James Dean and Marlon Brando had an S&M relationship, new book claims
By Ben Kelly
A new book has alleged that legendary screen actors Marlon Brando and James Dean were in an S&M relationship with each other.
Rumours that sexual relations existed between the friends have long persisted, but now a book called James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, claims specific details from the early 1950s.
A friend of Dean’s, Stanley Haggart, who was interviewed for the book, says that Brando used to play mind games with Dean, who was seven years his junior and reportedly idolised the older actor. This apparently included Brando making Dean watch him having sex with other people, and making him wait outside Brando’s apartment in the hope of some S&M play.
“I got the impression that Jimmy was engaged in a cat-and-mouse affair with Brando, with Brando being the cat, of course,” Haggart claims in the book.
“Brando seemed to be toying with Jimmy for his own amusement. I think Brando was sadistically using Jimmy, who followed him around like a lovesick puppy with his tongue wagging.”
It should be noted that the book’s authors, Danforth Prince and Darwin Porter, have written a number of books on the sex lives of old Hollywood stars who are no longer around to respond to the claims, meaning they should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt.
Nevertheless, gay rumours have always surrounded Dean and Brando.
Brando told his biographer Gary Carey in 1976: “Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed.”
Dean, who died in 1955 aged 24, has long been assumed to have been bisexual, with many books written about his colourful sex life. Screenwriter William Bast, an older man who was once Dean’s roommate, claimed the pair had intimate relations.
One biography claims that Dean declared himself a homosexual to dodge the draft, but later commented: “No, I am not a homosexual. But I’m also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.”
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