Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (30 page)

Nevertheless, his performance won him grudging respect among
the Cal Club crowd. Over the years, numerous movie types had tried
racing and failed. But James Dean was different. He came to the races
to compete, not to pose in the pits. He remained reclusive, seeking no
attention or special treatment. This gained him admiration from the
skeptics in the sport. He would later tell a friend, "The only time I
really feel alive is when I'm racing." Based on his easy adaptation to
the environment of speed, noise, heat, and danger, there was no reason to doubt him.

As shooting for Rebel without a Cause began in late March, it was
almost invitable that a torrid affair would develop between Dean and
co-star Natalie Wood. While studio publicists touted an off screen
romance, it was actually more of a brief, intense shipboard romance
between the pair that culminated, according to Dean, in the Porsche on
Mulholland Drive. The following morning he slouched into the
Warner Brothers commissary for breakfast with Bracker and playwright Joe Hymans. Lounging in a chair and lighting a cigarette, Dean
said softly, "Well, you guys, it can be done."

"What are you talking about?" asked Bracker.

"They said a Porsche is too cramped to get it on with a girl," said
Dean. "That's bullshit. If you don't believe me, ask Natalie."

There was a faint smugness in his voice, since it was well known
that both the director of Rebel, Nicholas Ray, and co-star Dennis
Hopper were in pursuit of the comely Miss Wood.

Principal photography for Rebel without a Cause ended in Los
Angeles on May 25, permitting Dean to rush north with the Porsche
to Santa Barbara where a Memorial Day weekend of Cal Club races
was scheduled for the 2.2-mile airport course on the edge of the city.
Dean planned to run on Saturday in a six-lap qualifying race and in the one-hour final on Sunday for cars 1,500 cc and smaller. He was
involved in a blind drawing for starting position and pulled the number 18 out of the hat, placing him deep in the field. By the second lap,
he had gained fourth place. Then a car spun in front of him, forcing
him off the course and into a pile of haybales lining the circuit.
Driving with his usual fury, he had regained fourth place when the
Porsche's engine gave way under the pounding. With one of its four
pistons badly fried, the Porsche was sidelined for the weekend and
ultimately towed back to Johnny Von Neumann's Competition
Motors on Vine Street in Hollywood for repairs. The car would be
placed in the hands of the shop's finest mechanic, a German transplant named Rolf Wutherich who had prepared race cars for the
Porsche factory to be run in some of Europe's most challenging races.

Dean then packed up his gear and headed to the desolation of west
Texas, where, in the tiny village of Marfa, director George Stevens and
crew had constructed an elaborate set for Giant. Fearing the worst for
the now cocky young race driver, Stevens had written into Dean's
contract that he was forbidden to compete in any sort of motor
sports event until shooting for the immense production ended in
mid-September.

In the meantime, Bracker had been bitten with the racing bug. He
had purchased his own Porsche Speedster and was embarking on a
career that would bring him several Cal Club championships in the
ensuing years. Monty Roberts joined Dean on the Marfa set, and
many hours were consumed in conversation about the actor's desire
to purchase a horse ranch in the Salinas area. Roberts and his wife,
Pat, were assigned the task of locating property to fulfill Dean's
increasing rapture with Western cowboy life. On the Giant set, he
spent many hours in the steamy Texas sunshine demonstrating the
rope tricks he had learned from Roberts.

The Los Angeles summer was cooler and cloudier than usual,
which some weather experts blamed on the increasing smog that was blocking out sunlight. Below the dingy, foul-smelling cloud layer, the
strange, outrageous world of rock and roll was driving conventional
big bands out of business, while the movie studios clung to widescreen Cinemascope as their only hope to repel the exploding interest in television. The two new threats were linked when a pouty,
sideburned, hip-swiveling kid from Memphis appeared on Ed
Sullivan's top-rated CBS variety show. Before the year was out, Elvis
Presley's "Hound Dog," and "Don't Be Cruel" would elevate him to
superstar status rivaling that of the aging Frank Sinatra.

"Elvis the Pelvis" soon displaced Bill Haley-whose "Rock around
the Clock" was the first rock and roll hit-as the latest outrage to middle America. Already, millions of teenage boys were emulating the
fashion of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, with leather jackets,
Levi's, motorcycle boots, and T-shirts, and the dreaded, slicked-back
"duck's-ass" haircut. While "decent" young men still favored brush
cuts, button-down shirts, khakis, and white bucks, the trend was
clear-a new and shocking cultural shift was under way in the nation.

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner had openly hated automobile
racing ever since the 1930s, when its boss, William Randolph Hearst,
had created shocking headlines whenever a driver died or was
injured. The Examiner remained true to form when it trumpeted the
death of Jerry Hoyt on July 10. The Indiana native, who had won the
pole position at the 1955 Indianapolis 500, had embarked on a barnstorming tour of the Midwest with a friend and Indy winner Bob
Sweikert in a matched pair of black Offy-powered sprint cars.
Running in a ten-lap heat race on the half-mile Oklahoma State
Fairgrounds dirt track, Hoyt's car hooked a light pole exiting a corner
and flipped. The young driver, unprotected by a roll bar or cage,
received massive head injuries that took his life the following day.
More cries rose up from the Hearst editors-and a few legislatorsthat the sport ought to be banned.

Detroit ignored the cry. Ford's new Thunderbird, billed as a "personal car" with more luxuries than the Chevrolet Corvette,
featured an optional 198 horsepower V-8. Chevrolet countered with
a V-8-powered Corvette, rated at 195 horsepower, but the luxury and
power accessories of the T-bird overwhelmed the noisy, hard-riding
two-seater from General Motors. While both were reviled by the
sports car crowd as overweight, poor-handling "Detroit iron," the
Thunderbird was an instant hit with the public. When the sales figures for 1955 were finally tabulated, 16,155 Thunderbirds had been
sold, while a mere 675 Corvettes rolled off Chevrolet dealers' lots.

As horsepower ratings rose toward 200 for even the most mundane sedans, the national media began to fret about the increasing
rates of death and injury on the nation's highways. The year would
end with 36,600 Americans dying in automobile crashes, over 3,000
more than in 1954. Part of this was due to 43.6 million more miles
driven (561,963,000 vs. 605,646,000) thanks both to the rising prosperity of the nation and cheap, stable gasoline prices.

The death rate rose slightly, to 6.06 fatalities per 100 million miles
driven-far below the record high of 45.33 per 100 million set in
1909, but way above the less than 1 per 100 million to be obtained in
the early twenty-first century, thanks to advances in automotive technology, improved roads, and severe crackdowns on drunk driving.

In 1955, when seat belts were essentially unknown in passenger
cars, airbags unthought of, tires, suspensions, and brakes essentially
unchanged for twenty years, and Interstate highways in their infancy,
the fact that the exploding performance of high-powered cars did not
produce even more carnage is a testament to the innate good sense of
the American driving public.

Concerns over the drumbeat of criticism from the national press
about racing deaths and highway safety prompted AAA president
Andrew J. Sordoni to announce on August 2 that the American
Automobile Association would cease all involvement with motor sports
by the end of the year. Its sanctioning of major American races had dated to 1902, and the news sent a ripple of panic through the
Indianapolis establishment. There were, however, smiles of satisfaction
at the Daytona Beach headquarters of Bill France's struggling NASCAR.
A gap would have to be filled, and initially it was believed that France
might step in to fill it. But Tony Hulman, the owner of the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, was not about to put his legendary event into the
hands of a former Florida gas station operator and his gang of bootleggers. He hastily pulled together a meeting of Midwest business associates, wealthy race team owners, and promoters and formed the United
States Auto Club, a nonprofit body that would assume sanctioning of
the 500 and other races on the former AAA championship trail.

After having lunch at the Brown Derby in mid-August with friends
in the movie business, I drove the MG back to Studio City, where I
found a business card stuck in my door. It was my own. On the back,
written in a decidedly feminine hand, was the message, "Tried to call.
Back in town. Love to hear from you. Diana."

A Hispanic maid answered my phone call to Diana's Beverly Hills
home, an elegant Georgian manse on North Beverly Drive in the socalled flats of the posh city. "Miss Logan not home. I take your number," she said, struggling with her new language.

Her call came an hour later.

"Sorry I missed you in Modena," she said brightly.

"It seemed like you were pretty tied up and I had to leave anyway."

She ignored the comment and said, "I just got back. Called twice
but no answer. So I came by and left your card. You're a hard one to
track down."

"That makes two of us."

She laughed easily and said, "I've got an idea. Remember when I
told you about James Dean and you and Peter scoffed?"

"So you called up to gloat?"

"My dad was right. He's gonna be a monster. The studio is having a
private screening of Rebel Without a Cause this evening. Want to go?"

"Let me check my schedule. There's a dinner with Zanuck at
Chasen's about my new screenplay. A date with Marilyn Monroe. And
a discussion about my secret inheritance from John Paul Getty. But to
hell with 'em. I'll cancel. Where and when?"

"I'm flattered. I hope Marilyn won't be jealous. The Coach &
Horses for a drink at six. On Sunset, three or four blocks west of
LaBrea. Veddy English in a Hollywood kind of way. But fun."

I hunted up a freshly laundered button-down shirt and a decent
pair of gray flannel slacks, and polished up my Bass Weejuns in an
attempt to make a presentable appearance for the lovely Miss Logan
and the movie crowd that was bound to show up for this screening.

The Coach & Horses was a mass of red leather, dark wooden
beams, and wrought-iron fixtures, as Diana had inferred. Out front
were parked a few sports cars-a Cadillac-Allard, a new Alfa Romeo
Giuiletta coupe and a shimmering silver Mercedes-Benz gullwing.
The valets had been instructed to park the trio curbside to amplify
the restaurant's reputation as a hangout for the sports car crowd.

My MG was unceremoniously hustled to the back lot as I made my
way to the bar. The chatter involved gossip about millionaire John
Edgar dominating California sports car racing with his sub rosa team
of professionals, headed by a transplanted Texas chicken farmer
named Carroll Shelby. Diana arrived. I played it cool.

"Long time no see," I said.

"Busy, busy," she said, laughing.

"So what's the plan?" I asked, as I ordered her a tall vodka tonic.

"We'll drive over to Warner's in the valley and then there's a party
at Nick Ray's."

"Nick Ray's? Sorry, but the name ...

"The Rebel director. Hot property in this town. At least this week."

"A short shelf life in this business," I said.

"Tell me about it."

"Still got the Ferrari?" I asked.

"Sure. It came in a week ago on Flying Tigers."

"You had it flown over from Italy?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"No. I actually had my last Ferrari brought over on my private
yacht. Airlines are too crassly commercial for me," I said.

"A little sarcasm there?" she asked.

"Naw, we Communists all think like that."

Her face darkened. "Are you on the blacklist?"

I laughed hard. "Me and Dalton Trumbo. Actually, not quite. Us
upstate New Yorkers are all trained from childhood to be rock-ribbed
Republicans."

The banter drifted on through two more drinks before I followed the blunt tail of her Ferrari over the Cahuenga Pass into the
San Fernando Valley. A zigzag of streets into Burbank and through
the Warner Brothers gates off Olive. Diana waved my MG through
and we parked in the executive lot on the edge of a row of white
stucco Bauhaus buildings. I had expected to rub elbows with a
mass of Hollywood celebrities, but instead found myself easing
into a leather chair in a small private theater filled with a collection
of ordinary businesspeople-theater chain owners, middling
Warner's executives, salespeople, and selected nobodies like myself.
It would be one of dozens of private screenings of a rough cut of
Rebel. The only celebrity of any kind was the director, Nicholas
Ray, a forty-four year-old with curly hair and the edgy good looks
of a movie tough guy. Ray spoke briefly, explaining that the final
version of the picture was weeks away and that some scenes would
either be cut or color-edited, while voice matching, sound effects,
background music, and other details had to be attended to before
the planned release in October.

Ray had gained good reviews the year before with the Sterling
Hayden Western, Johnny Guitar. He had co-written Rebel, which
ended up a personal favority of his, with playwright Irving Schulman, seeking to expand on the theme of angry young men that formed the
core of Stanley Kramer's The Wild One.

I watched Dean's pouting presence overwhelm the picture. His
race against a rival in the "chickie run" provided the centerpiece of
the action, along with a final knife fight staged on the steps of the
Los Angeles Planetarium. Those scenes provided the action
sequences needed for the great mass of unwashed male moviegoers
while Dean's romance with Natalie Wood was sure to please the
female audience. The story line involved restless, disaffected
teenagers rebelling against the conventions of middle-class life-"the
bad boy from a good family," as the Warner's publicists promoted it.
Rebel was avant-garde in the context of the mid-1950s. Surely other
young actors might have handled the Dean role, but it was his incendiary, introverted rage that carried the picture. As the lights came up,
a round of cheers and applause filled the room. "Didn't I tell you?"
said Diana as she tugged my arm. "He's gonna break a million hearts,"
I said, little knowing how right I would turn out to be.