One of James Dean’s most famous quotes was his flirtatious and evasive response to the question of whether he was gay.
“No,” he replied, “I’m not gay.” But I don’t go through life with one hand tied behind my back either.’
With that, Dean tacitly acknowledged that he enjoyed relationships with both men and women (his animal magnetism didn’t discriminate) and seemed more than happy to explore all of his sexual options.
But a new book has suggested that his inclinations may also have included engaging in an adventurous threesome with two powerfully attractive women twice his age.
Edna Ferber was 70 years old when the epic film of her novel, Giant, starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and a then-little-known 24-year-old actor named James Dean, was being filmed in Marfa, Texas.
It was to be his last film: he died in a tragic car accident at the end of production and another actor had to overdub some of his lines.
In Giant Love: A Ferber Memoir written by her great-niece Julie Gilbert: It’s clear that the writer was in love with the hauntingly beautiful Dean, as was her co-star Mercedes McCambridge, who was around 40 at the time.
“Ferber had never been normal in any sense except in this case,” Gilbert writes. “She was drawn to Dean’s magnet like everyone else.
She describes McCambridge as having a similar appearance and outlook to Ferber, with his strong features, forthright manner, and impressive accomplishments. He was also a confidant of the young James Dean.
James Dean on the set of Giant in 1955; died the same year
Dean with his Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor
“He trusted McCambridge during his time in Marfa… and they openly adored each other.”
Ferber never married, never had children, and is not known to have had a romantic or physical relationship with anyone, leaving many with questions about his sexuality.
“For much of my life people have been asking me about my great-aunt’s inclinations,” Gilbert writes.
And while researching the memoir, he says he got a clearer picture, thanks in part to a passing comment from none other than Katharine Hepburn.
“Hepburn was a good friend of Ferber,” he writes. They shared a deep understanding and “recognized a trait in each other.”
“Hepburn had a term to describe it: ‘We were both unicorn women,’ she once told me.”
At the time, Gilbert interpreted the comment as meaning that both women were rare, in the sense that they had remained single and dominant “in a world of romantically coupled people, where women were in most cases still subsidiary or recessive.” “.
“Ferber and Hepburn walked proudly on one horn throughout their lives,” Gilbert writes. ‘Both were intolerant of injustice, laziness, stupidity and arrogance, and spoke their minds with passionate eloquence. They lived their lives, public and private, as they saw fit.’
James Dean screen test for the role of ranch hand turned oil tycoon Jett Rink in Giant
The film starred two of the most important actors of the time, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.
Edna Ferber with James Dean, dressed as Jett Rink, older and bald
McCambridge had a similar appearance and outlook to Ferber; She was also young Dean’s confidant.
He later re-examined Hepburn’s comment, in light of the correspondence he discovered and through the lens of an era that was more accepting of non-traditional sexuality.
“When Katharine Hepburn called herself and Ferber “unicorn women,” I assumed the term meant they were unique. It sounded original and accurate. “They both had unique heads on their shoulders,” he writes.
‘Now, in the age of varied sexuality, I am finally understanding what a “unicorn woman” is all about. She is a woman who grazes with couples.
‘I think back. While researching Ferber’s biography, I found plenty of correspondence with well-known couples: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (devoted as they were to each other, both supposedly preferred their own gender); Moss (long-time homosexually inclined) and Kitty Carlisle Hart; Katharine Cornell (allegedly bisexual) and Guthrie McClintic; the Louis Bromfields and the William Allen Whites; Ferber had deep friendships with both men.
And while there was no outright sexual content in those letters, there was nohis audience was as sophisticated as one can be…and he knew that everything that is published stays in print’ – Gilbert caught the vaguest suggestion of romance in one from editor Blanche Knopf, congratulating Ferber on the success of his novel.
‘The correspondent reflects a certain melancholy… It is also documented that the wife was open to triangular relationships, so maybe, just maybe, she was referring in her note to a past invitation.
‘Dear EF,
As I read the Book of the Month Club news about you and remember our friendship from very early on, I hope, I’m starting with Giant. I am so impressed that I want to write to you and congratulate you on all your achievements. I wish… I wish… but it never happened. But I think your path has been full of glory and hard work and all I want to do is offer you my small congratulations along with those of the world.
Giant was Dean’s last film: he died in a tragic car accident at the end of production and another actor had to overdub some of his lines.
At age 30, Ferber was already a successful Midwestern writer (photo circa 1916).
Katharine Hepburn (left) referred to her and Ferber (right) as “unicorn women.”
Ferber had never been average in any way except this: she was drawn to Dean’s magnet like everyone else.
‘When someday we get another chance, we should get together and talk about all the good old times and maybe the ones to come.
“All the best wishes to this Texas book and to you.”
Then there was the allusion to a “romantic episode” with the film’s director, George Stevens, precisely at a Los Angeles farmers market.
A letter from producer Henry Ginsberg to lawyer Harriet Pilpel, written as contracts were being finalized, said: ‘My plans at this time are to come to New York the last week of the month. George Stevens will follow shortly after for a conference with Miss Ferber. You have probably heard Edna’s report about her visit to Los Angeles and what could be interpreted as a romantic episode between her and George Stevens at the Farmers Market.
As Gilbert writes: “Nothing else has ever been alluded to about it, but once read, it is hard to forget.” One could imagine a more intense collaboration between the two, or was it one that Ferber only longed for?
Taking a fresh look at Hepburn’s comment, she says, “The curtain opens on Ferber, Dean and McCambridge in Los Angeles during the final weeks of filming Giant. They spent a lot of time together on and off set.
Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean in the Oscar-winning film Giant
A romantic interlude with director George Stevens was also alluded to.
‘Ferber and Dean became close, but McCambridge was never far away. Maybe there was a link. McCambridge was married, but said “I love you” in a letter to Ferber; and Dean was so young and arbitrary that it seemed like he would try anything.
From time to time, Ferber would tell his sister Fannie, Gilbert’s mother, “Someday I’ll tell you everything.”
She never revealed everything. But Gilbert wonders: “Maybe this was part of the ‘whole.’
In the end, however, the only love affair Gilbert knew for sure Ferber had was hers with fame.
“In his words: “Life can never defeat a writer in love with writing, because life itself is the writer’s lover to death: fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”
Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Texas Novel and the Making of a Classic American Film by Julie Gilbert is published by Pantheon