Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (31 page)

Nick Ray's elegant, sprawling, ranch-style house, complete with
the obligatory swimming pool and tennis court, was on Abington,
halfway up the mountain in the better section of Beverly Hills. He
had made it in the business with such hits as the 1949 Humphrey
Bogart drama Knock on Any Door, and was one of Warner's prized
contract directors. As it turned out, Rebel would be his high-water
mark in the industry, followed by a slow descent into B-picture limbo
with his sexpot actress wife, Gloria Graham.

We took Laurel Canyon over the mountain, with the MG straining
mightily in every gear to keep up with Diana's Mexico coupe. Valet
parking awaited at Ray's curbside, and I handed off the keys to a
Mexican attendant who acted as if he was climbing into a farm tractor. In the heady world of California cars, MG roadsters ranked
somewhere between Studebaker sedans and Yellow Cabs. As we
walked up the driveway, the guttural rumble of an unmuffled Porsche exhaust rose in the distance. A white Speedster, its top down,
screeched to a halt. On its door, the black number 33 was neatly
pasted in place, marking it as a car that had been raced.

"How about that," said Diana. "The star has arrived."

The tousled brown hair, the sharp chin, and the heavy brows were
instantly recognizable. A cigarette dangling from his lips, James Dean
slid out of the seat and slouched into the house. He was shorter than
I had expected, no more than five feet six, and carried himself with a
shuffling, head-down walk as if seeking anonymity.

"Can you believe it? There he is," said Diana, breathing hard.

"I thought you said he was in Texas shooting Giant."

"He was, but they fly back and forth. Must be a break in his shooting. I hear he's leased a house in Sherman Oaks. So now he's part of
the Hollywood scene."

"He looks more like one of the parking attendants."

"Jealous?"

"If that's the new sex symbol, I'm Rudolph Valentino."

"You saw him on screen. Totally different. You'll see when we meet
him," she said, grabbing my arm and heading for the door.

We plunged into a sea of beautiful people. Perfectly coiffed blond
heads bobbed above tanned faces and flawless bodies. Black waiters
in tuxedos drifted among the flotsam of perfect human forms with
trays of drinks, while in a corner of the large, pastel-colored living
room a balding man played show tunes on a grand piano roughly
the size of Catalina Island. Diana identified him as Leonard
Rosenman, the composer for East of Eden. Jim Backus, the character
actor who would later gain fame as the screen voice for the myopic
cartoon character Mr. Magoo, eased among the mob with a pudgy,
soft-faced woman on his arm that had to be his wife. The rest
remained anonymous-production people, wannabe actors and
actresses, studio moguls and the inevitable pilot fish who floated in
such waters around the world.

Diana chattered her way through the crowd until Dean's small
frame came into view. He was speaking with a skinny young man
with a large nose, curly black hair, and pouty lips that I recognized as
Sal Mineo, another of the nouveau punksters starring with Dean in
Rebel. They were in intense conversation, their heads nearly touching
while both dragged on cigarettes hand-wrapped in brown paper.
Marijuana, "Mary Jane," "dope," "weed," "pot," etc. had first been
brought to the public's attention with the 1936 film Reefer Madness
which had hysterically depicted how a single toke on a so-called joint
could send a teenager on a suicidal death spiral. Twenty years later,
most American kids were still swilling beer, with widespread use of
drugs awaiting the counterculture revolution of the next decade. The
film colony had long experimented with morphine, cocaine, amphetamines and marijuana; Robert Mitchum had been briefly jailed for
his involvement with the dreaded "weed" in 1949.

Automobile racing seemed on the surface to be an activity that
would not tolerate even the slightest loss of reflexes, yet drugs had
intruded over the years. Achille Varzi, the great Italian Grand Prix
driver, had become addicted to morphine in the mid-1930s, while
Indianapolis driver Billy Winn was, at around the same time, known
to use amphetamines or "speed." During the pioneering days of the
sport, before World War I, Grand Prix drivers Jules Goux and Vittorio
Lancia were believed to have refreshed themselves with champagne
during pit stops, while in the mid-1960s a scandal hit the lesser
leagues of European open-wheel racing when the death of
Frenchman Bo Pitard revealed widespread use of speed among
young, crazily competitive drivers.

I watched as Dean and Mineo dragged on their joints until the
glowing tips nearly burnt their fingers. Then they tossed the butts
into a nearby ashtray and separated with a strangely affectionate
touch of the fingers that left me wondering if the rumored bisexuality of Dean was in fact true.

Diana seized the moment to rush up to him, and made a quick,
cursory introduction. He eyed me, head down, eyes shifting.

"Diana tells me you're into cars," he said.

"Yeah. A little. I do some writing. I was at Le Mans."

Dean nodded and took a drag on a freshly lit Chesterfield. "Bad
shit," he said.

"The papers say you're gonna start racing after Giant is finished I
said.

"Bet your ass. Stevens has me locked down until late September.
Then I'm going. And fuck the studio."

"You gonna stay with Porsche?"

"Yeah. I tried to buy one of the new Lotuses. Cool. Lightweight.
Quick. But they're fucking me over with getting one in time so Von
Neumann's got my Spyder coming."

He was talking about Johnny Von Neumann, the transplanted
Austrian who ran Competition Motors on Vine Street in Hollywood,
where Dean had purchased his current Speedster.

"Another Porsche?"

"A 550 Spyder. He's got five of 'em coming from Germany. Runs like
a raped ape. They're winning everything in the small-displacement
classes in Europe. It'll be a winner. With any luck I'll have it by the
end of September. There's a Cal Club race in Salinas on the thirtieth.
Gonna try to make it. Twin cams. Alloy body. Runs 130 easy. Really
quick for a little car."

Dean was relaxing, away from the artifice of the movie industry
and speaking about a subject he truly cared about. He seemed to
become a normal human being, released from his role-playing. Or
was he merely assuming yet another role in his chameleon-like repertoire? That of hard-core car nut and race driver?

"I'd like to see the thing when it comes in. Maybe do a story on it,"
I said.

"Hell, come to the race if you want. Me and a bunch of guys are planning to go, if we can get our schedules set and the movie is over
on time."

"Von Neumann do you a deal?" I asked, figuring that movie people got discounts on everything.

"Your ass," Dean scoffed. "Johnny doesn't cut a deal for anybody.
Guys are lined up to get one of those Porsches. Seven grand on the
barrel head. Cash money. Yeah, he'll cut me a little slack on the
Speedster by offering me three grand on the trade-in. But still, seven
grand is a lot of money."

He was scanning the room like most of the guests, who, while
seeming to be in deep conversation, were constantly shifting their
gaze to determine if an upgrade to more important, more prestigious, more potentially rewarding partners might be possible. A tall
blonde woman eased up to him and spoke in a soft German accent. I
recognized her as Ursula Andress, with whom Dean had been carrying on a much-publicized affair. "See you in Salinas," he said, turning
away and into the grasp of the rangy beauty.

The Hollywood Reporter would soon quip that "Jimmy Dean is studying German so that he can fight with Ursula Andress in two languages."

A buzz swept through the room. Heads turned toward a couple. I
recognized the blonde with the large bust and the wide mouth. It was
Zsa Zsa Gabor, one of the famed Gabor sisters, who, along with their
mother, had gained reputations as aristocratic courtesans in every
city in the civilized world. The man beside her was less familiarsmall, with a flat nose and a dark complexion.

"Oh my god," gasped Diana. "It's them."

"Them?"

"Zsa Zsa and Rubi. Don't you read the papers? Where have you
been?"

"I don't get out much," I said. "But would that be Porfirio
Rubirosa?"

"Nice guess," she laughed. "But you're right."

Porfirio Rubirosa was the former-son-in-law of longtime
Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Rubirosa had risen to
power in 1932 by marrying the ruthless dictator's daughter, Flor de
Oro, "Gold Flower." When the marriage broke up in 1937, Rubirosa
remained a favorite of Trujillo, who launched him on a career as an
international playboy, polo star, sometime diplomat, and legendary
lover of rich and beautiful women. In the late 1940s and early 1950s,
he shattered world records as a Lothario by marrying tobacco heiress
Doris Duke and Woolworth millionairess Barbara Hutton for brief
but highly profitable interludes.

Rubirosa considered himself a racing driver and was a prized customer of Enzo Ferrari. He had competed both in Europe and in
California amateur races, where posing in the pits and staying out of
the way of the more serious competitors appeared to be his primary
goals. "Rubi," as he was known, had caused a major tizzy in the film
colony by luring the beautiful Zsa Zsa away from her actor husband,
George Sanders. Their affair, tempestuous and punctuated by
screaming matches and slugfests, would be the source of Hollywood
gossip for years to come.

"They're trying to make a movie together," said Diana as the couple vamped their way into the crowd.

"I didn't know they could act."

"They can't. They call it Western Affair and Rubi plays a bar owner
and elegant gambler. Kind of like Bogey in Casablanca. But they can't
get studio financing and the immigration people are giving him trouble about working here as long as he's a foreign national. My father
says the whole thing is a joke."

"The little bastard must have something going for him if he can
hook all those babes."

"He's a legend."

"Meaning what?'

Diana brushed my crotch. It was a feint, an easy move that offered surprising encouragement. "Meaning that the next time you're in a
good restaurant and the waiter hands you a large pepper mill, there
may be people in the dinner party who'll call it a `Rubirosa. "

"You mean... "

"A legend."

"Hung like a bull moose. Is that what you're trying to say?"

"You could put it that way," she said, smiling.

I pondered Diana's revelation as Rubirosa and his spectacular
girlfriend mingled. Like countless so-called gentlemen sportsmen,
he considered motor racing to be an essential component of his
social dossier. He was able to afford high-priced cars like Ferraris
and Maseratis and to compete in racing at a relatively high level,
depending simply on the superior power and handling of his
machinery to outperform poorer competitors. While he had true
skill at polo, which demanded some athletic ability, driving a racing car at modest speeds was easily achieved. But when maximum
performance-called driving at 10/ 10`" in the trade-was
demanded, only the best professionals could rise to the top.
Poseurs and part-timers, the ones that the Indianapolis pros called
"strokers and brokers"-like Rubirosa-could play at motor racing
but never win.

The party gained in intensity as Rosenman labored at the grand
piano, his tinkling finally giving way to the general din of conversation. Defeated, he left his bench and closed the keyboard. Unnoticed
in a corner, four young men had installed a set of drums and were
quietly tuning a bass and two guitars.

The apparent leader was a gawky kid wearing horn-rimmed glasses
topped by a shiny pile of Brylcreemed hair. Like the other three, he
was dressed in an Ivy League-style three-button blue blazer. On a signal, Nicholas Ray stood on the vacated piano bench and called for
attention. After a few lusty shouts, the room noise dropped to a soft
background murmur and Ray began: "Ladies and gentlemen, as you may know, a new kind of music is sweeping the nation. Bill Haley and
the Comets started it with "Rock around the Clock," and in doing so,
coined the phrase `rock and roll.' There are others coming along,
including Elvis Presley, whom some of you may have heard about. But
tonight I'd like to introduce four boys from Lubbock, Texas, who have
just signed a big contract with Decca Records. Many in the business
think they're on their way to the big time. Please give a big Hollywood
welcome to J. I. Allison on drums, Joe B. Maudlin on bass, Nicki
Sullivan on rhythm guitar, and the leader of the group on lead guitar
and vocal, Mr. Buddy Holly and the Crickets."

The quartert of skinny kids from nowhere in Texas powered up
with what was to become their trademark song, "That'll Be the Day,"
which had a hammering beat that soon had the crowd shimmying and
foot-pounding in frenzied participation. At nineteen years of age,
Charles Hardin Holly was a prodigy, whose compositions, including
his rock and roll classic, "Peggy Sue," would elevate him to immortality in the music world. Sadly, his pyrotechnic career would end in a
frozen cornfield near Clear Lake, Iowa, a mere four years later.

Automobiles would play a role in only one early rock and roll
tune-"Maybelline" released by the brilliant St. Louis guitarist
Chuck Berry in May 1955: