Veteran screenwriter William Bast discusses his revelatory new memoir Surviving James Dean and sheds new light on his friend, the icon.

By Jeremy Kinser
Photo by Ron Lyon

Sipping tea beside the pool of his elegant Hollywood Hills home equidistant between the Hollywood Bowl and the Hollywood sign, William Bast has come a long way since he first moved from Wisconsin to Los Angeles to attend UCLA in 1950. Desperate to make ends meet, Bast rather reluctantly agreed to share a small studio apartment near the UCLA campus with another struggling actor—though one destined for cinematic immortality of the first order—named James Dean. Life with the mercurial Dean proved to be a roller-coaster ride for Bast. Bast soon switched vocations to become an in-demand TV and movie writer and the pair remained the closest of friends during Dean’s meteoric three-film career. The two were planning to collaborate on a film together at the time of Dean’s fatal car crash on Sept. 30, 1955.

The actor’s untimely demise transformed Dean into an iconic figure of endless fascination and launched an unprecedented cottage industry of biographies and films. Due to his close association with the actor, Bast was hired to write the first book about the legend, a touching account of their five-year friendship. Bast embarked on a lengthy and successful career of his own that would include working with other gay faves like Elizabeth Montgomery in the acclaimed TV film The Legend of Lizzie Borden and Barbara Stanwyck in the Dynasty spinoff The Colbys, and even adapted his book about Dean into a provocative 1975 television film that revealed at what gossip had speculated for years—that Dean was indeed bisexual. Fifty years later, Bast has reworked his earlier bestseller into a candid, new tome Surviving James Dean, that reveals new information that wasn’t permissible in 1956, most notably that he and Dean had been more than friends. The gentlemanly, soft-spoken Bast, happily partnered for more than 40 years with fellow writer Paul Huson, and resigned to a life as the main apostle of Dean’s still rabid cult following, speaks wistfully about his late friend.

IN: The big revelation in your new book is that you and Dean were intimate on at least one occasion. Why did you feel the need to set the record straight?

Bast: It wasn't a question of setting the record straight so much as I had just omitted it because times were different. Earlier on, it was still very sensitive as far as the family was concerned, I tried to avoid jumping on the bandwagon with this kind of thing where people who didn't have intimate knowledge of Dean and didn't know him that well had gone into (speculative stories of his sexuality). So it was not intentional but it was something that I didn't think was particularly relevant at the time. As you may know from the period I wrote that earlier book there was no gay movement. It was terribly subversive and illegal and people were being busted for it—an unbelievable period of nonsense. When we finally emerged from the shadows, it became possible to talk about it. Also when you're dealing with someone in the public eye, to be the one who begins to out them, as it were, or reveal any sort of private, personal things that used to require discretion, when giving interviews, it's only been in the last 10 or 15 years that it's become more relaxed and there's no shock value left, which is wonderful.

Most biographers attribute Dean’s angst to the death of his mother when he was a child and his subsequent estrangement from his father, who sent him to live with relatives in Indiana. I found it particularly interesting that you suggest it might have been partially due to his inability to be completely open about his sexuality.

His greatest motivator was his ambition to be an actor, his career, from the very start of our relationship. His angst was predicated on doing everything he could to assure that. He was very highly motivated and I guess some would have even called him ruthless when it came time to forge his way in, but he had … it was always, it seems, from UCLA on, a determination. He was totally determined to become an actor, totally. There was no question. No question. Jimmy was very, very much into sports. He was competitive, highly competitive, so of course when he jumped into a different arena, he remained highly competitive and he exerted all of his energies on his objective—I mean that was it, night and day. If it was pole vaulting, it was that. If it was acting, it was that. That's what he was aiming for and that's what he was going to get, come hell or high water. Very, very determined. Very focused, extremely focused.

Do you think that his fan base might have accepted his bisexuality?

We live in a different world today. I think at the time it would have been a very serious black mark. I think the gutter press would've made hash of it, you know, it would have been all over the place. I mean, Rock Hudson was hiding under a rock, everybody was very, very cautious.

I’ve always wondered if, because of Dean's rebellious persona, it might have been a bit more permissible.

I don't think so. He was quite perverse, so I think he would've been pleased with the amount of attention that would have prevailed about it, but I don't think he was reckless when it came to his career. So it was probably, from what I could see and from what I deduced, something that he wasn't going to let get out of hand. He was going to keep it under some degree of control. Maybe a little titillation would be all right, but (he wasn’t) going to be out bold and in the forefront of the movement.

Do you think if he had lived, he would have come out and we'd be speaking of him as a gay rights pioneer?

I can't see it, but then the limitation is he died before it all became OK, became open. I don't know that he would've espoused it so openly, being from the old school of the actor who was guarded, you know, like Rock Hudson. Rock Hudson bent over backwards to marry his agent's secretary or whatever he did—all that kind of nonsense that was going on then just to cover up and to keep it under wraps. I don't think he would've been reckless in that sense. I think he would've been crafty and wily and would've probably said, “Well you know, an actor has to try everything.” He'd get around it.

When did the public speculation about Dean's sexuality begin?

I think probably there were slight leaks of it before he died. Certainly after he died, it blossomed. When I wrote the first book, I don't think I really mentioned Rogers (Brackett, a radio director who “kept” Dean during hard times and may have helped secure some early breaks), but that was upfront in the opening information anyway, so it wasn't as though I was revealing anything.

People must've been speculating really early because you’ve written that you were at a party in London in the ‘50s and John Gielgud asked if you two had been lovers.

(Laughs) In the gay community, what constituted the gay community then, well, there was no community about it, but in the gay world of that day after Dean died, it was always a hopeful question. “Do tell me. Confirm what I want to know.”

How has he affected your life?

It's very interesting, from my perspective. Dean was my best friend and we were roommates and we lived together … and then all of a sudden he was gone and he went at a terrible time. I mean his career was bursting forth and we had plans, we had projects and then they approached me to do the book and I was at first reluctant and I thought, ‘You know, yes, he was good to me and if I don't do it somebody else will’ and that got me off the stump right away. ‘Somebody else will.’ Who and how? But it's been … he's here all the time. That's what it is; you begin living with this thing that you helped perpetuate.

Especially since you live in Hollywood. How do you feel about driving down the streets and seeing him on murals and in store windows everywhere and he's still 24 years old?

(Smiles) Well, I have had fantasies about taking some crayons and fixing that, but aside from that, I have a very simple, honest feeling about it and that is I wish he were still here. I wish he had come along for the ride. He would've been difficult, and a problem most of the time, but I loved him very dearly and we were very, very good friends. It would've been rather remarkable, but I'm terribly afraid it would not have lasted for him.

On Sunday, Sept. 17, Bast will appear at West Hollywood Book Fair in West Hollywood Park, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd., W. Hlywd.