James Dean Is Forewarned By Alec Guinness
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The Villa Capri,
Hollywood
September 23rd 1955
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A week before he is due to die, James Dean is sitting at a
table in his favorite little restaurant in Hollywood, the Villa Capri. He is
very chummy with Nikkos, its maitre d' from whom he has started renting a log
house in Sherman Oaks.
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Looking towards the entrance, he spots a familiar figure
attempting to get a table, then being turned away. He recognizes him as the
English actor Alec Guinness, the star of so many of his favorite Ealing
comedies, such as Kind Hearts and Coronets.
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Guinness has always been more than a touch superstitious,
and in a few minutes he will be applying his sixth sense to James Dean. He
regularly visits fortune tellers, and has even indulged in a little
table-turning. At one time in his life he became obsessed with tarot cards,
until all of a sudden one evening, 'I got the horrors about them and
impetuously threw cards and books on a blazing log fire.'
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Guinness delights in recounting his psychic powers. On the
afternoon of New Year's Eve, 1943, he was resting in the cabin of the naval
ship of which he was a lieutenant, when he apparently heard a sinister voice
saying, 'Tomorrow.' He became convinced that this was a premonition of death.
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That night, sailing from Sicily to the Yugoslav island of
Vis, his ship hit a hurricane. An electrical discharge caused ribbons of blue
fluorescent light, 'until the whole ship was lit up like some dizzying
fairground sideshow'. Convinced that he was going to die, Guinness found the
spectacle 'beautiful and strangely comforting.'
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The ship was dashed against
the rocks as it entered the small Italian port of Termoli, and he gave the
order to abandon ship. He had, it seems, outwitted the sinister voice - or had
it been delivering less of a judgment than a warning?
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In March this year, he and his wife were on holiday in the
Trossachs in Scotland when their car had a bad puncture. 'Couldn't get the
wheel off.' he wrote in his diary. 'After nearly an hour's effort said a little
prayer to St Anthony and the nuts came loose the very next time I tried - and
with only a small effort.'
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Six months later he arrives in Hollywood, exhausted after a
sixteen-hour flight from Copenhagen, in order to begin filming The Swan with
Grace Kelly and Louis Jourdan.
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The screenwriter of Father Brown, Thelma Moss, has invited
him out to dinner, but they have difficulty finding a table because Thelma is
wearing slacks. They finally settle for a small Italian restaurant, the Villa
Capri, which has a more casual dress-code, but when they get there they are
told by the genial maitre d' that it is full, and so they begin to walk away.
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'I don't care where we eat or what. Just something,
somewhere.' grumbles Guinness irritably, adding, 'I don't mind just a
hamburger.'
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At that moment, he becomes aware of the sound of feet
running down the street behind him. He turns to see a young man in sneakers, a
sweatshirt and blue jeans. 'You want a table?' he asks. 'Join me. My name's
James Dean.'
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'Yes, very kind of you.' replies Guinness with relief, and
eagerly follows him back to the Villa Capri.
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Before they go into the restaurant, James Dean says, 'I'd
like to show you something.' and takes them into the courtyard of the
restaurant. There, he proudly shows them his new racing car, one of only ninety
Porsche 550 Spyders ever produced. He has had it customized: it now has tartan
seating and two red stripes at the rear of its wheel-well, all designed by
George Barris, the man who will go on to design the Batmobile. 'It's just been
delivered; Dean says, proudly. On the lower rear of the engine cover are the
words 'Little Bastard: The car is so brand new that it is still wrapped in
cellophane, with a bunch of roses tied to its bonnet.
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Alec Guinness is seized by one of his premonitions. 'How
fast can you go in that?'
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'I can do 150 in it.'
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'Have you driven it?'
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'I've never been in it at all.'
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And then - 'exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered
in spite of Dean's kindness' - Guinness hears himself saying, in a voice he can
hardly recognize as his own, 'Look, I won't join your table unless you want me
to, but I must say something. Please do not get into that car.' He looks at his
watch. 'I said, "It's now 10 o'clock, Friday the 23rd of September 1955.
If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next
week."
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Despite this grim prognosis, Dean laughs. 'Oh, shucks!' he
says. 'Don't be so mean!'
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Guinness apologizes, blaming his outburst on a lack of sleep
and food.
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The three of them then have dinner together - 'a charming
dinner' - before going their separate ways. Guinness makes no further reference
to the car, 'but in my heart I was uneasy'.
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Though Dean himself has an interest in morbid premonitions -
passages about death and degradation are heavily underlined in his copy of
Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon - he ignores Guinness's warning. A
week later, on September 30th, he is driving his new Spyder across the junction
of Route 46 and Route 41 near Cholame, California, when he collides head-on
with a Ford Custom Tudor coupe driven by a student with the inappropriately
comical name of Donald Turnupseed.
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James Dean is taken by ambulance to Paso Robles War Memorial
Hospital, where he is pronounced dead on arrival at 5.59 p.m. His last words,
uttered just before impact, are, 'The guy's gotta stop ... he'll see us.'
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Fifty years after his death, this section of the road is
renamed the James Dean Memorial Junction.
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'It was a very odd, spooky experience: recalls Alec Guinness
of their strange meeting. 'I liked him very much. I would have liked to have
known him more.'
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Craig Brown "Hello
Goodbye Hello" (2011)
