. What good of what it done I had nothing to offer Pierre except my love and her mama would have been right in the middle of everything and gosh. I need another smoke. I sure do miss my mother. So here I am at the L.A. airport ready to leave for New York. I really fell in love with New York. I felt like I was at home. So I stayed there for about a year or two from the early 50’s and now I’m doing a film it’s called East of Eden. East of Eden was a book written by John Steinbeck and he was part of the film that was produced and directed by Elia Kazan. John was always on set helping out and givin’ us pointers on how he we could play the characters better. We did most of the filming up in Salinas, California. Got to hang out with the Mexican folk them people were real nice and kind. We did shoots out there in the lettuce fields and they got a lot of fields up there in Salinas, Ca.
Next film I got casted in was Rebel with out a Cause. I made let me see here, it must have been 1954 when I made Rebel and it was see I made all these three movies within a year to two years within themselves. So I was in Rebel with the kind kid Miss Natalie Wood. She was so sweet. She was the little girl in A Miracle on 34th Street that was made in the 1940’s.

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Sal Mineo was also my good friend that kid looked up to me. I love that kid it was too bad he got tragically killed and so did Natalie. And Pierre she drugged her self to death. I also got to know Dennis Hopper he was the villain on the movie Speed.
That movie was about teenagers and how they got into trouble with their parents and sometimes the law. I was now about 23 or 24 years old and the last movie that I did was Giant now we went up to Texas and I got to meet Liz Taylor, Roc Hudson and I got to work again with Sal and Dennis and Elia was our director again. I really enjoyed getting to know. Mercedes McCambridge. She played the sister to Roc Hudson on the movie. I got to meet some more Mexicans. I really love these people.
The only thing I loved more than anything in the world was acting. I just I was able to express my guts my emotions my passion and I completely loved that was the only time I never felt conscious. I still was feeling lonely though, felt real sad. So I bought me a car and I named it, “Little Bastard.” It was a grey Porsche spyder and not too many of those were made. It was made by a German Manufacturer. Since I loved drag racing I won me several awards and I had signed me up for one of the car races up in Salinas, Ca. So I took two photographer friends with me and my mechanic.
That day on September 30th I got to see my father and one of my Uncle’s from Indiana before I headed out to leave for Salinas. I’m still mad and resentful at my father but I guess I’ll always love him. So then we left and headed for Salinas. We stopped in Bakersfield to have a bite to eat at a local diner. Then we left it wasn’t to far from there that I got pulled over and got a ticket and can you guess what for, speeding. After that, I just tore the ticket I didn’t care.
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That was that. So Ralph, my mechanic, and I were racing along through the long roads of Cholame, California. My photographers we’re quite a ways behind us and from a distance we saw a green Ford car coming the opposite way and you know me driving real cool with a smoke in my head and wearing my red hooded jacket with my cool shades. I was racing man it was as if I was the only person that existed and nobody else and I told myself, “"That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us."
I never really saw what hit me. All I know was I was out of my body seeing my mechanic on the passenger side and I’m on the driver’s side and I looked horrible. I had whiplashed with the impact of the car because the driver hit my side. And I practically almost got decapitated. After that I heard the sirens coming and I was then put onto the gurney and then I remember seeing the police I was on a hospital and I got this real terrible headache and before you know it. My head fell to the side and I went to sleep. A sleep from this world
I was now back in Indiana and as I walked through the Funeral I saw people crying and my poor Aunt and Uncle and my cousin Marcie. I touched his face but you know. Then I walked right up to my…coffin and there I was. I looked like a sweet angel, proper and gentleman like and can you believe it. I finally cried.
The people and family members who were there had gone and walked to the Fairmount Cemetery and there I was laid to rest I was there co-mingled with everybody else except they couldn’t see me I was the only one wearing my red hooded jacket and I threw me my own white rose after that everybody had left, the Winslow’s had left and it was just me there. Me and James. James Dean and me.
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And then I heard the most softest voice in the whole wide world and I fell to my knees and I started crying and I turned into the little nine year old boy and I wept and wept and wept and as I was weeping I had a flashback of being nine again and seeing my mother go.
As I got up and came back I was back to my ol’ 24 year old self again and wearing my little red jacket and my cool hip blue jeans folded from the bottom and some black boots and I turned around and heard the voice again. I turn the left no one there and I knew because the hand on my right shoulder was very soft and warm. And you know what she told me. “It’s time to go home Jimmy.” There was no more cancer in mother’s eyes any more and I said, ok. But mother when we get home can you just hold me and never let me go and she said, “I will Jimmy and I will never let you go.” I love you mother I love you too my Jimmy.”
Wait there’s something I gotta do before I go. I gotta say goodbye to someone. Good bye, James Dean.








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References
Alexander, Paul. Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times and Legend of James Dean. Plume: New York-USA. 1994