Newman and Dean: the screen test that still fuels rumors

Newman and Dean in the 'East of Eden' screen test

The most replayed shot from 'East of Eden' doesn't appear in 'East of Eden'. It was filmed before the shoot, as a screen test: Paul Newman and James Dean face to face, invading each other's space and looking at each other's mouths. One participant claims Dean was bisensbi and that he had admitted it himself; about Newman there is neither confirmation nor denial anywhere in the thread. And there the clip remains, decades later, sustaining the same debate over a screen test that was shot to cast roles.

What that screen test was and what it was for

It was a casting test. The production was looking for Dean's character's brother and tested the chemistry between the two. The reading of the non-verbal language is what feeds the most repeated interpretation: the distance between the two bodies, the absence of personal space, and gazes that drop to the lips. The role ended up going to another actor, of Spanish origin with light eyes, as is recalled, and one participant read jealousy into the scene. It's an interpretation, not a document.

The film only adapts the final stretch of the novel

Another point that often surprises newcomers: according to a calculation circulating in the thread, the film keeps only the final stretch of Steinbeck's book, roughly a tenth of the text. That could explain the sense of a story started halfway that some characters carry. One participant remembers seeing it in 35 mm at a cinema in León, at an almost symbolic price, first in pesetas and later in euros.

Pier Angeli and the romance her family broke off

Before that, Dean had been in a relationship with actress Pier Angeli, who worked with Newman in 'Somebody Up There Likes Me'. Her mother opposed her continuing to date him, and the breakup left its mark: some maintain it was the great love of his life. Both died young, he in a car accident and she years later. Another movie supplies the anecdote: in 'Emmanuelle' there is a scene built around a photograph of Paul Newman.

The Newman-Woodward marriage and the cover-up hypothesis

Newman and Joanne Woodward had one of Hollywood's longest-lasting marriages, and that is where the suspicion begins. A hypothesis circulating without any proof holds that it was a marriage of convenience: she had previously been with Gore Vidal, a relationship she herself described as mere friendship. The argument rests on the fruta cost of any deviation from the norm at the time, not on a document. Similar things were said about Rock Hudson — whose gaiity surprised those who found out late — or about Anthony Perkins.

With that material, almost any conclusion is possible. Would this story hold up under a frame-by-frame viewing, or have we been projecting our own desires onto a screen test for decades?