James Dean was blackmailed into paying off a former lover just before his big break because he was terrified about being outed as gay.
A new book revealed that the movie legend paid $800 to Rogers Brackett in 1954, days before the East of Eden premiere, in an agreement that has remained secret for seven decades.
Dean handed over the money even though he thought that Brackett, an older, wealthy advertising executive, had sexually exploited him during their year-long affair.
According to author Jason Colavito, Dean was furious and snapped: ‘I didn’t know it was the w***e who paid – I thought it was the other way around.’
In Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean, which is out on Tuesday, Colavito writes that Dean’s reputation could have been destroyed as homophobia ran rampant in 1950’s America.
So he paid the equivalent of $14,500 today to avoid a ‘public scandal’ and make it go away.
Colavito told DailyMail.com: ‘Implicit in the correspondence and conversations between Brackett’s team and Dean’s is the threat that the suit might become public, which both Brackett and Dean knew would destroy Dean’s career.’
Dean’s untimely death at age 24 in 1955 turned him into a tragic icon, but it ensured that his myth – and interest in his life – has lived on decades after his passing.
Jason Colavito’s new book Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean revealed the superstar actor had to pay his older, gay lover Roger Brackett in exchange for his silence. But Dean felt he’d been sexually exploited by the wealthy advertising executive during their year-long affair
Rogers Brackett photographed as a Director for the CBS Radio Program Vox Pop in 1946. When he met Dean in 1951, he had been working for an advertising agency that produced for CBS
Dean paid Brackett the equivalent of $14,500 today to avoid a scandal that could’ve destroyed his career, author Jason Colavito told DailyMail.com
He met Brackett after dropping out of UCLA in 1951 and moving back to Santa Monica where he was so broke he couldn’t afford his rent.
Through a friend, he got a job as a parking valet next door to the CBS Studios where he met Brackett, who at the time was working at advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding, the firm that produced the weekly CBS afternoon radio drama Alias Jane Doe, about an undercover magazine reporter.
Despite being tall and handsome, Brackett was ‘struck by the golden beauty of the youth who took his keys’, who let slip that he was an actor.
They swapped numbers and Brackett said he would keep Dean in mind for any roles.
Soon Brackett was ‘smitten’ and offered Dean a part in Alias Jane Doe that July. Dean appeared in four episodes and soon began to feel attached to his debonair new boyfriend.
‘Although these feelings scared Dean, Brackett unlocked something Dean had kept so closely guarded that it had threatened to break him,’ the book says.
When Brackett found out that Dean was about to become homeless, he ‘took a gamble’ and asked him to move into his house
But despite Brackett opening doors for Dean, his arrogance was his undoing with one screenwriter remarking that he was ‘absolute poison’.
Colavito’s book comes out on Tuesday and discusses how Dean’s reputation could have been destroyed as homophobia ran rampant in 1950’s America
The payout happened in 1954, days before the premiere of the East of Eden – which Dean starred in alongside Julie Harris
Dean allegedly dodged the military draft in 1951 after Brackett advised him to write back to the United States Selective Service System that he was gay and therefore ineligible for service
Brackett later remarked: ‘Jimmy was like a child. He behaved badly just to get attention…he was a kid I loved, sometimes parentally, sometimes not parentally.’
Tensions began to mount the longer they were together and while Dean thought Brackett was his ‘heroic equal’, Brackett regarded Dean like an ‘unruly son’.
But Brackett did help Dean overcome one of his biggest threats: being drafted into the military.
In 1951 Dean got a letter from the United States Selective Service System saying he had to report to a base in Marion, Indiana, in October that year.
At Brackett’s insistence, Dean wrote back saying he was gay and therefore ineligible for service.
As Colavito writes: ‘Brackett used his power and wealth to keep Dean safe. He sent him to a compliant psychiatrist for a series of sham sessions to prove his homosexuality, but this tore at Dean’s fragile masculinity.’
The relationship struggled when Brackett moved to Chicago for work and Dean moved to New York, where he lived in poverty.
It was during this time that Dean accepted the financial help which would later threaten to unmask his sexuality.
With ‘great reluctance’, Brackett spent more than $1,000 supporting Dean, paying $450 in hotel bills and more than $700 on gifts and loans.
Colavito wrote that Brackett used his power to shield Dean but also tore at his concept of masculinity by sending him to a psychiatrist to prove to the young actor that he was gay
Dean’s big break came in the movie East of Eden. He only went on to make two more, Giant and Rebel Without a Cause
Dean began to regard Brackett as ‘increasingly desperate’ and ‘manipulative’ as he would introduce him to his well-connected friends who made unsubtle remarks about wanting to have sex with him.
Still, Brackett pulled some strings to get Dean a part in See the Jaguar, the 1952 Broadway play that was a major break for him.
The next few years would see Dean emerge as one of the most talented actors of his generation, culminating in his casting as Cal Trask in East of Eden.
Brackett drifted out of Dean’s life but in the weeks before Eden was due to be screened, he came back into his life ‘unbidden and unwelcome’, Colavito writes.
Now Brackett was ‘on the warpath’ and demanding Dean repay him the $1,200 he had given him while he lived in New York.
Brackett had lost his advertising job and was short of cash while planning an opera with composer Alec Wilder which was doomed from the start.
Colavito writes: ‘Brackett imposed on Dean for a drink and, striking a more conciliatory tone, asked him for money – a loan, he called it.
‘The brazenness of the request shocked Dean, who had come to believe his time ‘dancing’ for Brackett’s friends had been abusive.
‘Sorry, pops,’ he said to Brackett as he refused to give him money. He told him that he had outgrown him, that he no longer wished to see him. But privately he was furious.
Wilder reminded Dean that Brackett had given him the help that launched his career, the book says.
‘The undercurrent threatening public scandal should Dean refuse was obvious. He (Wilder) upbraided Dean for his unkindness, demanding Dean write a letter of apology and shouting that Brackett should sue Dean for all the support he had given him over the years.’
Dean’s fame skyrocketed fter Brackett pulled strings for hm. But when Brackett lost his job he began to extort Dean – even though their relationship had already fallen apart
Julie Harris and James Dean in the film East of Eden – Dean was a heartthrob for woman across America at the height of his success
Dean reluctantly signed the apology that Wilder wrote and hoped that was the end of it.
But Brackett took Wilder’s advice and sent a formal legal demand to Dean for the $1,200 he had loaned him during their affair.
The letter came with an implied threat of exposure should Dean not ‘liquidate your obligation’ i.e. pay Brackett off.
Brackett’s next move was to file suit for $1,100 in New York’s Municipal Court including $450 in hotel bills.
Dean quickly agreed to an $800 settlement in $100 weekly installments to ‘avoid a scandal when he could least afford one’.
The actor balked at paying Brackett back for hotel bills and Brackett accepted his $800 offer.
Had Dean failed to pay in full, the court could have found him responsible for the full $1,100 but he forked over the required sum six weeks early.
Dean’s agent also agreed to get Warner Bros to pay Brackett a sizable ‘finder’s fee’ to ensure his ‘continued silence’.
Dean died at age 24 in 1955 after he crashed his Porsche 550 Spyder car
Dean’s agent agreed to get Warner Bros to pay Brackett a sizable ‘finder’s fee’ to ensure his ‘continued silence’
The court documents, copies of which appear in the book, gave no hint of the explosive nature of the allegations they pertain to and simply state that in the case of Rogers Brackett versus James Dean, both parties had stipulated to the agreement.
But even the amount showed what was at stake: the median salary for men at the time was $3,100 per year – showing how vast that $800 was.
Had Dean’s relationship been exposed he may never have been chosen to appear in Rebel Without a Cause, his most famous role, or Giant, before he died in 1955.
Colavito told DailyMail.com: ‘This story has never been told before, and all parties involved worked hard to make sure no one ever found out.
‘And for seventy years, no one did. The only reason we know about it today is that Dean’s agent secretly kept copies of his papers hidden away for decades.’