For half a century after, he carefully guarded Dean’s reputation, forcefully denying increasingly insistent rumors about the sexuality of the most famous movie star in the world and the idol of millions. Bast dropped the phone and fell out of his chair, blacking out at the news. Around sunset, the phone rang with the news that Dean, just 24, was dead-killed when his Porsche collided with another car in the California desert. As Bast told the story decades later, after a long, confusing courtship, full of starts and stops, denials and doubts, Dean wanted them to live together as partners and lovers, not just as friends. The next morning, he planned to carry those suitcases out to Sherman Oaks, where James Dean, his best friend and onetime lover, had invited him to move in together in a large rented house. apartment surrounded by suitcases, banging out a movie outline. Late in the evening on September 30, 1955, screenwriter William Bast sat at his typewriter in his cramped L.A.
