The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

James Dean had more than his share of psychological problems. His mother, with whom he was close, died of uterine cancer when he was nine, and he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Indiana. As a teenager, he may have been sexually abused by his pastor. He was, in the words of Carroll Baker, “a sad-faced, introverted oddball,” and he had a pronounced, almost performative, vulnerability. Although he had dropped out of college to become an actor, he hated being exposed, analyzed, or critiqued. Actors need to be able to adjust the thickness of their skin in order to survive, hardening themselves to the gaze of the public while becoming open and vulnerable for the sake of their work. James Dean never learned how to do this, and his inability to modulate himself led to strange and off-putting behavior. Once, Bobby Lewis asked James Dean to audition for his production of Teahouse of the August Moon. Bobby had seen Jimmy’s work and felt he could do the role, but Lewis couldn’t simply cast him by fiat, particularly as the character was Japanese. “Jimmy was paralyzed with fear when I told him to prepare a few lines of Sakini’s opening monologue,” Lewis recalled. When Dean got up onstage at the Martin Beck Theatre to deliver his monologue, he collapsed in a fit of laughter and ran offstage.