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| Julie Harris and James Dean in East of Eden (1955). C: Ted McCord. D: Elia Kazan. |
In 1954, before James Dean was cast in the film, and at the behest of director Elia Kazan, John Steinbeck met Dean and took an instant dislike to him that never went away. He did, however, agree with Kazan: whether or not Dean could act, he was Cal Trask.
There's some irony here. Whether or not the people of Steinbeck's home town of Salinas (where the film and the novel are set) respected his writing ability, which I doubt, they loathed Steinbeck as a person.
Steinbeck was a democratic socialist. This world view affected his novel-writing, of course, and the people of Salinas—or, at least, the movers and shakers—disowned their native son and actually burned him in effigy periodically. Steinbeck's death in 1968 did not soften his image much in Salinas.
More irony. About fifteen years ago, my wife and I went to the John Steinbeck Museum in Salinas. It had opened in 1998. Signs all over town directed us there, so it was easy to find. We paid our entrance fees and were each handed a little sticker to put on the left upper front of our shirts. We spent about an hour and a half in the exhibits area and in the bookstore. I bought my copy of East of Eden there. I removed my sticker and placed it inside the book on the title page.
We decided to find Steinbeck's grave. He was buried somewhere in town. While my wife started looking it up in our tour book (we did not own smartphones), I started driving, not knowing where to head. But soon I saw a sign with a little arrow underneath the words, "John Steinbeck's Grave." I followed the sign to another sign at a turn, then another sign and a turn, then sign after sign in the cemetery, leading right up to his gravesite, which we could see from the car. Of course we got out to get a closer look.
In death, John Steinbeck had become a one-man tourist attraction, a boon to local hotels, restaurants, and other businesses. The entrepreneurs of Salinas were cashing in on a socialist.
