(480) POUT LIKE JIMMY

Back when Buddy Knox and me had our photos done by Bruno of Hollywood, I was still thinking about acting too, as many of my peers did  - like Elvis Presley and Bobby Darin were doing.  I had been promoted as a "singing - acting" sensation while with United Artists. I had traveled for years on the road as a singer, but I hadn't given up on acting.

Christine White, James Dean's friend and girlfriend before he was famous, was also in Hollywood and, as a successful working (early) television actress, she advised me to get another manager and agent for acting.  I'd first met Christine as a tourist, one who read fan magazines, during a brief Hollywood vacation before I even lived in Akron. 

She was sweet enough to make some introductions once we were both back in Southern California.

Dean was a country boy who went to the Big Apple and took up jazz and playing the bongos - a Beat. Then he went West, to California, to make movies and race cars.

I was a country boy who also went to the Big Apple and then West, to California, but though I owned some sports cars in my time, which I bought from music residuals, I didn't have what some say Jimmy did, the death wish. 

I grew up in Murphy, North Carolina, and then Cottage Grove, Oregon.  I remained a Southern boy.  I might have been a Renaissance man but I wasn't Beat.

Dean was supposed to be moody.  His family would say that too was just part of his promotion. 

I was shy, but when they asked me to pose for pictures they expected me to "do" Jimmy, pouting.  I was an actor who was supposed to live out of character! I never saw the facial resemblance between me and James Dean myself. I thought I looked like him from some angles. His family said I moved like Jimmy.
By the early to mid 1960's I was maybe the first person to give up on "The Next James Dean" promos. I wanted to be myself. I was a happy guy, out for fun.