The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

Many of Dean’s peers disliked him. He had a bratty streak, and his technique, such as it was, leaned heavily on his natural gifts, emphasizing spontaneity over rigor. Norma Connolly, who acted with Dean on television, said, “Jimmy was an asshole. He was also a trade kid. He would trade sexual favors to move up the ladder … he was a boring, tacky little boy.” She also remembered an Oscar party at which Dean, dressed in a T-shirt and desperate for attention, kept drumming on the host’s pots and pans and bragging about the size of his penis. Dean relented only when Marlon Brando entered the room. Dressed in a crisp suit, Marlon pointed to Dean’s T-shirt and said, “That was last year, Jimmy.” Accusations of copying Brando and Montgomery Clift dogged Dean’s brief career, in part because they were true. Dean phoned Clift regularly, trying to get the secret to his minimalist grace—the way Clift did everything just so without appearing to try too hard—but Clift refused to divulge his secrets. To study Brando’s mannerisms, Dean watched The Men again and again and read press reports about his idol’s research process. Brando, who responded to Dean’s entreaties for advice with a recommendation that the younger man see an analyst, was among those charging Dean with plagiarism. After seeing Dean in East of Eden, Brando remarked that the young actor was “wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talent.”