Mr. Henry, James Dean & Tennessee Williams

A few years back in New Orleans, probably five now, I was at Harry's bar in the French Quarter working on my book (novel) manuscript. It was pouring down rain outside, and I was sitting at a table by an open window for inspiration. A man came over and started reading it and then offering his suggestions on edits. He turned out to be a PhD who oversaw many doctoral projects at Tulane. He invited me to come to his house for a little party--he was just stopping in to grab a couple of six-packs.

We stopped at Verti Mart on Royal for some vodka and went to his place on the lower end of Royal Street. There were a few old men there. We started drinking vodka on the rocks and they were telling stories. One old man was terribly drunk and he was going on and on about "Tennessee." I faded into drunkenness as he droned on. Was he talking about Tennessee Williams?

The next day I tried to re-hash the conversation. If he was really talking about Tennessee Williams, then I needed to hear his stories with a clearer head!

So I went back to the place that afternoon and the old men were at it again. This time I listened to Mr. Henry carefully. It seems he was a Barrymore on his mother's side and he'd done a fair bit of acting and directing in his day. His wife was Miss Lily, who used to play the piano and sing requests nightly at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street. And Tennessee just adored Miss Lily.

Henry went to New York when he was 18 and did some off-Broadway shows. He said he and James Dean used to meet at Jim Downey's and drink 15 cent beers. "I never saw it, I never thought Jimmy was anything extraordinary. He would sit and complain about how much they'd cut his part. He wore glasses, and wasn't particularly good-looking, so he seemed unremarkable to me -- just another struggling actor. But when I saw him on the silver screen I knew Christ had walked on water! Oh, Jimmy! He was magnificent up there on the screen--and Kazan, Elia Kazan the director was an absolute genius who saw it in him! But poor Jimmy, he left us so young, and he had so much more life in him."

Then the man who I'd originally met started telling his Capote story. It seems he was at a dinner with a group along Cannery Row. "And Truman just kept going on and on about Marlon Brando's sex life, and the men they both had slept with, and heads were turning and he was getting louder and drunker and it was just embarrassing, so I stood up and slapped him across the face to shut him up. Later, I was driving him back to his hotel and he thanked me for that. Then he got out a picture of James Dean he kept in his wallet. He was obsessed with him, and he wanted me to take him to the scene of the crash. He threw a fit, so I took him there. Of course, there's really nothing there, just a plain intersection."

I got this from an AOL discussion site:

California State Highway 46 streaks eastward from the city of Paso Robles, near the northern edge of San Luis Obispo County, and cuts across gentle rolling hills and sweeping fields dotted with an occasional ranch.

It is a desolate, windblown vista, broken only by the squatty, weather-beaten buildings that make up the hamlets of Whitley Gardens, Shandon, and Cholame.

Almost twenty-five miles from Paso Robles, and less than a mile east of Cholame, the highway cuts through a gap in the Temblor Mountains, so named because the San Andreas Fault runs at their base.

Here the highway splits: 46 continues eastward to Bakersfield, and its branch, Highway 41, turns northeast toward Fresno.

This junction near Cholame was the epicenter for a shock that reverberated around the world over two decades ago, but not because of the constantly shifting San Andreas Fault.

Actor James Dean, idol to millions of moviegoers, was killed in a violent automobile accident at the junction.

Cholame, population five, consisting of a Chevron gas station, a small store, and a tiny post office, changed for all time since Dean’s death on Friday, September 30, 1955.