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Surviving James Dean
A beautifully written memoir, candid and definitive, that tells the story of Bast's five year relationship with the charismatic actor and American legend—James Dean.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 20, 2006
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July 29, 2013
This is a heartfelt and deeply moving autobiography and biography of the five-year relationship between the author, William Bast, and his best friend, James Dean. Bill describes himself as a closeted gay while Dean is less so. But as Bill’s love for Jimmy grows, so does the fear that a sexual relationship between the men will not end well. Still, Bill is finally ready to take that plunge when the two men consummate their love in a Borrego Springs hotel in the desert.
Dean wonders: “What took you so long?” and Bast responds, “Scared, I guess.” Dean assures him that there is nothing to be scared about and proves it.
But before the two men can live together again, not as roommates, as in the past, but as lovers, Dean is killed in the car crash of September 30, 1955, before the release of his final two movies, “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant.” A year later, Bast publishes the first biography of James Dean, censoring out the homosexuality. About half a decade later, Bast briefly meets the novelist W. Somerset Maugham at a house party at a villa on the French Riviera. Maugham says to him: “You must have loved him very much.” Bast looks confused, and Maugham explains, “It was there, between the lines.” Maugham had read the biography. It’s a new world, and I wonder what Maugham would have thought of this second volume. The love is on display more than ever and it is no longer afraid to speak its name.
Additionally, there are wonderful descriptions of the caring, sensitive, supportive people in both Bill’s and/or Jimmy’s lives. There are the photographer Sanford Roth and his wife Beulah, the Colgates (toothpaste heirs), Elizabeth Taylor, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy’s aunt and uncle from Indiana, and others.
Dean wonders: “What took you so long?” and Bast responds, “Scared, I guess.” Dean assures him that there is nothing to be scared about and proves it.
But before the two men can live together again, not as roommates, as in the past, but as lovers, Dean is killed in the car crash of September 30, 1955, before the release of his final two movies, “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant.” A year later, Bast publishes the first biography of James Dean, censoring out the homosexuality. About half a decade later, Bast briefly meets the novelist W. Somerset Maugham at a house party at a villa on the French Riviera. Maugham says to him: “You must have loved him very much.” Bast looks confused, and Maugham explains, “It was there, between the lines.” Maugham had read the biography. It’s a new world, and I wonder what Maugham would have thought of this second volume. The love is on display more than ever and it is no longer afraid to speak its name.
Additionally, there are wonderful descriptions of the caring, sensitive, supportive people in both Bill’s and/or Jimmy’s lives. There are the photographer Sanford Roth and his wife Beulah, the Colgates (toothpaste heirs), Elizabeth Taylor, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy’s aunt and uncle from Indiana, and others.
July 23, 2020
I'm a big fan of James Dean so I've read quite a few biographies about him, but this one is by far the best. It was written by one of James Dean's closest friends, so I figure he knows the actual facts better than most. I cried when William Bast writes about receiving the phone call about Dean's accident; it was very moving and heartbreaking.
October 30, 2021
"When Jimmy drove into oblivion, he didn't take my love with him. It lived on to torment the rest of my days with a simple question: What if? Why did destiny step in just as I finally made my decision to go for broke? Whatever the explanation, that choice, long avoided, having been snatched away before it could be realized, has cost me dearly. I have known loss, of course - not just Jimmy's, but many others since - some near, some dear, others less so, but all painful to bear, like the host of friends and acquaintances who fell victim to AIDS, especially in the early years. The trouble is, despite having known loss, I have never learned to survive it well. I grieve too hard and too long. At such times, I would rather be stone. Unfortunately, I can't change my composition, and of all those losses I have had to bear, the effect of Jimmy's has endured the longest."
This was a beautifully written memoir of Bill's life, with a lot of James Dean in it. From when they met at UCLA in 1950, until Jimmy's unfortunate death in 1955. They became friends at first, though Bill secretly crushed on his handsome friend. They were roommates, then their ways parted for a while when Jimmy went to New York, but in the end they always found their way to each other again. When they went away together for a weekend to Borrego Springs, sharing a room, James finally invited William into his bed, asking him why he took so long.
But of course their relationship had to be kept secret; Jimmy, the rising moviestar, the dream of many women all over the world, could never reveal his sexuality. William understood and was fine with a role in the margins of Jimmy's life. And just as they both decided they would search for a place to live together - for the outside world as 'roommates and friends' - James was taken away.
When William describes his reactions to the phonecall he received about James's accident, I got goosebumps all over. The emotions, his grief is palpable. To imagine your best friend, the love of your life probably, be taken away from you just when you both had decided to chose a life together, that's absolutely impossible. And at such a young age. Such a promising, beautiful life gone in just a second.
The story continues with the author describing the aftermath of Jimmy's death. The tabloids, the rumors, the absurdity of how far fans would go in their admiration and grief. Guys who wanted to bed him because he had been the one in James Dean's bed, men who didn't want him for who he was, but just because he could tell them about James Dean. It's painful to read how he had to learn to be aware of people's sincerity and honesty.
Jimmy remains alive in my mind's eye, alive and forever young, as he was when we first met and when we last parted. Perhaps this should please me, yet, in fact, it saddens me. You see I never had the reward of watching him grow older, more mature, of watching him evolve into a long-loved friend and companion. On the other hand, I, in my mirror, grow alarmingly older, year after year, and now only vaguely familiar, while he, in ads, on book jackets, souvenir T-shirts, video covers, in ancient publicity photos, on never-ending television and cable reruns of his films, he remains alive and young and immediate. In this sense, it could be argued that he has fulfilled his fondest dream. He has become as immortal as any modern icon can hope to be. Eternally James Dean.
This is not a James Dean biography like any other. It's a recollection of memories, of a life spent with one of the few who made it to eternity. It's an interesting inside story of the man James Dean, not the actor. It's also an interesting view of time, of the fifties, of how life and morals were back then, of the Hollywood life. I really enjoyed William Bast's writing, his descriptions of time and places, of people and of his love for James. When this book was first published a year after James's death, it was highly censured, because the reality of their friendship could not be told yet. But like a friend suggested, William wanted to remember the real Jimmy, the man he had known and had called his best friend for five years. He didn't want to lose that image and that feeling in the hoax that started right after he died - the truth and untruth about him, the wild rumors, the false memories of people who just wanted their spotlight and used Jimmy for that.
I, for one, am happy that William decided to be honest and open in this 'new' biography he wrote several years later (in 2006). It's interesting to see how his life developed since then, and what the years did to create the mythical James Dean. He got to witness his friend and lover grow into eternity from the day he died, and yes, it must have pleased him, since it was the wish James had had - to be remembered for eternity. But it must also have saddened him. The constant reminder of the much too early passing of the man he loved.
For those who are remembering the dead, there is a vast difference between photographs and motion pictures. In photos, the dead are still and somehow safely distant; in movies, they come alive again and can be far too real to bear.
William Bast, the author of this book, sadly passed away in 2015. According to Wikipedia, he died of Alzheimer's disease. And that's one thing that really saddens me.
June 29, 2016
This is an excellent autobiography (I'll call it that since it's about William Bast, but don't get me wrong, there is a-lot of James Dean to cover here). It might get too far into scenarios that lack interest, but maybe that's because it starts deviating away from Bast and James Dean, and I picked this book up to know more about James Dean! Anyway, that's a minor gripe, and I really appreciate William Bast after having reading this updated Biography (sort of). On to the good stuff! Bast cuts to the chase and begins the novel right when he met Dean, and writes out his life for the next five years, further describing the lifelong impact his tortured roommate had on him. It is an insightful book, since it really sheds light on what it was like to live with James Dean. Bast goes on to describe how the boyish, and moody rural Indianan became a silver screen legend with a dreamy intelligence far beyond his generations understanding. He and James Dean share many intimate and revelatory moments during the troughs of their five years together as friends (and even more than friends) and we as the reader can fully understand to the best of our ability to answer the question: who REALLY WAS James Dean?
July 14, 2016
Scurrilous gossip. Smells like bullshit to me. A self-aggrandizing attempt by the author to attach himself to a legend.
July 5, 2024
I did a school project on James Dean back in February, his birthday month funnily enough, and he's been bouncing around in my brain ever since. I can't shake the 65 year dead film star, and I don't fully know why. I've since watched two of his movies, read all the blog posts and articles on him that I can find, and now I've just finished my first Dean biography.
Surviving James Dean by William Bast is sort of a biography, sort of an autobiography of Bill, the author. James plays a huge role, but it's quite untraditional in the way it weaves Dean’s story with Bast’s. Having certain chapters focusing more on Bast than Dean is a deterrent, I understand, but I would encourage everyone to give it a shot anyways. It is also my strong belief that William Bast deserves way more than just a footnote in queer history, and this book is evidence of that.
This book was so honest and full of love. You could tell how Bast felt about Dean through the page. The note that Rogers Brackett wrote to Bast: "don't jump on a cheap bandwagon, especially if it's a hearse," may be true for some films, books, and gimmick-y souvenir shops that came about after Dean’s death, but I don't think this book is doing that. His quest to immortalize his friend is fueled by, I think, sincere passion to do his dear friend and lover justice. Bast wrote the first James Dean biography in 1956, in a time where coming out publicly was a far off dream, resulting in him omitting so much about their relationship and James Dean as a person. The book scrubbed the actor's--who had been dead for but a year--image clean of imperfections. James Bellah, college friend of Dean’s, told another biographer Ron Martinetti, "I could never finish the book. [Bast] made James Dean sound like the sweetest boy he ever knew". Part of that, perhaps, was honest affection fueled by the grief of wanting only the best legacy for his friend. But the rest was the sheer impossibility of a complete and honest take on the life of James Dean.
After the first book was published, Bast was haunted by fans and admirers, those who did not know James, only the rosey image Bast had painted for them. Despite Bast’s best efforts to sanitize his friend, some people weren't fooled. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, and many people assumed the obvious: William Bast and James Dean were more than just friends, or "teammates" as he often referred to them as. After Bast published the first biography he released Surviving James Dean in 2006 (physical copies of which are extremely hard to come by; I read it through the Internet Archive). In it, he writes candidly about him and James' intimate relationship as well as the volatile and (Bast’s words, not mine) bipolar nature of his friend. This book shaped how audiences thought about James Dean--it certainly did for me, at least. It's a case study in memory, fame, infamy, grief, love, and the reality of being queer in the fifties.
It's tragic the way Bast describes all the 'what ifs' of James' death. Mere weeks before Dean died, he asked Bast to move in with him, into his apartment in California. What if he had lived long enough for that? How many more movies would he have made? Would he have married? Would he have had kids? What would he have been like in the sixties, seventies, two thousands? What would he have thought about all of the progress we've made since his death? We will never know. Though this book is a great wealth of information on James Dean from a man who knew him well, it's not the ever elusive Real James Dean. It's likely he never showed that to anyone, not even himself. He was so young, only twenty four, when he died.
I loved this book. I would recommend it to everyone who even has a middling interest in the life of James Dean. Even if you don't, this book is still amazing. I might be biased because of how the James Dean illness has seeped into my soul, but I think this book should be like required reading or something.
Surviving James Dean by William Bast is sort of a biography, sort of an autobiography of Bill, the author. James plays a huge role, but it's quite untraditional in the way it weaves Dean’s story with Bast’s. Having certain chapters focusing more on Bast than Dean is a deterrent, I understand, but I would encourage everyone to give it a shot anyways. It is also my strong belief that William Bast deserves way more than just a footnote in queer history, and this book is evidence of that.
This book was so honest and full of love. You could tell how Bast felt about Dean through the page. The note that Rogers Brackett wrote to Bast: "don't jump on a cheap bandwagon, especially if it's a hearse," may be true for some films, books, and gimmick-y souvenir shops that came about after Dean’s death, but I don't think this book is doing that. His quest to immortalize his friend is fueled by, I think, sincere passion to do his dear friend and lover justice. Bast wrote the first James Dean biography in 1956, in a time where coming out publicly was a far off dream, resulting in him omitting so much about their relationship and James Dean as a person. The book scrubbed the actor's--who had been dead for but a year--image clean of imperfections. James Bellah, college friend of Dean’s, told another biographer Ron Martinetti, "I could never finish the book. [Bast] made James Dean sound like the sweetest boy he ever knew". Part of that, perhaps, was honest affection fueled by the grief of wanting only the best legacy for his friend. But the rest was the sheer impossibility of a complete and honest take on the life of James Dean.
After the first book was published, Bast was haunted by fans and admirers, those who did not know James, only the rosey image Bast had painted for them. Despite Bast’s best efforts to sanitize his friend, some people weren't fooled. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, and many people assumed the obvious: William Bast and James Dean were more than just friends, or "teammates" as he often referred to them as. After Bast published the first biography he released Surviving James Dean in 2006 (physical copies of which are extremely hard to come by; I read it through the Internet Archive). In it, he writes candidly about him and James' intimate relationship as well as the volatile and (Bast’s words, not mine) bipolar nature of his friend. This book shaped how audiences thought about James Dean--it certainly did for me, at least. It's a case study in memory, fame, infamy, grief, love, and the reality of being queer in the fifties.
It's tragic the way Bast describes all the 'what ifs' of James' death. Mere weeks before Dean died, he asked Bast to move in with him, into his apartment in California. What if he had lived long enough for that? How many more movies would he have made? Would he have married? Would he have had kids? What would he have been like in the sixties, seventies, two thousands? What would he have thought about all of the progress we've made since his death? We will never know. Though this book is a great wealth of information on James Dean from a man who knew him well, it's not the ever elusive Real James Dean. It's likely he never showed that to anyone, not even himself. He was so young, only twenty four, when he died.
I loved this book. I would recommend it to everyone who even has a middling interest in the life of James Dean. Even if you don't, this book is still amazing. I might be biased because of how the James Dean illness has seeped into my soul, but I think this book should be like required reading or something.
April 25, 2020
"Stonewall, where were you when i needed you?"
don't talk to me, I'm crying!!!!
don't talk to me, I'm crying!!!!
September 21, 2025
This book is hard to find and I’m so glad I finally got my hands on a copy. Very grateful for Bast to have written such an honest, loving and respectful account of his relationship with Dean. I’m a huge Deaner and read every bio I can. Bast writes from a place solely focused on the truth- he isn’t ashamed to be vulnerable and question Jimmy objectively while also holding so much love and care for their bond. I appreciated his perspective that Jimmy could have been bisexual, homosexual and even possibly bipolar. Bast does a great job of gifting us with direct experiences with Dean that are full of insight and delightful details. None of this material feels like gossip, it is touching and a fantastic historical resource. Every bio on Dean has different perspectives of the same situations, and this bio is another great addition to my research. The energy of the book is clearly from a place of someone who truly loved and knew him!
October 5, 2025
I always love this book no matter how many times I read it. The best book on James Dean!
April 18, 2021
I have to say this didn’t quite hit the mark for me. As I said when I read ‘The Mutant King’ - that is the book to read if you want to read a book about James Dean. This book is good, it’s a much more personal story of James, from the perspective of his closest friend, however, it constantly felt like it was alluding to something but wouldn’t come straight out and say it. I had trouble I trying to figure out how the author wanted to paint James, he’s the hero and villain of William Bast’s story. Also, it’s well written but also kinda dry, I never once felt entertained or completely lost in it the way I did with ‘The Mutant King’, it was just kinda like ok that was a book, I read it, I finished it, next. There is a nice story here, some touching moments throughout, but I feel it’s more William Bast’s story and Jimmy is just a side player in it.
Elizabeth Taylor came straight out and said that Jimmy was gay, this book constantly dances around it and I found it frustrating to be quite honest.
Elizabeth Taylor came straight out and said that Jimmy was gay, this book constantly dances around it and I found it frustrating to be quite honest.
December 16, 2010
Biography of my teen idol, with details that couldn't be published back when, by his friend and lover. East of Eden was about, and shot in, my home town of Salinas. But the rest of the story wasn't really all that interesting.
October 30, 2021
FORGOT TO REVIEW IT EVENTHO I FINISHED IT LAST SUMMER BUT BASICALLY I STILL HAVENT RECOVERED NO BOOK MADE ME CRY LIKE THAT AND I STILL CRY ABOUT IT ITS MY FAVORITE BOOK NOW AND I LOVE JAMES DEAN SO MUCH AND NOW I LOVE WILLIAM BAST TOO
Read
March 13, 2022and they were roommates 🥺
November 6, 2022
“Eternally James Dean”
October 24, 2023
this is my Brokeback Mountain
April 15, 2023
I did a school project on James Dean back in February, his birthday month funnily enough, and he's been bouncing around in my brain ever since. I can't shake the 65 year dead film star, and I don't fully know why. I've since watched two of his movies, read all the blog posts and articles on him that I can find, and now I've just finished my first Dean biography.
Surviving James Dean by William Bast is sort of a biography, sort of an autobiography of Bill, the author. James plays a huge role, but it's quite untraditional in the way it weaves James' story with Bills. Having certain chapters focusing more on Bill than James is a deterrent, I understand, but I would encourage everyone to give it a shot anyways. It is also my strong belief that William Bast deserves way more than just a footnote in queer history, and this book is evidence of that.
This book was so honest and full of love. You could tell how Bill felt about James though the page. The note that Rogers Brackett wrote to Bill: "don't jump on a cheap bandwagon, especially if it's a hearse," may be true for some films, books, and gimmick-y souvenir shops that came about after James' death, but I don't think this book is doing that. His quest to immortalize his friend is fueled by, I think, sincere passion to do his dear friend and lover justice.
Bill wrote the first James Dean biography in 1956, in a time where coming out publicly was a far off dream, resulting in him omitting so much about their relationship and James as a person. The book scrubbed the actor's--whole had been dead for but a year--image clean of imperfections. James Bellah, college friend of James, told another biographer Ron Martinetti, "I could never finish the book. [Bast] made James Dean sound like the sweetest boy he ever knew".
Part of that, perhaps, was honest affection fueled by the grief of wanting only the best legacy for his friend. But the rest was the sheer impossibility of a complete and honest take on the life of James Dean. After the first book was published, Bill was haunted by fans and admirers, those who did not know James, only the rosey image Bill had painted for them. Despite Bill's best efforts to sanitize his friend, some people weren't fooled. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, and many people assumed the obvious: William Bast and James Dean were more than just friends, or "teammates" as Bill often referred to.
50 after Bill published the first biography, in 2006, he released Surviving James Dean (physical copies of which are extremely hard to come by; I read it through the Internet Archive). In it, Bill writes candidly about him and James' intimate relationship as well as the volatile and (Bill's words, not mine) bipolar nature of his friend.
This book shaped how audiences thought about James Dean--it certainly did for me, at least. It's a case study in memory, fame, infamy, grief, love, and the reality of being queer in the fifties. It's tragic the way Bill describes all the 'what ifs' of James' death. Mere weeks before James died, he asked Bill to move in with him, into his apartment in California. What if James had lived long enough for that? How many more movies would he have made? Would he have married? Would he have had kids? What would he have been like in the sixties, seventies, two thousands? What would he have thought about all of the progress we've made since he died? We will never know. Though this book is a great wealth of information on James Dean from a man who knew him well, it's not the ever elusive Real James Dean. It's likely he never showed that to anyone, not even himself. He was so young, only twenty four, when he died.
I loved this book. I would recommend it to everyone who even has a middling interest in the life of James Dean. Even if you don't, this book is still amazing. I might be biased because of how the James Dean illness has seeped into my soul, but I think this book should be like required reading or something.
Surviving James Dean by William Bast is sort of a biography, sort of an autobiography of Bill, the author. James plays a huge role, but it's quite untraditional in the way it weaves James' story with Bills. Having certain chapters focusing more on Bill than James is a deterrent, I understand, but I would encourage everyone to give it a shot anyways. It is also my strong belief that William Bast deserves way more than just a footnote in queer history, and this book is evidence of that.
This book was so honest and full of love. You could tell how Bill felt about James though the page. The note that Rogers Brackett wrote to Bill: "don't jump on a cheap bandwagon, especially if it's a hearse," may be true for some films, books, and gimmick-y souvenir shops that came about after James' death, but I don't think this book is doing that. His quest to immortalize his friend is fueled by, I think, sincere passion to do his dear friend and lover justice.
Bill wrote the first James Dean biography in 1956, in a time where coming out publicly was a far off dream, resulting in him omitting so much about their relationship and James as a person. The book scrubbed the actor's--whole had been dead for but a year--image clean of imperfections. James Bellah, college friend of James, told another biographer Ron Martinetti, "I could never finish the book. [Bast] made James Dean sound like the sweetest boy he ever knew".
Part of that, perhaps, was honest affection fueled by the grief of wanting only the best legacy for his friend. But the rest was the sheer impossibility of a complete and honest take on the life of James Dean. After the first book was published, Bill was haunted by fans and admirers, those who did not know James, only the rosey image Bill had painted for them. Despite Bill's best efforts to sanitize his friend, some people weren't fooled. It wasn't hard to read between the lines, and many people assumed the obvious: William Bast and James Dean were more than just friends, or "teammates" as Bill often referred to.
50 after Bill published the first biography, in 2006, he released Surviving James Dean (physical copies of which are extremely hard to come by; I read it through the Internet Archive). In it, Bill writes candidly about him and James' intimate relationship as well as the volatile and (Bill's words, not mine) bipolar nature of his friend.
This book shaped how audiences thought about James Dean--it certainly did for me, at least. It's a case study in memory, fame, infamy, grief, love, and the reality of being queer in the fifties. It's tragic the way Bill describes all the 'what ifs' of James' death. Mere weeks before James died, he asked Bill to move in with him, into his apartment in California. What if James had lived long enough for that? How many more movies would he have made? Would he have married? Would he have had kids? What would he have been like in the sixties, seventies, two thousands? What would he have thought about all of the progress we've made since he died? We will never know. Though this book is a great wealth of information on James Dean from a man who knew him well, it's not the ever elusive Real James Dean. It's likely he never showed that to anyone, not even himself. He was so young, only twenty four, when he died.
I loved this book. I would recommend it to everyone who even has a middling interest in the life of James Dean. Even if you don't, this book is still amazing. I might be biased because of how the James Dean illness has seeped into my soul, but I think this book should be like required reading or something.
December 28, 2025
Such a strange boy.. So difficult to understand, so beautiful and so tragic. That whole passage of when it was mother’s day and he had come to Will never fails to make me sorrow, my beautiful whimsical angelic motherless always looking for validation and love in all the wrong places Jimmy. “I am the sun” Yes Jimmy, you are the river of light.
“Of course I loved him, not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what it would have been like, had he lived, moving in with him again, this time as his lover. Could I have trusted him with my love, my devotion, my life?”
“And of all the losses I have had to bear, the effect of Jimmy’s endured the longest.”
“You see I never had the reward of watching him grow older, more mature, of watching him evolve into a long-loved friend and companion.”
“I suppose my greatest regret is the fact I never got to let him know how much he really meant to me”
“Of course I loved him, not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what it would have been like, had he lived, moving in with him again, this time as his lover. Could I have trusted him with my love, my devotion, my life?”
“And of all the losses I have had to bear, the effect of Jimmy’s endured the longest.”
“You see I never had the reward of watching him grow older, more mature, of watching him evolve into a long-loved friend and companion.”
“I suppose my greatest regret is the fact I never got to let him know how much he really meant to me”
February 17, 2022
It was hard to track this book down. It's currently out of print. The author, William Bast, was James Dean's best friend, roommate, and ?? I found the book to be a fascinating portrait of Dean and his complexities. The author takes great care presenting Dean as he perceived him. The friendship they shared before Dean hit it big, is the highlight of the book. After reading this book, I will always look at Dean differently than before. I feel I understand him better. If you're a James Dean fan, by all means seek this book out. Decide for yourself.
November 22, 2024
Probably one of the best books I will ever read.
It’s such a privilege to be able to know Jimmy so intimately through Bast’s words.
He writes about him so honestly, avoiding treating him as a god like figure as so many have when attempting to capture him in writing.
Bast was clearly the man who knew him best of all. His perspective if the most personal and accurate we will ever have, and I’ll treasure it forever.
Desperately need to read the little prince now…
It’s such a privilege to be able to know Jimmy so intimately through Bast’s words.
He writes about him so honestly, avoiding treating him as a god like figure as so many have when attempting to capture him in writing.
Bast was clearly the man who knew him best of all. His perspective if the most personal and accurate we will ever have, and I’ll treasure it forever.
Desperately need to read the little prince now…
November 8, 2024
An interesting book. Bast writes more about his life than he does Dean's and much of what he writes about Dean comes across as supposition rather than fact. Still, he is acknowledged to have been the actor's closest associate (and sometimes roommate) from the time they met in college until Dean died in 1955. It is an interesting book.
November 18, 2025
took me a bit longer to get through, only because it was mainly about William Bast (obviously). I loved reading his complicated perspective of James Dean, as he was a complex character. arghhhh.
whenever i read a book about james dean, will never not be hurt and destroyed when it gets to --that-- part aghhhhh
whenever i read a book about james dean, will never not be hurt and destroyed when it gets to --that-- part aghhhhh
June 26, 2022
I love him more than beyond. While I reading this book, i cried, I smiled. It’s so sad that I have never a chance to meet with him but I glad to know about his legacies.. Rest In Peace Jimmy and also William
October 18, 2019
Amazing look at the real man behind the myth. Reminded me of “City of night”.
April 28, 2023
im never moving on from this book. its so personal you can feel how much he meant for bill :( a great book
July 12, 2023
I knew going in that this book was likely to affect me deeply, and it certainly did.
August 4, 2024
Maybe I should just jump off the balcony and die.
April 12, 2008
This account of the author's friendship with James Dean has the ring of truth.
Bast knew James Dean from student days at UCLA until Dean's death. Bast and Dean were about the same age. While Bast became an insider at the TV networks, Dean became an increasingly popular actor, appearing on TV and, of course, in the movies.
Bast wrote two very good TV scripts in the seventies. One was for a TV movie about Lizzie Borden. I didn't know he wrote that until I read this book. So, I can say William Bast has had fine achievements of his own.
Bast also wrote the screnplay for an NBC movie, made in 1974, about James Dean. I was about 14 when it aired and remember it as an involving story about a friendship.
This book is for people who want to get a sense of what it was like to deal with James Dean. In that sense, it isn't a comprehensive biography and it does not pretend to be one.
Most interesting, to me, is the section toward the end, about how the public's reaction to Dean's death affected Bast's life. He wrote a biography of Dean in 1956 and many people the author met and sometimes worked with after that would ask him about James Dean. It must have been weird for Bast to have John Geilgud, Somerset Maugham and others take the focus off themselves to ask or talk to him about Dean.
Occasionally, Bast goes on too long. But he makes valid points throughout. If he dismisses a lot of people, so do a lot of other people.
If you have a serious interest in James Dean or Hollywood, you'll learn something from this book.
Bast knew James Dean from student days at UCLA until Dean's death. Bast and Dean were about the same age. While Bast became an insider at the TV networks, Dean became an increasingly popular actor, appearing on TV and, of course, in the movies.
Bast wrote two very good TV scripts in the seventies. One was for a TV movie about Lizzie Borden. I didn't know he wrote that until I read this book. So, I can say William Bast has had fine achievements of his own.
Bast also wrote the screnplay for an NBC movie, made in 1974, about James Dean. I was about 14 when it aired and remember it as an involving story about a friendship.
This book is for people who want to get a sense of what it was like to deal with James Dean. In that sense, it isn't a comprehensive biography and it does not pretend to be one.
Most interesting, to me, is the section toward the end, about how the public's reaction to Dean's death affected Bast's life. He wrote a biography of Dean in 1956 and many people the author met and sometimes worked with after that would ask him about James Dean. It must have been weird for Bast to have John Geilgud, Somerset Maugham and others take the focus off themselves to ask or talk to him about Dean.
Occasionally, Bast goes on too long. But he makes valid points throughout. If he dismisses a lot of people, so do a lot of other people.
If you have a serious interest in James Dean or Hollywood, you'll learn something from this book.
April 28, 2011
A fine memoir of William Bast's relationship with James Dean, interesting both on that account and on gay life in show business in the years they were friends/lovers and in the years following Dean's early death. Bast makes it clear why Dean probably never would have come out: his career came first. (Some things have not changed.) Then again, no one can really say. Far better written than the Paul Alexander biography of Dean, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," though it has its value too.
February 22, 2023
Surviving James Dean (2006) by William Bast, Dean’s roommate, gives an intimate portrait of Dean’s life through his accounts with living and meeting with Dean as a long-time friend, “lover”, and roommate. I guess for the book to focus on Dean, it must focus on Bast’s life, but I feel like it focuses too much on his life, making this only an empathetic caricature of Dean rather than a biography. Readers be warned, it is still a fantastic read for James Dean fans.
December 8, 2010
Very informative and interesting. I couldn't put it down. I stayed at the same YMCA in NYC that James Dean stayed at when he first came to New York.
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