JAMES DEAN SCREEN TEST MARLON BRANDO

Don't know the date on this but the rumors are true, Marlon screen tested for the role Jimmy got. We'll never know what would have become of James Dean and his career if he had lived...

NEW CODE FOR VIDEO NEEDED

CHRISTINE WHITE - I MISS YOU!

The recent news that actor Paul Newman had gone to Eternal Life made me think about my early New York days and taking classes at Actors Studio. I met Paul Newman in New York and Joanne Woodward on a Greyhound bus; we were both bussing it back home to North Carolina.

In those days my friend Christine White, James Dean's good friend, and Joanne were up for a lot of the same roles.

I miss you Christine White!

Love ya!

Wes

WES BRYAN - COOL MAGAZINE

Here's one of the magazines I was mentioned in back in March of 1958 as the New James Dean. It had an article about James "Jimmy" Dean as well. (That's another fellow on the cover - another hipster!) The comparisons of me and James Dean went on and on. More than one man hoped to fill those big shoes James Dean left but I was the one with United Artists behind me. I was being groomed by United Artists to play Jimmy in a "Bio Pic" about his life, which was never meant to be. But about this time in New York I met the great actor Paul Newman. He said to me, "There's a great need to fill James Dean's shoes and you're it!

Oh - that's Ronnie Burns on the cover... Guess who his dad was? George Burns. That's right. George who gave Ann-Margret her start in Las Vegas! If I remember the photo spread inside, it had Ronnie at home pool side with a lot of sexy girls sitting around him...

PAUL NEWMAN - MY LIFE IN ACTING AND HIS

P A U L N E W M A N

The great actor Paul Newman passed into Eternal Life last week at the age of 83. He first acted in a Broadway play in 1953 and it was in New York that I first met Paul in about 1958.

During my first tour for United Artists of the South, I did a radio performance show in Saint Louis, Missouri with the actress Geraldine Page. So Geraldine asked me to call her when I got back to New York and in New York she invited me to go see The Sweet Bird of Youth, which Paul was in. We went backstage and I met Paul. Paul invited me to Downeys to get a couple Budweiser's. That was the same restaurant that I met columnist Earl Wilson in when he interviewed me for the New York Times.

Paul said to me, "There's a great need for an actor to take Jimmy's (James Dean) place and you're it!"

Paul Newman was a few years older than James Dean when they both auditioned for East of Eden. James Dean got the roll in part because Paul was thought to be too old for the role.

Paul was a very private person and he didn't talk about it with me, but I knew that Paul had never gotten over the death of James Dean. The James Dean that impressed Paul Newman was not only the actor but the race car driver. Paul fullfilled every dream that James Dean had about racing cars!

Wes Bryan

C 2008