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Vintage original Second Draft script for the popular 1970's made-for-television biopic drama, JAMES DEAN (AKA James Dean: Portrait of a Friend), directed by Robert Butler and originally broadcast on February 19, 1976. A dramatization of the story of legendary movie actor James Dean (Stephen McHattie). The film's writer, William Bast (Michael Brandon), had roomed with Dean in the early 1950's when both were trying to break into films as actors. The cast includes Brooke Adams, Julian Burton, Candy Clark, Dane Clark, Meg Foster, Katherine Helmond, Amy Irving, and Heather Menzies-Urich.
Written by William Bast, this Second Draft script is dated June 16, 1975. It consists of six acts in 139 pages on white stock that were 3-hole punched and bound with two brass brads without any covers. This script is complete in overall fine+ condition with random signs of wear on the edges of the title page with some small stains and a 1.5 in. diagonal crease on the bottom right corner (which affects the first 35 pages). The last page has signs of wear around the two brads and outer edges. There are no missing pages, tears, or other flaws, nor are there any handwritten notations present within.
In the early 1950s, the film's director, Robert Butler, worked at CBS Television in charge of the studio audience ushers. James Dean got a job there as an usher through his friend, William Bast (who wrote this film), who was also an usher. Butler was unimpressed with Dean's "abilities" and fired him. Christine White, who plays a secretary, was once James Dean's real-life girlfriend. They were accepted into the Actors Studio together. The role of screenwriter William Bast, Dean's best friend, is played by Michael Brandon. This portrayal is based on the 1956 biography by Bast, which recounts the early acting career and rise of Dean. The film paints a clear picture of James Dean's pursuit for authenticity, depth, and artistic meaning. Bast claimed that Dean's inspiration as an actor was inspired by what he learned from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella, The Little Prince.
William Bast (April 3, 1931 – May 4, 2015) was an American screenwriter and author. In addition to writing scripts for motion pictures and television, he was the author of two biographies of the screen actor James Dean. He often worked with his partner Paul Huson. After the death of Dean in an automobile accident in September 1955, Bast chronicled his five-year relationship with the actor in James Dean: a Biography. After moving to London, Bast wrote The Myth Makers[6] for Granada Television, a fictionalized drama inspired by Dean's funeral, which Bast perceived as grotesque and publicity-driven, with a shattering effect on Dean's rural-American family and his hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. In the United States, the script was produced again by NBC's Dupont Show of the Month and aired under the title The Movie Star. In 1975, Bast produced and scripted James Dean: Portrait of a Friend for NBC, a movie for television based upon his first biography of James Dean. In 2006, Barricade Books (USA) published Surviving James Dean, a second, more candid book by Bast about his relationship with Dean; which featured material that Bast did not include in his earlier account due to personal trepidations and social mores of the 1950s. In Surviving James Dean, Bast describes Dean in a compassionate light; how they met at UCLA, shared an apartment in Santa Monica, dated the same woman, and had a sexual relationship. He also describes the events that happened to him after Dean's death, largely as a result of having written his first book.
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