5

how love can lead
youngsters to murder

Scott’s, the young artist’s, real name is James Dean.

Marcia’s real name is Janis Joplin.

James and Janie fell madly in love when James, or Jimmy, was still working on Rebel Without a Cause. They were children and not yet hardened, frightened into feelinglessness by the Hollywood scene: still able to fall in love. Fall in love frantically, desperately, without any reservation. With all the insane hopes, fantasies, myths, and desires children have. Jimmy was 24 years old. Janis was only 9. They were unhappy, scared. They didn’t understand the world they had been thrown into. Not only could they escape into each other; they also were able to reinforce each other’s fantasy that the constant loneliness and paranoia of the world no longer existed for them.

Theirs was the perfect American love affair.

Rebel Without a Cause tells a story as old as Tom Brown’s School Days : a boy’s adventures, travails, and triumph on his first day at a new school. Jim Dean plays the part of the fledgling Jim Stark, a new boy at Dawson High. What makes Rebel different from traditional schoolboy adventures is that school is no longer the only relevant field of action. Most of Rebel takes place away from Dawson High, late at night, in a teenage underworld of violence, romance, and death. There are also new, more powerful authority figures: parents and the police.

In Rebel Without a Cause Jimmy Dean plays himself. He’s victim and hero: the kid who learns to be bad cause he can’t be good in a society whose goodness stinks. The kid who keeps his innocence and vulnerability while he learns. The corrupted society. Jimmy not only played in this film, he also helped director Nicholas Ray create the film. Jimmy did this while he was lonely, overwhelmingly lonely, confused by his homosexuality and the sudden success he was having. The Hollywood world in which he made the film was, as is reality, far more complexly corrupt than the society in Rebel Without a Cause. Everyone in Hollywood carries hell in his or her heart.

If Jimmy was lonely, Janis was even more lonely. She had fled the boredom and the hostility of her hometown, Port Arthur, Texas, to find a place that was like her: bubbling and wild. Venice, Hollywood, all that part of southern California at that time was full of freaks, but Janis was too insecure, too unsure of herself to talk to anyone.

One day, when Jimmy was sitting in the Warner Brothers’ cafeteria, he met Janis. He noticed a young girl sitting at the table across from him. She was so young she should have been with her parents, but she wasn’t. She seemed so innocent Jimmy was intrigued. “Hey,” he said to the long-haired kid, “what are you doing around here?”

“What d’you mean ‘what am I doing around here’?” she pugnaciously replied. “I have as much right to be here as you do.” Janis noticed how good-looking Jimmy was, but she wasn’t going to show she noticed.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I am not.” She pushed up her filthy shirt sleeve and showed him the tracks covering the lower part of her arm.

Jimmy sneered. “So what. Only brats who want to act grown-up do that. Real actors have to take care of themselves.”

Janis felt put-down. “Fuck it up your ass. Star.” She tossed her long brown hair. “Anyway I’m not an actress. I’m a singer. I sing the blues.”

“Hey, Jimmy, you’re on,” Natalie Wood’s voice rang out. Natalie was playing Judy, the main girl in Rebel Without a Cause.

Jimmy decided he wanted to see this brat again. She wasn’t like any other girl he had ever met. “Listen.” His finger pointed at her face. “Wait here, I’ll be back in three hours.”

When Jimmy drove his M G right up to the door of the Warner Brothers’ cafeteria, Janis’ heart began to flutter in her chest. What a wild thing to do, Janis thought to herself. Here’s a man whom I want to be able to tell what to do. He’s tough and he’s wild and he’s mean. I need a mean man cause I’m mean and wild myself. I’m too intelligent for a woman. I need a man who can help me a little cause this death society doesn’t like intelligent women. A man who can teach me something. I need a man who can step on me a little. A woman’s gotta be stepped on, otherwise she stops being hard and mean and she can’t deal with society anymore. I mean, I’ve got to make it and I’ve got to keep on making it. Dum, dum, dum.

This man isn’t like those Port Arthur creeps. Those jocks and rednecks who made fun of me and told their children to stop associating with me, cause I wasn’t feminine enough and pretty enough and I didn’t DO THINGS RIGHT.

This guy probably doesn’t like me. Hard men never go for powerful chicks, the ones like me, who got visions. They got their own visions and they just want some pretty chickie who’ll say yes to them and make life easier for them. That’s all they want.

But I gotta get loved and I gotta get love from a guy who’s real to me. I need a tough leather guy. So I’ll just take whatever this boy offers, Janis decided, I’ll do whatever he wants, as much as I can, so that he’ll love me a little. If he kicks me in the groin, and throws me away, so what, at least I’ll have gotten a little bit of good loving. When it’s over, it’s over.

As soon as Janis got in the car, Jimmy stopped noticing her. He wanted her to reject him. As if alone, he began to race his red 53 M G down Santa Monica Boulevard, Venice Boulevard, right on to a deserted portion of the Venice beach. He pulled the car up to an old, old for California, ramshackle beach house.

He got out of the car and, hands in his pockets, started slouching toward the ocean.

Janis wasn’t going to be put off like this. Goddamnit, he was going to notice her. Notice me! Notice me! her body cried. She ran into Jimmy and started punching him.

“Just cause you’re some fuckin’ M O V I E STAR,” her eyes, skin, and hair seemed to light up and explode, “you think you can ignore me. You’re just like all the other creepy men I’ve ever known.” She was trying hard not to cry.

Jimmy smiled. He looked shy and childlike. “O.K. Let’s see if we can become friends.” They grabbed hands and fell down in the sand. Jimmy’s body was thin and muscular. Janis was already in love with him.

“I’ll tell you everything,” Janis said. “I want to sing, man. That’s all there is to me. I got this vision and it’s driving me crazy. Like Zelda Fitzgerald.

“You’re not going to understand cause you’re a man.”

“I understand what it is to be driven. My mother died when I was 9 years old. She just left me like that. Then my father sent me away. I knew I was bad and I knew I had to create my own world. Really. Not just fantasize. Create my own world.”

“You still don’t understand.” Suddenly Janis didn’t care anymore if she was impressing him. She was caught up in her own pain. “Men can do what they want. Those who got visions can try to follow them. Women in show business, man, they sing their fuckin’ insides out cause they give up more than you’d ever know. If they got kids, they give them up; any woman gives up a home life, an old man, probably, a home and friends; you give up an old man and friends; you give up every constant in the world except music. That’s the only thing you got, man.”

“It’s the same for a man,” Jimmy said thoughtfully. “An actor doesn’t even have a constant like music. Everything in the world is simply a tool for him, nothing more.”

“But you can get laid, man! Every movie star gets laid! But I’m a woman: I don’t want an ass-kisser, I want a guy who’s bigger and stronger and balisier than me. When I’m on the road, where am I going to find a man like that? Men like that want ass-lickers. They don’t want women they’re constantly going to have to fight. I’m always going to be alone, man.”

Jimmy looked at Janis seriously. She was being honest and, like him, she sensed her own badness. “I’m lonely too, Janis. I’m trying to make myself be someone else, be JAMES DEAN, but I’m killing myself, I don’t know who and where I am. As for sex,” he looked at her closely, “I haven’t been to bed with anybody. I’ve told all the girls I’ve met to kiss my ass because they’re sterile, spineless, stupid prostitutes. What d’you think of that?”

“I think we’re going to be friends, man.” They looked at each other for a long time.

Both of them felt they had found something they had lost a long time ago, before they could remember. Now they could relax. They started playing with each other and giggling, just like kids.

Often they talked about themselves and their problems, about movies and acting, about life and life after death. Then they’d walk side-by-side, not actually speaking, but communicating their love silently to each other.

They were beginning to have a complete understanding of each other.

They were like Romeo and Juliet, together and inseparable. Sometimes on the beach they loved each other so much they just wanted to walk together into the sea, holding hands, because they knew then that they would always be together.

It wasn’t that they wanted to commit suicide.

They loved their lives, and it was just that they wanted to be that close to each other always.

They didn’t want to be seen together at film premieres and nightclubs.

They didn’t want to be in the gossip columns or be seen at the big Hollywood parties.

They were kids together and that’s the way they both liked it.

They began to see a great deal of each other when they weren’t making films or singing. They were young and wanted to enjoy life together and they did.

More than any other person Henry Kissinger is determining our lives in the 1970’s.

On January 20, 1969, the government of the United States fell into the hands of a group of men who were undistinguished in intellect, personality, or vision. Swept into power at the end of a tormented decade, they were chosen not so much out of admiration or enthusiasm as out of fear, hatred, and desperation. No one would deign to bestow upon them the superficial accolades that had frequently adorned their predecessors, even in the worst hours of poverty and cruelty and war; in these administrations there are no Thousand Days, no New Frontier or Great Society. It was as if everyone had instantly grasped their obvious inferiority, and hoped only that the country could somehow muddle on until a time in the future when, refreshed and reinvigorated, it would catch hold of itself and produce leadership where a simple void had existed before.

In this bleak and unpromising setting, for those who think they know or presume to judge, one figure stands out. Unlike the rest, he is sharp, determined, relentlessly intellectual—one of the brightest men, some say, this country has ever produced. Open-minded and pragmatic, he is not tied to the mistakes of the past, even to those he himself had once spoken for. Brash and impenetrable, yes, but there is still a humility about him that his steelier and more arrogant predecessors clearly lacked: he possesses a stark recognition of America’s and his own limitations, and he has promised again and again that neither will be tested at its extreme. The days when America would pay any price, would bear any burden, would meet any hardship, would fight any foe to achieve the defense of liberty had made for a certain public spirit and élan; but, in retrospect, they led to overcommitment, to useless loss and destruction around the world. And in those hours of crisis, the President of the United States was surrounded by men largely lacking in open-mindedness and critical perspective, men who blindly insisted that the country continue on the same futile course of action that they themselves had launched. But now, it would be different: there would be a sense of proportion. One often wonders, in fact, how he emerged in this crowd of banal and mediocre men, and more important yet, how influential he will be and how long he will last.

The main question of our age is: how can all-out war and total nuclear destruction be avoided? Kissinger’s answer is: by limited war. Kissinger was led to believe in limited war through his faith in the universal applicability of Metternich-style diplomacy, a diplomacy that presupposed an area of common interest and understanding, as well as one of conflict, between the contending parties. “In seeking to avoid the horrors of all-out war by outlining an alternative, in developing a concept of limitation that combines firmness with moderation, diplomacy can once more establish a relationship with force even in the nuclear age.”

What are the requisites of such a diplomacy?

A diplomat, to be effective, must possess a certain degree of credibility. Under the circumstances of America’s worldwide commitment—a commitment that, by its very scope, would seem to defy belief—and of the general unstable world condition due, among other causes, to the advanced nuclear technology many nations now possess, Washington’s and Washington’s international representatives’ credibility must be total and constant. Washington’s diplomats must have the freedom and the power to handle incredibly subtle and difficult tactical maneuvers. That means that diplomats must not be harassed by public opinion or the necessities of domestic policy.

According to Kissinger, “. . . it is the President who decides and he, therefore, has to feel comfortable with the way his choices are presented to him or indeed whether he wants any choices.” The Presidency is necessary only for decisions on America’s role in international affairs. As the chief diplomat, the President is his own Secretary, his own adviser, his own deskman. One of the consequences of Kissinger’s “diplomacy”

The story of Rebel Without a Cause played a large part in Jimmy’s and Janis’ romance and so must be told:

Rebel Without a Cause is the story of Romeo and Juliet. Jimmy is the first person we see in Rebel Without a Cause, lying dead drunk on the sidewalk, curled up next to a toy monkey he is whimsically trying to cover with a piece of paper, while credits and title flash by in flaming letters.

Without being introduced or identified, Jimmy acts out his own prologue to the movie. He plays an isolated, defenseless child, deliriously enclosed in his own protective fantasy, stranded like some inhabitant of another world on a grimy concrete ledge. Jimmy modeled his pose on one of his favorite paintings, Manet’s Dead Bullfighter, and in his slow, deliberate actions, the hero is introduced to us almost in embryo, a child with his mechanical toy who wishes nothing more than to be left alone with his dreams.

In the course of this night journey Jimmy (Jimmy Dean) is hauled into Juvenile Hall—a cold, sterile maze with glass partitions and jangling phones, gloomy and bizarre, with endless forms and mechanical procedures. These wards are the result of parental indifference and inability to understand their children. Despondently, the “juvenile delinquents” wait for the real culprits to collect them.

Jim’s been hauled in because he’s suspected of having beaten up some man. Society sends all its youngest casualties to Juvenile. Plato’s (Sal Mineo’s) also in this decompression chamber because he’s shot a puppy. Judy (Natalie Wood), in searing red coat and lipstick, has been picked up for wandering around late at night.

RAY (THE JUVENILE DETECTIVE): Why were you out walking the streets at one o’clock in the morning, Judy? You weren’t looking for company, were you? (She starts to cry.)

JUDY: H e hates me.

RAY: What?

JUDY: He doesn’t like anything about me. He calls me . . . He calls me . . .

RAY: He makes you feel pretty unhappy?

JUDY: He calls me a dirty tramp—my own father!

When Ray calls Jim in, he immediately recognizes Jim’s act: “You don’t kid me, pal. How come you’re not wearing your boots?” When Jim tries to take a swing at Ray, Ray invites Jim to “blow your wheels . . . take it out on the desk.” Jim blurts out, “If I could have just one day when I wasn’t all confused . . . I wasn’t ashamed of everything. If I felt I belonged some place.” Ray releases Jimmy for lack of evidence.

The next day, the students of Dawson High sit in a darkened auditorium, confronted with a giant replica of the heavens, listening to the dry, droning voice of a lecturer as insectlike as his projector, and they watch this artificial show, a Hollywood projection of the universe! As the lecturer says,

FOR MANY DAYS BEFORE THE END OF OUR EARTH, PEOPLE WILL LOOK AT THE NIGHT SKY AND NOTICE A STAR, INCREASINGLY BRIGHT AND INCREASINGLY NEAR,

Jim enters and says in a stage whisper to the teacher checking names at the door, “STARK, Jim STARK.” Jim’s the new boy in school. The class turns; the lecturer hesitates; Jim slithers to a seat.

Jim tries to make himself part of Buzz’ (Corey Allen’s) gang:

LECTURER’S VOICE: . . . and Taurus, the bull . . .

JIM (IN GOOD IMITATION): Moo! (He waits for approval.)

But Jim’s attempt to horn in on the gang has the opposite of the desired effect: it provokes them and they taunt Jim with the idea that he may be a coward:

SCENE: Angle shot of Judy, Buzz, and group (seen from Jim’s angle). He is in the foreground. They are staring at him. Nobody laughs.

CRUNCH (FLAT): Yeah, moo.

BUZZ: Moo. That’s real cute. Moo.

GOON: Hey, he’s real rough.

CRUNCH: I bet he fights with cows.

BUZZ: Moo.

PLATO, WHO’S TRYING TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH JIMMY, WHISPERS SOME ADVICE:

PLATO: You shouldn’t MONKEY with him.

JIM: What?

PLATO: He’s a wheel. So’s she. It’s hard to make friends with them.

JIM: I don’t want to make friends. (He turns back, unhappy at having revealed himself.)

LECTURER’S VOICE: Destroyed as we began, in a burst of gas and fire.

The lifeless professor who manipulates the cosmos with his dumbbell projection ends the world:

LECTURER: The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the complexity of our universe and the galaxies beyond, the earth will not be missed . . .

Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naive. Indeed. And man, existing alone, seems to be an episode of little consequence . . . That’s all. Thank you very much.

PLATO: What does HE know about man alone?

Outside the school, Buzz jabs his knife into Jim’s whitewall while Judy’s nylon-stockinged leg dangles suggestively in front of the tire. Jimmy, sitting on the parapet with his back to the gang, lets out a slow, painful breath of air. There’s no way he can avoid the trouble behind him. He climbs down and moves toward the group. Goon, then the rest of the gang, and finally Buzz start clucking at Jim.

Jim asks if they’re calling him chicken. He’d had to leave another school for “messin’ up a guy” who called him chicken. He tries to refuse the knife Buzz forces on him, but the gang knows he really has no choice and eggs him on.

The two boys circle each other, like wolves vying for territory. Buzz seems to snarl, thoroughly enjoying the encounter, while Jim hesitates, then lunges and gets jabbed in the stomach. Buzz grins. Jimmy makes another quick leap and is cut again.

Jimmy wins the knife fight, but he still can’t get into the gang. Now Jimmy has to win Buzz in a chickie run.

Jimmy takes his dilemma home. Can his father help him? Jimmy’s father’s wearing an apron,

JIM: Can you answer me NOW?

FATHER: Listen, nobody should make a snap decision—this isn’t something you just—we ought to consider the pros and cons—

JIM: We don’t have TIME.

FATHER: We’ll make time. Where’s some paper? We’ll make a list . . .

JIM (SHOUTING): WHAT CAN YOU DO WHEN YOU HAVE TO BE A MAN?

FATHER: What?

JIM: You going to stop me, Dad?

FATHER: YOU know I never stop you from anything. (Jim suddenly makes his decision and sheds his jacket for the red one.)

Believe me—you’re at a wonderful age. In ten years you’ll look back on this and wish you were a kid again. When you’re older, you’ll laugh at yourself for thinking this is so important.

Jimmy runs out of the house to meet his next battle, incredulously repeating, “Ten years . . . ten years . . .”

Wind shrieks over the exposed plateau which is several hundred yards long. It cuts into the darkness like the prow of a ship and ends in empty air. Several cars are scattered about defining a sort of runway in the center. There are several kids present but very little talk . . . They stand in small clots, murmuring and smoking.

BUZZ (QUIETLY): This is the edge, boy. This is the end.

JIM: Yeah.

BUZZ: I like you, you know?

JIM: Buzz? What are we doing this for?

BUZZ (STILL QUIET): We got to do SOMETHING. Don’t we?

It’s the last time they speak, for during the run Buzz catches his sleeve on the door handle and can’t get out. Trapped in his car, he careens over the side, and his life ends in a “burst of gas and flames.” Jim, looking over the cliff, realizes he’s lost his first friend.

Buzz’ girlfriend, Judy, rides home with Jim.

Jimmy slips into his parents’ home. To cool his overheated brain and heal his frayed nerve ends, he rolls the cool glass of milk bottle across his forehead.

Jimmy sees his father watching T.V. His father (Jim Backus) doesn’t want to notice him. Jimmy can’t leave: he can’t let go of his father.

Jimmy’s mother enters the room. Jimmy tells them he got in trouble out at the bluff. His parents tell him they’ve seen a “bad accident” on the T.V. Jimmy tells them this accident was real and involves him. His parents don’t understand. Jim puts his hands around his father’s throat, drags him down the stairs, pushes him over his easy chair and onto the floor. His mother runs after them, shrieking, “STOP IT! YOU’LL KILL HIM. JIM! DO YOU WANT TO KILL YOUR FATHER?”

Jim runs away from his parents. He looks for the only other adult he believes can help him—Ray, the juvenile officer. Ray isn’t at the precinct, but the gang is. They think Jim’s going to tell all so Crunch decides they’d better take care of him.

Jim doesn’t want to go home. He has nowhere else to go. He finds Judy waiting in his parents’ driveway. She’s run away too:

JIM: I swear sometimes, you just want to hold on to somebody! Judy, what am I going to do? I can’t go home again.

JUDY: Neither can I.

JIM: No? Why not? (no answer) You know something? I never figured I’d live to see 18. Isn’t that dumb.

JUDY: No.

JIM: Each day I’d look in the mirror and I’d say, “What? You still here?” Man! (They laugh a little.)

Like even today. I woke up this morning, you know? Then the first thing that happens is I see you, and I thought this is going to be one terrific day so you better live it up, boy, cause tomorrow maybe you’ll be nothing.

As Jimmy gets to kiss Judy—their first kiss

There’s a place where Jimmy and Judy can hide: an old mansion Plato knows about. An abandoned villa, with its sunken gardens, waterless foundations, stone balustrades, and rococo candelabra.

This is the new world:

PLATO (HE HOLDS UP THE CANDELABRA): What do you think?

JIM: Wow! Well, now, then, there . . . Let’s take it for the summer.

JUDY (LAUGHING): Oh, Jim.

JIM: Should we rent or are we in a buying mood, dear?

PLATO: . . . Only three million dollars a month!

JIM: Why don’t we just rent it for the season?

JUDY: You see, we’ve just . . . oh, you tell him, darling. I’m so embarrassed I could die!

JIM: Well, we’re newlyweds.

Judy hums a little lullaby to Plato and he falls off to sleep, but his dreams of the future become nightmares. As the gang members arrive, Plato, as frightened as a child and he is a child, shoots one, screams “You’re NOT my father!” at Jim, and rushes off into the bush as the police arrive. Judy and Jim run down the hill after Plato, who has broken into the planetarium and hidden himself in its dark, empty space. The cops arrive at the planetarium door. There are light, bullhorns, Officer Ray, Jim’s parents, Plato’s maid, and cops.

Cops with guns surround the planetarium. Officer Ray tells the boy in the planetarium to come out with his hands up.

PLATO (SHIVERING LIKE A PUPPY): DO you think the end of the world will come at night, Jim?

Jim tells Plato he’ll trade Plato’s gun for his jacket. Then he’ll unload the gun and give it back to Plato.

JIM (HANDING PLATO THE EMPTY REVOLVER): Friends keep promises, don’t they?

Jim walks with Plato to the planetarium door. Plato hesitates when he sees the menacing searchlights and the faceless crowd outside. Plato runs away from Jim and Judy and sobs, “They’re not my friends!” The police open fire and the child falls dead.

“But I’ve got the bullets!” Jim shouts to everyone and no one. Jim goes over to Plato, the second friend he’s lost today, and zips up Plato’s jacket.

“He was always cold.”

The dumbbell professor who gave the astrology lecture walks up to the planetarium and doesn’t understand anything, is that the Presidency has gained more power in decision-making, and Congress and the Pentagon, among others, have lost power.

The second requisite of Kissinger’s “diplomacy” is that diplomatic decisions are made according to historical necessities. A diplomat has to follow a course of action which is manifestly correct, rather than give in to the transitory whims of public opinion. A diplomat thinks conceptually because he thinks in terms of wide-range even visionary historic goals.

What are the pragmatic consequences of this conceptual thinking?

Above all, Kissinger fears any power who, for the sake of an idea, as did Hitler, will deny and try to destroy the area of common interest and understanding the other powers have set up. Kissinger most fears ideology. He sees America as the defender of the free world simply because America is still the main nonideological power. Since the Soviet Union is the main ideological power, the fundamental priority of Kissinger’s policy is to convince Moscow that it is fruitless to conduct international business on ideological grounds. And the clearest expression so far of Kissinger’s opposition to the idea of an ideologically oriented foreign policy is Washington’s rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China.

Another consequence of Kissinger’s conceptual thinking besides his hatred of ideology and revolution, for Kissinger is the arch-conservative, is the concept of “linkage.” The rationale of linkage is that all the world’s trouble spots exist on a single continuum which connects the Soviet Union and the United States. In this context, the resolution of an individual issue depends not so much on the merits of the specific case as on the overall balance of power in the world. Kissinger’s tendency has been to link Europe, the Mideast, and Vietnam without much regard to political or conceptual subtleties. Seeing no viability in modified linkage, he has chosen total linkage over no linkage at all.

Given this situation, America needs a sturdy and dependable group of allies. Kissinger’s main disagreement with President Kennedy was Kissinger’s assertion that America could not limit the Soviet Union’s power by itself. For this reason America has had to militarily and psychologically overcommit itself.

At the same time Kissinger is trying to reduce America’s military presence and the power of the Pentagon. So more and more, the United States, to maintain its credibility, must use threats. Threats tough enough to work. Kissinger and Ford would like to avoid nuclear war, but the excessive political commitments of their regime are edging them closer in that direction.

Kissinger is the intellectual. Kissinger himself, philosophically influenced by Hegel, believes that individual men can make real decisions that affect the world: “. . . on co-operating the intellectual has two loyalties: to the organization that employs him and to values which transcend the bureaucratic framework and provide his basic motivation. It is important for him to remember that one of his contributions to the administrative process is his independence, and that one of his tasks is to prevent routine from becoming an end in itself. . . . It is essential for him to retain the freedom to deal with the policymaker from a position of independence, and to reserve the right to assess the policymaker’s demands in terms of his own standards.”

Kissinger moved from Harvard, via Rockefeller and Henry Cabot Lodge, to Washington. Yet Harvard University had been, and will continue to be, the focus of Kissinger’s life: he had been launched on his fortune there, and his most enduring friendships and personal associations are still there. Harvard has trained many men including Schlesinger, Bundy, and Galbraith for the White House; there has always been a beeline from Harvard to the White House.

Kissinger is an individual who has always been obsessed, even before his arrival in government, with making his mark on history. It would not be at all surprising if, besides seeing Nixon and Ford administration foreign policy as a historical turning point, and besides conceiving of himself as a notable historical figure—which, no doubt, he does—Kissinger imagines, in his moments of greatest personal self-esteem, that he is one of Hegel’s great men, one of those rare individuals, those carriers of mankind’s historical spirit, about whom Kissinger’s favorite philosopher once speculated so long ago.

Both Kissinger and Kissinger’s policies, according to Kissinger, above all must reflect the historical conditions we see today and the historic possibilities we see for tomorrow. They are moving with history and moving history themselves. But a policy and a man who speak not to concrete realties or to contemporary concerns, but merely to what the man sees as the vindication of history, are a policy and a man who harshly excludes those human beings who are not living with the historians of the future in mind, and who completely disregard whatever torment and anguish happen to be generated at this time.

“There’s a new woman in the life of James Dean,” Kandid Kendris wrote in her column:

—a wild youngster who’s putting a new sparkle in his eyes.

For the first time since he came to Hollywood, Jimmy’s dating in public—and the woman he loves being seen with is Janis Joplin, one of America’s newest blues singers.

His dates with this excitable 9-year-old make Jimmy glow. The couple has been seen gazing into each other’s eyes at cozy, exclusive Topanga Canyon restaurants and laughing and whispering cheek-to-cheek on Jimmy’s motorcycle. On one date—in an unprecedented public display of affection—Jimmy kissed her.

“I was only a few feet away when it happened,” said a photographer who’s been observing Jimmy’s new dating game since it began in August. The photographer, who asked not to be named, said he’s never seen Jimmy looking more relaxed and radiant. “He doesn’t even avoid the camera when he’s gone out with her.”

The new woman in Jimmy’s life is a former keypunch operator with the Los Angeles Telephone Company and the most exciting new singer on the scene. She lives on the Venice beach.

Janis, who’s made no effort to hide her friendship with Jimmy, had her first known date with him on August 20. She met him at the Warner Brothers’ studio. They went to a drive-in to see The Sun Also Rises.

After the movie, they spent a lingering evening on Sunset Boulevard, in the pool halls, and left around 3 A.M.

Jimmy and Janis dated several times after that in August and September.

A pool hustler who saw them together told The Enquirer: "They would talk together in hushed tones in the back, and once I overheard them having a conversation about leaving Hollywood. They really seemed to have a good time together.”

Everywhere the couple went, they left an impression of warmth, even heat. At Schwab’s Drugstore, a soda jerk told The Enquirer: "Jimmy and the girl had dinner here recently. They chatted and laughed a lot, and seemed to know each other very well. Jimmy Dean looked very happy.”

At another drugstore, Googie’s, a manager identified photos of Janis and admitted: “The girl was with Jimmy Dean. She didn’t give her name, but she was very loving and pleasant to him, and obviously a pal.”

Janis is well-known in rock-and-roll circles. It’s difficult to determine whether her family is wealthy or not, for Janis looks like a beatnik.

Hollywood, all its evil, was beginning to destroy Jimmy’s and Janis’ love. Every word these two youngsters whispered to each other in public, every word of trust and affection, every gesture of trust and desire, was immediately reported in the gossip columns, the scandal sheets, the teenage heartthrob mags. Reported and distorted. Were Jimmy and Janis beginning to believe these distortions of their feelings and of themselves?

JANIS and DRUGS. Janis Joplin, the gutsy, raunchy, and very vulnerable singer that everyone’s talking about, a psychiatric social worker from Venice told Photoplay, is taking drugs. A lot of drugs.

“According to Janis,” said the social worker, “she’s having a nervous breakdown. Her parents are psychotics, and she’s been trying to break away from them. ‘I don’t want parents,’ she told me. ‘I was born from nothing.’ Even though she’s told her parents to stop calling her, they now call her and hang up the phone when she answers.

“At the same time the enormous amount of publicity Janis has been receiving on account of her affair with JAMES DEAN has made Janis feel more unstable. Janis has to flee to something, and she’s fleeing to what’s easiest for her: drugs.”

Janis refused to talk seriously about her use of drugs. The only thing she said to us was: “I never wanted to sing publicly, man. Much less be a STAR! I just came to Hollywood and sang cause that way, I thought, I could get LAID a lot and get a lot of drugs.”

One of Janis’ friends, who wants to remain nameless, told Photoplay that she had the impression that Janis is now receiving insulin shock.

Janis was too young and too vulnerable to battle Hollywood’s glamorizing dehumanizing death machine. And drugs were destroying whatever chance she had to toughen up and keep her love for Jimmy, her ability to love anyone, in a private fortress. Drugs were making her duller and, finally, even more vulnerable.

The evil of Hollywood. The coldness of Hollywood. The other side of Hollywood: if someone wants to become a really good actor or actress, that person has to become someone else, in fact become everyone he or she plays. Actors have to destroy themselves. They don’t have time for love.

Jimmy began to realize that his affair with Janis was forcing him to remain human. Remain stuck on the ground when he wanted to soar into the air, a myth. As he put it, “Up here, I hate all earthlings.”

But love is strong. Stronger than the desire for immortalization. Stronger than the desire for death. Jimmy and Janis had to flee Hollywood. They went to Montmartre, Paris, France and changed their names.