Did you know about this? Neither did we! It seems Mr. Steven Morrissey wrote a James Dean biography back in ’83! How very peculiar! We have a copy at the office now thanks to Chris the business development dude (who added an ‘S’ to his last name by the way), and we thought we’d publish a few choice passages for you because the chances of you ever reading this rarity yourself are super slim. Have a look on Ebay.
This first installment from Morrissey’s ‘James Dean is not Dead.’ concerns Jimmy’s bad behavior on the set of ‘East of Eden’, and his subsequent breakdown at shootings end.
Bon app’etit!

East of Eden is the story of a son aching for the affection of a disapproving father. Jimmy as the son (Cal) and Raymond Massey as the father, found the Steinbeck characters creeping into their daily lives on the set. Julie Harris (playing Abra) would often bridge the gap between Massey and Dean.
Harris: “Jimmy would say a lot of, would swear, I remember some of what he’d say – ‘fuck’ , or something like that, and Raymond Massey would turn scarlet and finally had to say once: ‘You mustn’t talk like that, there are ladies present’, which just egged Jimmy on more.”
In one scene with Massey, Dean was to read a passage from the Bible before supper. Instead of the expected ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’, Dean in a deliberate effort to enrage Massey, who was devoted to the Bible, recited: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not suck cock.” Massey’s heart nearly stopped. He stormed from the set and refused to continue working with Dean, a decision he was forced to retract.
On the set Dean tagged after Richard Davalos who played Cal’s angelic brother Aron. Aron was perfection in his father’s eyes, but his stainless nature had cunning tendencies. Davalos was not over-keen on Dean, and was unwilling to share an apartment with him when Kazan suggested they should.
For most of the film, Cal is projected as little more than a confused boy, unable to understand his straightlaced father, yet identifying with his mother (Jo Van Fleet), a whorehouse madam. On the set, Dean was as troublesome and complicated as possible. He drank violently and abusively and Julie Harris was the only one with an understanding.
Julie Harris: “The first time I met Jimmy at some party down in the Village. We were introduced and he looked at me kind of quizzically and he said: ‘Well,, how do you like playing in The Moon is Blue?’. and I thought, what’s he doing? Is he putting me on? And I said, ‘I wasn’t in The Moon is Blue, and he kind of looked at me and smiled. He didn’t say much after that.”
In the film, Harris (as Abra) is Aron’s girlfriend but is distracted by her fascination for the other brother, Cal. Abra realises that until Cal receives the approval he deserves from his self-righteous father, he shall always feel incomplete.
Julie Harris: “I remember the last day of filming. It was terrible for me. You always feel that you’re alone in these feelings, whatever you feel. You feel that nobody else can possibly feel that. The last scene was shot – I don’t know what scene we were working on. It was the exterior of the house, I know that. And there was to be a party that night. It was awful for me that last day to think it had all gone away, that life we’d been leading for two and a half months. You wouldn’t see anybody again. You wouldn’t come there every day. You wouldn’t look forward to it. And I remember looking around and thinking, I’ve got to say goodbye to Jimmy. And suddenly, all the set was just deserted, and everybody had just gone. And he had a dressing room, a portable dressing room, on the set, and I went up to the caravan and knocked on the door and I thought I heard something like a sob. I said, ‘Jimmy’, and then knocked again. So then I was sure it was a sob and I opened the door and he was just in tears, his eyes – and I said ‘what’s the matter’, and he said, ‘It’s over, it’s over’, and he was just like a little boy. So lovely.”

Good stuff Mozz!