The Woman Who Made Him a Star

THE ICONIC ACTOR FOUND AN AGENT, PROTECTOR, CONFIDANTE AND MOTHER-FIGURE IN JANE DEACY

- LOUISE A. BARILE

During filming of the 1955 classic D East of Eden, James Dean wrote a letter to "Lady Jane," the woman he also called "Mom." In it, he expressed his dislike of LA, his quest to find a discreet dentist, asked about his finances, and assured her he was doing fine. "Too much smoking. [Have] stopped completely, also stopped drinking. Taking vitamins also," he wrote in the two-page letter. "I'm fatter now and feel much better. Tear myself up in New York. Build myself up in Calif. (health and maybe career huh?)."

Jane Deacy, the woman James addressed in the letter, believed in the young actor before anyone else. After signing him to her nascent talent agency in New York, she helped James make job connections, paid his bills, protected him from blackmail, and kept his secrets even after his 1955 death. "She went above and beyond what agents did at that time," says Jason Colavito, author of a new examination of the star's private life (due out from Applause Books this fall).

James had lost his own mother, Mildred, to cancer when he was 9, leaving a hole in his life. "He was very close to his mother. She had encouraged his interest in the arts with storytelling and fantasy," says Colavito. "But the most important influence his mother had, sadly, was in dying. He never got over her death. He treated Jane like a mother figure."

EARLY PROMISE