“I hope the second adjective is the more abundant,” he said. He then had almost exactly nine more months to live.
He made Rebel Without a Cause—and made a friend of its director, Nick Ray.
Hollywood started to simmer with excitement over this new, young talent when East of Eden was released and Jimmy went into Rebel, causing no problems for anybody because Nick Ray could communicate with him; they got along like a house on fire. Then came Giant, which he should never have gone into. The part of Jett Rink, Texas wildcatter turned millionaire, was not right for him.
George Stevens is a martinet, a slow-moving hulk of a man who tried to force Jimmy to conform to George’s interpretation of the role. Now Jimmy could be led but not driven; he’d bend like a young tree but not break. How poorly Stevens understood him showed in his remarks after Jimmy died: “He was just a regular kid trying to make good in Hollywood. He was determined to reach his goal of being a topnotch movie star at any price.”
Tremendous trouble was brewing on the set. It reached boiling point when Jimmy went on strike and boycotted Giant for three days. The newspaper and town gossips started picking on him, pinning all the blame on his shoulders. It was high time we had another talk.
“I’ve been reading some bad things about you,” I said. “I understand you haven’t been showing up for work.”
“Right, I haven’t. Stevens has been horrible. I sat there for three days, made up and ready to work at nine o’clock every morning. By six o’clock I hadn’t had a scene or a rehearsal. I sat there like a bump on a log watching that big, lumpy Rock Hudson making love to Liz Taylor. I knew what Stevens was trying to do to me. I’m not going to take it any more.”
“I hold no brief for Stevens,” I said, “but what you don’t know is that there’s a man on that set who put the whole deal together. Henry Ginsberg, Stevens, and Edna Ferber are partners. It took Henry two years to do it. This is the first time in Ferber’s life she took no money, only an equal share of the profits as they come in. If this picture goes wrong, Stevens can walk out, and those two years of Ginsberg’s life go down the drain.”
“I didn’t know,” Jimmy said.
“Something else. Henry has a great deal of affection for you, but he can’t show it or else Stevens might walk off the set.”