Think James Dean and you get one brilliant fifties movie actor, a “rebel without a cause” who thrilled his audiences, and became a myth in his own time. But there are some darker undercurrents to this “live fast die young style” actor, and they have been written about by Darin Potter and Danforth Prince in their book “Tomorrow Never Comes!”

The Express quoted from the book itself; recounting events so shocking they fall under the “I Would Never Have Believed It?” category.

For example, “He had three or four conquests each week and though he wasn’t the most handsome man, didn’t have a great body, had two false front teeth and was often rude, women and men threw themselves at him.

The authors claim that “Despite all his success Dean remained a tormented soul.” Well that is not too difficult to imagine. His roles were always a tad “twisted.”

But saying that, do you believe the apparently bi sexual Dean, the Star of “Giant” and “East of Eden” really had flings with Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Rock Hudson and Spencer Tracey and that Hudson dropped him like a hot brick much to Dean’s chagrin?

Okay, it is easy to envision Dean as “difficult, selfish and insecure” but could he really have attracted the most gorgeous movie stars in Hollywood, stars like Marilyn Monroe and Elisabeth Taylor.?”

Apparently the answer is yes. “He was very loving, very romantic,” Monroe told actress Shelley Winters. “I’ve agreed to marry him one day.”

Monroe was jealous of Taylor and moaned about her? She once said“She’s got a voracious sexual appetite and the morals of a truck driver. I hear that unless she shaves constantly she is hairy. One of her former lovers told me she even has hair growing between her breasts!!”

But hang on, did Dean really have a fling with Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead, Hollywood legends in their own right? And could Judy Garland have also become his lover? The authors claim Dean took part in a threesome with Garland, admitting “I don’t really remember who did what to whom Judy gave us some pills after popping a few themselves?”

Eartha Kitt and Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton were other sometime lovers to all intents and purposes; Kitt said “Our love for each other just happened. I became his confidante and I taught him about stage presence. We were like soul brother and sister.”
He called me “my voodoo priestess”.

Those who worked with Dean were frightened by the man, not hard to believe, but it is a bit more difficult to give credence to the fact the man was so threatening some claimed he was an “in the closet” serial killer! Dean’s friend, composer Leonard Rosenman, certainly confirmed he beat up his girlfriends.

But there is more and this time it is really hard to believe. Apparently, when Spencer Tracy and Dean got together in the bedroom Spencer burst into tears!“I don’t like who I am,” sobbed Tracy, who at the time was an item with Katharine Hepburn. In the morning Dean slipped away stealing Tracy’s wallet and cash.”

Yes Dean was hailed as the new Marlon Brando, but let’s face it, it is almost impossible to envisage Dean actually becoming his lover!!

However, a mutual friend called Stanley Haggart insisted that “Brando was sadistically using Jimmy who followed him around like a love-sick puppy,”

On September 30, 1955, Dean was racing down a road in northern California, when he struck a car “turning across his path.”

Dean crashed into a telephone pole after being thrown 50 feet, he had a broken neck and his forehead and chest were as tangled a mess as the car itself.

The authors of “Tomorrow Never Comes” have researched well, and their conclusions are so shocking you might still find them hard to believe. But how does that old saying go? “Where these is smoke there is fire!”

Ref Express, Tomorrow Never Comes by Darwin Porter & Danforth Prince, published on July 1 by Blood Moon Productions, £17.99