James Dean Jokes about Falling in Love with a Man in Newly Auctioned Letter
Dean's joke referred to his horse in a previously unpublished letter to girlfriend Barbara Glenn.
As we approach the seventieth anniversary of James Dean’s death on Tuesday, it’s the time when Dean comes back into the news. I published a piece in The New Republic this weekend in which I discussed how understanding the aftermath of James Dean’s death and the cult that formed around him can help us to understand what is currently happening with assassinated conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk. And, as happens most Septembers, there was an auction that included James Dean memorabilia.
This week, a letter that James Dean sent to his New York girlfriend, Barbara Glenn, from Los Angeles on May 19, 1954, sold at auction for more than $32,000. The letter had been in the possession of a European collector since the last time it sold at auction, decades ago. To the best of my knowledge, this letter has not previously been published or made available for study. Since the letter has now been scanned and posted to the internet via the auction house, and covered as a “mushy” love letter in the New York Post, I have taken the liberty of transcribing it for analysis since the “full” transcript that the auction house provided omits a number of lines.
My transcription follows Dean’s original and inconsistent punctuation and poor spelling. As you can see, it is not particularly “fiery,” as the Post claimed:
5-19-54
Darling,
I havent written because I have fallen in love. It had to happen sooner or later. Its not a very good picture of him but thats “Cisco the Kid” the new member of the family. He gives me confidence. He makes my hands and my heart strong. He’s a very spirited horse but well trained. That’s my trainer in the picture Thoroughbred Palamino (black main and tail) with buckskin throw-back he’s actually a buckskin. He shakes hands and everything. May use him in the movie. I’m very lonely. Your card smelled so good, please don’t do that. (dirty tricks, I’m still a Calif-virgen. I hate this place. Kazan and everybody but Cisco can go fuck themselves.
Don’t call because I havent got a place of my own yet. Just keep writting. Honey these are the nicest, sweetest letters in the world. Oh the terrible doubts an artist is given to!
Tell Lennie I love him. I miss the sounds of good men and bad men. There’s no Marty’s here or Jerry’s or . . . anything, ever. Even if there were, it would be different probably.
Maybe you can come & see me sometime. Is it alright to send my letter to Equity? There’s not much we can say over the phone. Lennie and I tried it. We weren’t very successful. Like a couple of kids almost. I’ll be home soon.
Love
Jim
P.S. send the picture back. By that time I will have had some good ones taken.
Love
Jim
The only word I had difficult reading is the one I have rendered as “Equity,” presumably the Actors Equity guild. I believe this must refer to correspondence he wanted Glenn to forward about his Actors Equity membership, which he renewed on April 16, 1954. Dean was in Los Angeles at the time, and the guild was located in New York, though it had a branch office in Hollywood.
The “Lennie” referred to in the letter is almost certainly Leonard Rosenman, who would soon follow Dean to Los Angeles to compose the score for East of Eden.
The letter to Glenn contains nothing that radically changes our understanding of Dean’s early days filming East of Eden, but it does reinforce themes already known from letters to Glenn that were previously published by David Dalton and Joe Hyams prior to the collection of missives, which were once in the possession of Glenn’s family, being broken up and sold decades ago. In those letters, Dean similarly expressed his loneliness and his dislike of Hollywood, often in vulgar terms.
Most interesting to me is the way Dean opened with a joke about falling in love with a man before revealing him to be a horse. While there is nothing particularly telling about this one line, which could easily be read as simply silly, when we read all of the available correspondence between Dean and Glenn and read it in light of Glenn’s interview with David Dalton shortly before her passing, it adds more substance to the strong impression I got that Dean had not only told Glenn about his same-sex relationships but that they were open with each other about seeking outside sexual encounters. (In other letters, Dean discusses men coming on to him and openly discusses his plans to have sex with other people in California.)
I wish I had had this joke about falling in love with a man to include in Jimmy, if only to add a bit more color to what was already evident from Dean’s other correspondence.
Oh, in case you were wondering: Eden director Elia Kazan had Cisco the horse sent away, claiming he was a distraction for Dean. Dean did not visit the horse much, if at all, after that. The horse remained stabled with a relative of Dean’s insurance agent, Lew Bracker, until Dean’s death. The horse was later sold for $130.
Actually, Lew kept the horse at his family's ranch until it died. Then he had him buried on the ranch. Cisco lived another ten years after Dean died. Lew said both of his daughters learned to ride a horse on Cisco. Also, the horse didn't go to the Bracker's ranch until a couple of weeks before the accident. Lew said he first met Cisco after Jimmie came home from Marfa.